Mandel's Dance with Stalinism

London NW5 1HR

MANDEL'S

DANCE WITH

STALINISM

y Richardson reviews Ernest Mandel's collection of essays publish New Left Books under the title From Stalinism to Eurocommunis irnest the tit (Pa Mand le Fro erback el' s coll Stalir. 2.95 A comprehensive attack on the Tr Stalinism as the major counter-revoluti the workers' movement is contained articles by Ernest Mandel, who goes question the very purpose of Trotsky's to the practical activity of revolutionaries.

Mandel, however, poses as a Trotskyist. He is chief "theoretician" of the 'United Secretariat of the Fourth International. And as such he brings together in this book more than just a series of mistaken positions and interesting errors. The whole collection of articles amounts to a theoretical justification for the opportunist activity of USFI sections in Europe and internationally, whose habitual adaptation to Stalinism has become increasingly open in recent years. The biggest European section of the USFI, the Spanish LCR, went so far recently as to send a telegram of greetings to a counter-revolutionary gathering of "EuroCommunist" leaders in Barcelona. If this book is allowed to circulate without a serious response from Trotskyists it will spread nothing but confusion among a layer of people drawn towards the Trotskyist movement. Indeed many workers and youth internationally now recognise that Stalinism is in an acute crisis, and are looking for ways of intervening in that crisis.

Mandel's book offers them no perspective other than adaptation to the positions argued by the Stalinists them selves, and must therefore be decisively rejected.

otskyist analysis of onary force within in this volume of on to throw into analysis as a guide Trotskyist conception of Stalinism.

In each of the major crises in the post war Fourth International, Mandel has come forward with an analysis based on no more than the most superficial appearances of the situation, and has opposed those who have fought for the necessary political independence of the revolutionary party and of the working class. His role has consistently been that of a reviser of Trotskyist and Marxist theory- whether this be on Stalinism, petty bourgeois nationalism, or the economic crisis of capitalism.

Indeed Mandel himself played a majo the revisionist positions on Stalinism 1953 split in the Fourth International.

The developments in the international class struggle in 1953 sharply exposed the way in which the analysis and programme advocated by Fourth International leader Michel Pablo left Trotskyist forces impotent in the face of revolutionary opportunities.

In the Soviet Union Pablo was taken posturing of the Stalinist bureaucracy i Stalin's death, and failed to put forward political revolution. In East Germany also, as workers rose up in political struggle against the bureaucracy, to be repressed by Soviet tanks and troops, Pablo and others focussed their attention not on demands to develop the independent struggle of the working class but on the various tactical manoeuvres by the East German bureaucrats. And in France a massive general strike movement revealed once again the counter-revolutionary perspective and role of the mass French Communist Party at a time when Pablo and Mandel had claimed such parties were likely to be driven by mass pressure to "project a revolu- Page 11

MANDEL'S HI

Of course not come as political histor

STORY

the positions a bolt from y of attempt argued in this latest volume do the blue. Mandel has a long ing to soften and abandon the ing the r role i which n develop- provoked in by the n the wake a clear call eft' of for

ionary orientation The liquidationi: were encapsulated in Decline of Stalinism of Michel Pablo and the 1953 split. But, as Mandel George Breitman, '' Rise and Decline' t politics the noto which w became a behind such w ious document is published ur major bone of rong : The ider 1 cont positic Rise a. he nar ention himself pointed am the author (Trotskyism v. out in a of the first Revisionism letter draft . Vol. ns in If we leave aside for the moment the way in which that document omits key sentences from its quotes from the Transitional Programme, and the various other detailed points which Mandel later said could be changed in the document, we still find in The Rise and Decline of Stalinism a clear advance outline of Mandel's present positions on Stalinism. The whole document, in seek within the Stalinist apparatus and eous self-reform, is a departure Trotsky on the need for parties of to be built to give conscious leade tion for the overthrow of the bur the nationalised property relations.

Mandel, then as now, places developments: "Malenkov, after 15 years of silence, referred to the activity of "deviationist anti-Leninist" groups in the Com- munist Party in the Soviet Union, on which the victory of the political revolution depends." (Rise and Decline...

p.15). Again and again the necessity for conscious, Marxist leadership in the struggle against Stalinism is understated: "What is new in the situation is that we have reached stage, forecast in the Transitional Programme, where laws of history' reveal themselves stronger than than bureaucratic apparatus'. Of the two factors determin- the orientation of the masses-the death agony of italism which unlooses immense revolutionary forces a world scale, and the policy of the reformist and linist bureaucratic apparatuses which play the role of a ke upon the masses-it is the first which is coming more the the th ing bra ing progressive elements movements to spontan- from the insistence by the Fourth International rship to political revolu- eaucracy and defence of and more to the fore. The revolutionary tide which the Soviet bureaucracy is no longer capable of smashing and arresting is even being nourished by certain of the methods of self-defence applied by this bureaucracy, and is preparing the conditions for the overthrow of the bureaucracy by the Soviet proletariat." (p.16).

Developing this revisionist concept of a supposed historical "stage" in which spontaneous struggles outweigh the bureaucratic power of Stalinism and reformism, the document goes on to worship developments in Yugoslavia and China, specifically opposing the building of Trotskyist parties and the call for political revolution in these countries (pp.19-20). It draws from this welter of confusion a general conclusion: "The system of rigid subordination of the Communist Parties to the political directives of the Kremlin and of the automatic and servile repetition of each successive manifes- tation of Stalinist revisionism of Marxist-Leninist theory has thus been breached. " (p.17).

Hence emerges the even worse stat "The Chinese revolution and the China are today the principal motor revolution, an essential element of the tionary upsurge." empiricism and ement that: People's Republic force of the colon international revol As for the Eastern European Buffer states document looks eagerly forward to the possibility of: "autonomous mass actions transmitting themselves to the native Communist Parties, where there are developing leftist currents capable of giving leadership to the upsurge."

(p.21) In the light later, these glib never corrected. Equally false were the predictions on developments within the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries: "These transformations of the CP objectives provoked swings from adventurism to opportunism, and led certain Communist Parties to take directly counter-revolutionary actions at certain periods... " (p.21) (emphasis added).

If only "certain" CPs adopted counter-revolutionary of the Hu forecasts ngarian events a mere t look pretty sick. But hree they years were Kremlin tanks Hungary, 1956.

Page 12 in

actions at "certain periods", then the illusion is opened up that the rest of the time the remaining CPs are potentially open to pressure forcing them towards centrist or even revolutionary actions. This position flies in the face of the analysis which formed the basis of Trotsky's decision in 1933 that the Comintern was 'dead for the purpose of revolution', a counter-revolutionary obstacle to the struggles of the work- ing class, and that not individual parties, but a whole international needed to be built in opposition to Stalinism to offer revolutionary leadership.

But this same position is almost exactly restated in Mandel's book today, in which he peddles the line that the "Eurocommunists" criticise the Soviet bureaucracy as a result of pressure from their working class members.

In 1953 Mandel was arguing that the CPs reflected both the pull of Moscow and the pressure of their militant rank and file, and that therefore: "they were obliged to reflect, to a certain extent and however inadequately, the interests of the proletariat."

This revisionist line was proved disastrously wrong in 1953 in the French general strike, and has remained wrong ever since. But Mandel's document did not stop there. He goes on to imagine possible wholesale defections of smaller Communist Parties from Stalinism to revolution.

"The crisis in these parties can lead the major part of the communist cadres to come close to the Fourth Inter- national and even join its ranks. Thus on condition that the Trotskyist organisations fulfill their task of revolutionary leadership of the masses and adopt a dynamic and flexible attitude toward the communist militants by seeking a common basis in action that would facilitate their transition to Trotskyism."

This approach, translated into the opportunist practice of Pabloism means in effect that the Trotskyists rewrite their programme and adopt their practical work in order to appeal to the Stalinists. The "transition" that takes place is not of Stalinists towards Trotskyism, but of Trotskyist parties into opportunist appendages of the Stalinist parties.

This process can be seen at work today in the Spanish section of the 'United' Secretariat, the LCR Of the mass CPs, Mandel is even less guarded: "In countries where the CPs are a majority in the working class they can, in certain exceptional circumstances (advanced disintegration of the possessing classes) and under the pressure of very powerful revolutionary uprisings of the masses, be led to project a revolutionary orientation counter to the Kremlin's directives, without abandoning the political and theoretical baggage inherited from Stalinism."

(p.25). Hence the Mandel-Pablo schema of a revolutionary Stalinist party-which in fact concedes to the Stalinists that in almost every revolutionary ("exceptional) situation the pressure of the masses will force the bureaucracy along the road not of Popular Frontism and counter-revolutionary class collaboration, but revolution.

To spell out his revisionist views, Mandel gleeiully describes such developments within the CPs as not the dis- integration of Stalinism but a "gradual internal transforma- tion". . He declares that it is possible that: "... under the pressure of circumstances, they may modify their policies to conform to the interests of the masses". (p.25). Why, then, build Trotskyist parties at all? This question is not seriously answered in the remainder of the document, which goes on to stress that although Stalinism can still be counter-revolutionary, "the general direction towards liberation from the Kremlin, through which CPs will be "compelled to strengthen their ties with masses". Small wonder, therefore, that in his recent article in Intercontinental Press on the 40th Anniversary of the Fourth International, Mandel is forced to an evasive state- ment which completely falsifies the issues at stake in the 1953 split: "In fact, none of the international splits was program- matically justified, that is, not one reflected the historically demonstrable fact that one or another current in the Fourth International had crossed class lines or adopted positions that constituted a betrayal of the proletariat."

Of course the Pablo-Mandel current did not actually cause the defeat of the working class through their revisionist policy of 1953.

But their disorientation of the Fourth International in the face of Stalinism left the Trotskyist movement impotent in the carrying out of its main task-the building of a revolutionary international which has absorbed the lessons of Trotsky's long battle against Stalinism, and which is capable of offering a clear revolutionary alternative. A Trotskyist movement which cannot analyse or fight Stalinism is as much use as a detergent that cannot dissolve grease. To argue that by rendering the movement impotent Pablo and Mandel did not actually go over to the class enemy in no way proves that the 1953 split was unnecessary. Mandel, who method today, is unwarranted. " is the the still continues to uphold the self-same bound to argue now that the split was

OTHER USFI LEADERS

It would be incorrect self as the sole source of leadership of the USFI. French LCR leader Alain Krivine, for instance, equally bankrupt and reactionary positions on Stal He is on record as declaring that in 1956 Kruschev "objectively opened the way to destalinisation, a new relationship with the masses" This concept of seeking out "progressive" sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy and hoping that these forces will somehow "destalinise" the Kremlin regime shows the very essence of USFI revisionism. In reality it constantly seeks shortcuts which will avoid the fight to build indepen- dent revolutionary parties based on the Trotskyist programme. For Trotsky "Stalinism" was the scientific term to describe the bureaucratic deformation of the Russian Revolution in the historical difficulties that followed the dislocation of the Civil War. Trotsky saw no answer to this bureaucracy other than political revolution carried through by the working class. For Krivine now to suggest that Kruschev, a leading Stalinist bureaucrat, could "open the way to destalinisation" is no more than a public rejection of the Trotskyist programme.

The latest realignment of factional forces within the USFI has brought political agreement between Mandel and Krivine and their erstwhile "opponents" in the leadership of the US Socialist Workers Party (which is barred from affiliation to the USFI by reactionary US legislation). The result has been the production of more tactfully phrased material which poses as "orthodox" Trotskyism.

But while Mandel, Krivine, and the form national Majority Tendency" of the US! trace a however, to regard Mandel him- revisionist positions within the holds inism. er "Inter- direct line Page 13

of political descent back to Michel Pablo and positions on Stalinism that produced the 1953 SWP has had a more motley history.

Initially in 1953 it acted as the major force breaking from Pablo, and its leaders denounced Pabloism in the most bitter and resounding terms. James P Cannon himself proclaimed that "We are finished and done with Pablo and Pabloism forever, not only here but on the international field. And nobody is going to take up any of our time with any negotiations about compromise or any nonsense of that sort .. the false split, the members. There is no hint of Trotskyist sentiment t found anywhere in Blackburn's summary of the British Small surprise therefore to find five years Blackburn, together with fellow student leader Taria weeping in Socialist Challenge over the financial crisis now besets the Morning Star.

› be CP. later Ali, that Blackburn asserts that "the disappearance of the Morning Star would be a setback for the workers' move- ment in this country". To describe the Star as organising scabbing, says Blackburn, would go down alright in student circles [!] but "would be rejected as absurd by the majority of class conscious militants". He waxes positively enthusiastic: "The Star supported the big struggles against Heath and has supported the big national confrontations against the social contract" Most of the errors made by the Star on the industrial front are similar in that they encourage misconceptions already quite widespread among advanced workers which would have to be reflected in any authentic workers' newspaper". The CPGB, says Blackburn is being forced to re-examine its relationship to Stalinism, its programme for socialism, and its tactics in the class struggie".

The only conclusion the reader can draw from such eyewash is that Trotskyists have only to pressure the CP to correct its unfortunate "errors", which flow apparently not from its counter-revolutionary Stalinist tradition and method, but from "misconceptions" widespread among advanced workers. Thus this self-styled Trotskyist' effectively blames the working class for Stalinist betrayals!

In reality of course the Stalinists of the British CP have played a despicable role in every major struggle-whether it be their support for outright scabbing against the Leyland toolmakers in Spring 1977, their refusal to support the Port Talbot electricians in battle against Phase 2, their contemptible refusal to mobilise support for the Desoutters unionisation struggle, or their refusal to confront the TUC bureaucracy during the Grunwick strike. Never a major battle erupts without workers confronting in practice the treachery of the British CP at some level in the Labour movement. But in the academic circles in which Blackburn travels and in the editorial offices of Socialist Challenge, the "left' words of the CP can be accepted at face value, and the necessity to retain and develop the Trotskyist analysis o Stalinism can be lost sight of.

Tariq Ali joins Blackburn in this stand, also claimin!

that the Star has "supported most strikes" and "container information", despite following a Stalinist line.

"Despite this crippling defect". Ali tells us, "The CP dailies supported most strikes, contained the only rea information regarding industrial sturggles and were, for whole period, indispensable reading even for their enemie and political opponents".

(Speeches to the Party 176) But from 1956 onwards the SWP began increasingly to drift towards the superficial analysis and opportunist adaptations of the Pabloite International Secretariat. This political shift brought Cannon and the SWP leaders into growing political conflict with the International Committee which then included the forerunner of the French OCI along with the British Socialist Labour League, and which had been formed in the wake of the 1953 split to provide a focus for the fight against Pablo.

It is indeed significant that one of the most determined efforts by Cannon and the SWP to heal the political breach between themselves and Pablo took place in 1957-on the basis of Pablo's document Decline and Fall of Stalinism.

This document failed to draw the slightest lesson from the vicious Stalinist repression of the Hungarian proletariat the year before- and instead talked happily of the Stalinist bureaucracy being forced under pressure of the masses to install 'left' wingers, such as Gomulka in Poland!

The confusion of Cannon and the SWP in 1957 grew only worse in the years up to and during the events of the Cuban revolution and the Cuban missiles crisis-in which Cannon emerged as an open defender of Kruschev.

Since that point the SWP has played a key role as one of the most "orthodox" sounding advocates of Pabloite politics internationally, prostituting the tremendous legacy of the historical struggle for the Trotskyist movement in the USA to the political defence of a bankrupt, empirical, leadership in the "United" Secretariat and all its most pernicious confusion on the role of post-war Stalinism. In Britain the clearest example of the abandonment of Trotskyist positions by leaders of the USFI section the International Marxist Group has been the positions taken on the coming demise of the Stalinist Morning Star.

Prominent IMG leader Robin Blackburn-famous in the late 1960s for his espousal of "student power" concepts —wrote an article in the New Statesmen in the week of the Pinochet coup in Chile-September 1973. That coup marked the climax of an historic Stalinist betrayal by the Chilean CP. Yet Blackburn's article says of its sister party, the British CP "Though the CP is not a new force it is now a more significant one than at any time in the post-war period. In its ranks are some of •he best militants in the trade union movement; indeed, under the able and energetic guidance of Bert Ramelson the industrial work of the party has been a major ingredient in the trade union struggles of the last few years". Not a word of the consistent Stalanist sabotage of strike after strike in Britain. Not a word of the corrupt deals between the CP and top union bureaucracies in which tacit Stalinist support for betrayal after betrayal is exchanged for a few plum full time union jobs for CP Of course the 'defects' included such minor "errors as supporting the Moscow Trials and the execution c Trotskyists and countless other opponents of Stali throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

The "defects" stretched as far as refusing to print th reports from their own correspondents in Hungary 195 because those reports actually told the truth. But to A such questions are of little importance: "The death of the Star would leave us without a papi in which one can occasionally read the views of sho stewards engaged in struggles and their calls for nation Page 14

solidarity". Ali carefully avoids closer examination of these "calls for solidarity"-the monotonous regularity with which they are couched in terms that protect the TUC bureaucracy right and 'left' alike; and the consistent inclusion of such reactionary demands as import controls. Only "crazed sectarians". he says, would welcome its collapse.

Well if hating Stalinism as a pernicious counter- revolutionary cancer on the workers movement internationally, and regarding the Morning Star as an eruption of that cancer makes us "crazed sectarians", then we proudly believe we share that category with Leon Trotsky and the followers of the early Fourth Inter- national. Trotsky declared in the 1930s-before he himself was savagely murdered by Stalin's agents-that a river of blood" separates Bolshevism from Stalinism-and that is even more true in the post war world than it was then. If the IMG and USFI leaders seek to ford that river of blood and join the Stalinist camp, then we will do all in our power to expose their desertion of the Trotskyist principles to which they claim to adhere.

And of course their opportunism towards the Stalinists is not restricted to the Morning Star issue. As mouthpieces for the confusing opportunism and superficiality of the 'United' Secretariat leaders, and in particular of Ernest Mandel, these British "Euro Trotskyists" declare in Socialist Challenge that Stalinist secret policeman Santiago Carrillo has "challenged the theory of socialism in one country," and "rehabilitated Trotsky". Carrillo's book Eurocommunism and The State "opens up an important discussion" , they tell us.

Such positions are so obviously derived and empty of independent thought that procede with our examination of the high Trotskyism', , Ernest Mandel, and his latest on the question of Stalinism.

from we pries terat elsewhere must now t of 'Euro y offering Writing on Louis Althusser his readers: "The most remarkable part of Althusser's articles is that which unmasks and denounces the structure and internal regime of the PCF [French Communist Party] "There are two sorts of remedies for this disease. The first is developed by Althusser and is of an essentially political nature. It calls for a political theory and practice diametrically opposed to those of the Stalinist and reformist bureaucracies, which are based on distrust and fear of the broad working masses".

"The second sort of remedy against the bureaucratic disease is more strictly organisational. • Here Louis Althusser's approach is very timid to say the least".

(Socialist Challenge 6.7.78) us believe, then, that Althusser "political nature" to the PCFs the articles published in by Le leading Monde French Mandel Sta inf linist orms Mandel would offers a solution Stalinist regime! One would scarecely think from this account that Althusser's articles consistently defend viteran French Stalinist leader Maurice Thorez, who led the CP during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Indeed Althusser concentrates particular attention on defending the Popular Front policies adopted by the Stalinists in the period 1934-36-and bitterly fought by the Trotskyists both in propaganda and in practice. Trotsky himself wrote articles and whole book.

lets condemning this reactionary turn by the Stalinists towards so-called "progressive" bourgeois forces, supposed have of a Page and attempting to mobilisation of the wo But Althusser-aj argues strongly for "a popular unity" and "a and nonular forces" turn toward king class. parently with Mandel's blessing- working class and people's policy of policy of liaison of all working class Preciselv such nolicies led to the penden defeat of the Spanish revolution in the the door to the Pinochet coup in Chile in tells us that Althusser offers a "political' Stalinism! This one example illustrates the whole method of approach to Stalinism within it: each is dealt with in the isolated, a-historical fashion, leading to to grasp the pernicious counter-revolu Stalinism as a material force in the worke world scale. 1930s and 1973. Yet ' answer to opened Mandel French USFI leadership's and to movements most superficial, a complete failure tionary nature of rs' movement on a The Workers Socia st League, differentiating on this issue from each of the main "Trotskyist" currents inter- nationally, struggles to understand historical events and changes in their dialectical development, as processes in motion, and not start from surface appearances. In this way we attempt to apply the method fought for in practice by Trotsky and given theoretical explanation in In Defence of Marxism. We struggle therefore to understand Stalinism both from its own historical development (as a counter- revolutionary reflection of the interests of a conservative bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union) and in the context of the developing crisis of capitalism on a world scale.

Thus the pressures flowing from 1935 turn by the parties of the Communist International towards the Popular Front policy in order to consolidate "peaceful coexistence" between the Soviet Union and capitalism must be seen as the source of many of the apparently contradictory move- ments within the mass Stalinist Parties today. In drawing the Communist Parties into direct collaboration with sections of their "own" national bourgeoisie, the Popular Front period, followed by "national" governments in the war period and by the class collaboration of capitalist coalition governments in France and Italy in the immediate post-war period, created a dual pressure on the leaders of the mass CPs. Instead of merely reflecting and transmitting the reactionary foreign policy requirements of Moscow, these bureaucratic leaders had become increasingly responsive to the needs and problems of their "own" bourgeoisie.

From components of an international apparatus designed solely to safeguard the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy the Stalinist Party leaders increasingly began to pursue their counter-revolutionary policies on a national level. As the capitalist crisis has weakened the national bourgeoisies in Europe and elsewhere, the open collaboration between the Stalinist parties and this chosen bourgeois allies has increased, and the tendency towards open splits with Moscow-wherever this may further their manoeuvres at home-has also increased. But Mandel does not seriously regard Stalinism as a material force which is itself the product of material forces, and is unable to grasp the necessary basis for understanding so-called "Eurocommunism". On Page 14 he declares that the Stalinist "theory" of "socialism in one country" had its "own relatively autonomous dynamic". In other words, Mandel believes that the idea of 'socialism in one country' had a power in itself, separate from the bureaucratic

apparatus of the Comintern.

This is different indeed from Trotsky's insistence on the inter-connection between the defeats brought about or worsened by Stalinist misleadership (eg. Germany, China, British General Strike) and the way that these defeats rallied material support to the Stalinists in the battle against Trotskyism. This fight, and that of the Left Opposition and later the Fourth International, was not against the "idea of 'socialism in one country' but against the growing parasitic bureaucracy whose interests were reflected in that "idea". And it was the very material conditions in 1920s Russia that meant that, for all the correctness of their ideas, the Trotskyists were defeated and the Stalinist bureaucracy established its dictatorial rule over the nationalised property relations established in October 1917 Mandel goes on to say on Page 14: "Indeed, the adoption of the theory that it was possible to complete the construction of socialism in one country had deep repercussions which shook the entire international communist movement. That the immense majority of convinced and sincere communist cadres were unaware of this in 1924, 1928 or 1934 is proof of the difficulty for any system of thought, even an analytic instrument such as the Marxist method, immediately to grasp a really radical upheaval in the co-ordinates of its social field. In amongst the mumbo jumbo of this passage is a to Mandel's whole approach to Stalinism. By run together the three dates 1924, 1928 and 1934 he blurs the very different orientation of the Trotskyist mover in those years. In both 1924 and 1928 Trotsky and the Left Opposition were fighting both within the Soviet Union and internationally as a faction of the Comintern, trying to win over its leading cadres and reform it along revolutionary lines. But by 1934 Trotsky had drawn the lesson of the catastrophic defeat of the German working class through the ultra-left sectarian line of the Comintern. Stalin's "theory" that the German Social Democrats were in reality "social fascists" led to a fatal split in the powerful German workers' movement in the face of Hitler's drive for power.

The German CP had been the strongest in the world outside the USSR. But its ignominious and total defeat at the hands of fascism, with not so much as a token show of organised resistance, produced not so much as a ripple of concern among the "sincere communist cadres" that Mandel believes were in the Comintern in 1934.

Trotsky and the International Left Opposition drew from this complete failure to respond to the situation the unavoidable conclusion that the Stalinised Comintern had become dead for the purposes of revolution, a counter- revolutionary force in the workers' movement that had to be replaced by the construction of parties of the Fourth International in every country to lead the working class to power. clue ning over nent 1934 fundamer ment in i the histor reflecting ideas and Thus 'periodic therefore marked tally different period tc ts struggle against Stalinist y of Stalinism is not a co material and class forces, events detached from the on Page 17 he tells us t ransformation into an i he beginning of a r the Trotskyist move- n. For Mandel, however, ntinuity of development but a series of particular historical process. hat Stalinism undergoes nstrument of bourgeois Page counter-revolution. In other words there must be periods in which Stalinism is not an instrument of counter- revolution. If Mandel is right on this, then Trotsky must have been mistaken when in 1933 he definitively pro- nounced the Comintern "dead for the purposes of revolution". Perhaps all that Trotskyists need to do is to wait for a "period" in which Stalinism plays some sort of progressive role, and then seek means of jollying the process along, in order to turn the CPs back towards revolutionary politics? • course there has been no such "period" since 1933. Stalinism was correctly characterised by Trotsky in that period, and retains its counter-revolutionary character to this day-even where, as in Vietnam and Angola, Stalinist forces have actually entered battles against imperialism. The disappearance of the popular forces of the NLF in Vietnam under the repression of the Hanoi bureaucracy and the use of Cuban troops to wipe out worker and peasant opposition to the petty bourgeois nationalist Neto regime in Angola shows that Stalinism is opposed, above all else, to the independent mobilisation of the working class in every country of the world. Mandel refuses to accept this. He forgets or brushes aside the river of blood between Stalinism and Trotskyism.

He abandons Trotsky's analysis of the Comintern as dead for the purposes of revolution. And he sets aside Trotsky's insistence on the historic mission which falls exclusively to the forces of the Fourth International-the construction of revolutionary vanguard parties for the world socialist revolution. For Mandel, the Fourth International is no more than one "current" among many, which has arrived at some correct answers on "questions" of Stalinism: "The Fourth International has worked for longer on these questions and has reached much more serious Marxist conclusions than any other current of the international workers' movement" Accordingly, Mandel specifically thusser

"Eurocommunism" is a concession by Stalinist bureaucrats to the national bourgeoisie. The emergence of "Euro.

Communism" and its condemnation of certain actions by reaucracy, he claims, represents in fact a the Soviet concession the working class in order to win votes, arguing: "It follows that we must regard this Communism positively and not negatively" Mandel regards the "Eurocommunists"' a failure to go far enough in their criticisms, workers' councils in the workers' states.

But he fails to point out that every criticism Stalinist state bureaucracies raised by the communists" is entirely compatible with the restora bourgeois and not workers' democracy.

Mandel attempts fraudulently to separate off the completely reactionary domestic policies pursued by the "Eurocommunists" in their own countries, and contrast them with their "progressive" positions on the workers' states. "When the Eurocommunist leaders commit themselves (insufficiently) against the bureaucracy in this struggle they place themselves on the side of the masses and not on the side of imperialism" bu to weakness as or to call for mass movement becomes. In Spain, Carrillo chose the high point of workers' struggles to sign the reactionary Moncloa Pact: in Italy, Berlinguer maintains the CP as the lynch-pin of the right wing Christian Democratic government, despite a clamour from the ranks of his party for action to defend jobs and wages. The Stalinists certainly do respond to the movement of the working class-by seeking the best and quickest means of stifling and gagging that movement before it reaches the level of questioning and jeopardising their priviliged bureaucratic positions and collaborationist policies.

of the "Euro- tion of

VE RAN

Mandel however offers these "Eurocommunist reactionaries a further olive branch by soft-peddling the very nature of the Communist International founded by Lenin. Trotsky, in the formation of the Fourth Inter- national, insisted that it based itself squarely on the political legacy of the first four congresses of the Comintern -1919-22. Wha then, did the early Comintern represent? Lenin Theses in

OLIVE BRANCH

(Page 52) But these attacks on the Kremlin bureaucracy and the practical support for bourgeois governments in France, Italy and Spain are both reflections of the mass Communist Parties drawing in closer to their "own" bourgeoisie and seeking out petty bourgeois "respectibility".

To Mandel, however, the Euro-CP critici ternal regime in the Soviet Union "contribute to the ripening of first called for 1917. prior to th new International in his April e October Revolution. In the aftermath of pressed ahead Communist in were breaking fundamental Comintern wa of any strengt upheld this pr This strength struggle from combat party - anal ---- ut ige 60 the successful revolution, the Bolsheviks with the preparations for the formation of a ternational as an attractive role for those who or had broken from social democracy. The strength of the Bolsheviks and of the s that Lenin's had been the only whole party h to have opposed the First World War, and incipled position throughout the war period.

in turn flowed from Lenin's consistent 1903 for a disciplined, democratic centralist to lead the working class. This discipline was a central reason tor ene success or tne boisneviks in tne October revolution. And through the early Comintern the Bolshevik leaders fought for the construction of similar parties on an international level.

For Mandel, however, the key question in his "fraternal" approach to the Stalinists is to reduce Trotskyism, as the continuity of this tradition, to the status of simply another "current" in the workers' movement. To do this, he is forced to go back and minimise the centrality of Lenin's struggle and the Bolshevik Party: This statement is a complete abandonment of the Trotskyist position. The political revolution which must overthrow the Stalinist clique in Moscow and Eastern Europe can be assisted from outside their borders only by the struggle for social revolution in the capitalist countries.

Trotsky's whole theoretical analysis of the emergence of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union is based on a grasp of the isolation of the Russian Revolution, and in particular the failure of the German revolutionary struggles which deprived the new workers' state of the advanced technology needed to eliminate poverty and establish a genuinely planned economy. Had such revolutions taken place, the basis could have been provided for the emergence of a bureaucracy to have been defeated.

But the Eurocommunists' role of obstructing the revolution in their own countries, and protecting their "own" national bourgeoisie now means that in material terms they help perpetuate the isolation of the workers' states and preserve the Kremlin bureaucracy. If workers in Eastern Europe do in fact, as Mandel suggests, look to the Euro-Ps for a lead, then they are looking at certain defeat. Of course there are divisions between sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy internationally on how best to contain the movement of the masses. But, far from making concessions to the demands of the masses, the Euro-Ps have distinguished themselves by drawing ever closer to their "own" ruling class the more militant and powerful the "Lenin was not alone in proclaiming that the Second International was dead and that a Third International would now have to be built, on a much firmer doctrinal and organisational basis. Rosa Luxenburg and a good part of the 'centrist' majority of the Zimmerwold Conference also accepted the idea that 'the International is our only fatherland and that international discipline should be imposed within the revolutionary workers' movement, at least on major international questions. This concept was not the product of the October Revolution, the predominance acquired by the Bolsheviks with the founding of the Comintern, or of any inclination of Lenin's to extend Russian organisation conceptions, throughout the entire world. It was the common patrimony of all inter- nationalists, whether Bolsheviks or not, from 1915 onwards. It was the nearly unanimous reaction to the catastrophe that struck the bourgeois workers' movements in August 1914" Here once practical action Page 17 more Mandel is placing "ideas" above and material reality. Certainly there were

other internationalists in 1914 and after who gallantly opposed social-patriotism and imperialist war. But they did not lead successful revolutions, because they had not built Bolshevik-type parties capable of capitalising on the enormous post-war upsurge of the working class throughout Europe. The important issue for Marxists today is not to award posthumous ticks and crosses as to which thinker had the right ideas in 1914, but to assess the practical lessons from the Russian revolution and the defeats throughout the remainder of Europe. Because Lenin and Trotsky understood those lessons, they above all fought for the rapid establishment of a new, democratic centralist, International. The task of the International was to act as the organising centre for the struggle in every country to build parties to lead the overthrow of capitalism.

Only the Fourth International, established in the wake of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Comintern, represents today the continuity of that ear stand by Lenin. The Stalinists-whether "Euro inmunists" or pro-Moscow hard liners-stand not simply outside but opposed to that tradition and legacy, opposed to genuine internationalism, and opposed in practice to the very notion of international proletarian revolution Mandel refuses to say this. It might offend the Euro-CPs.

But in attacking the notion that Lenin sought through the Comintern to extend Bolshevik lines of party organisation ("Russian organisational conceptions"), Mandel reveals also the USFI's contempt for democratic centralism and its deep-rooted federalist concept of an international, in which each individual section or faction is allowed to go its own opportunist way-so long as it does not attempt to examine the historical problems of the post-war Fourth International

MANDEL APES THE EUROCOMMUNISTS

Of veteran French Stalinist Jean Ellenstein, Mandel writes that "he leaps beyond the criticism of Stalinism that had previously been made by other CP members.

Ellenstein's contribution, says Mandel, is that he attacks as insufficient the theory of the "cult of personality" But what does Ellenstein really say? He tells us that the "Stalin phenomenon" is "fading" now that Stalin is dead.

He goes on to depict the "Stalin phenomenon" not as the product of material social forces and the reflecting of an emerging bureaucratic caste, but as something peculiarly Russian, and linked with the underground work done by the Bolsheviks prior to 1917. The implication is that such a thing couldn't happen in France.

Pursuing his once stated objective of "rescuing Trotsky from the Trotskyists", Ellenstein then skilfully selects aspects of Trotsky to defend, admitting that "Trotsky was sometimes a good strategist, he was a great writer and a good orator" (p. 54). Ellenstein attacks Russia and attacks the -even calling for the MoscowTrials. But having established these 'objective' observer and critic o on to defend Stalin's line against of policy. He speci the lack of democracy in Stalinist show trials in Moscow and elsewhere rehabilitation of the victims of the spurious credentials as an f Stalinism, Ellenstein goes Trotsky on every key issue country"-a policy entirely tune with the French Stalinist party's policies today. He goes on to defend the Popular Front policy, and, as is fashionable with liberal' Stalinists, concedes that the fatal ultra-left sectarianism of the "Third Period" in Germany was a mistake. Stalin's post-war deals with imperialism to divide up the world into arbitrary "spheres of influence" and betray revolutionary struggles in France, Italy and Greece also find a staunch defender in Ellenstein. And Stalin's over-all record as a "builder of socialism" is defended to the hilt by self-styled 'dissident' Ellenstein, who without hesitation trots out this line so characteristic of every Stalinist hack.

The whole picture from Ellenstein's book is therefore one of a Stalin who has made a few mistakes but was generally correct, though regrettably undemocratic. There is no attempt whatever to show the link between the rigid suppression of democracy in the Soviet Union and the preservation of the bureaucratic privileges of the Kremlin clique headed by Stalin. This, then, is the "critique" of Stalin held up coin by Mandel, and praised as "leaping beyond" criticisms by CP members. Mandel's account merel up the credibility of an unrepentant defender of t' essence of Stalinism. But there is worse to come as good previous y builds le entire

RRILLO'S "BOMBSHELL

"Where Ellenstein has fired a shot at the edifice Stalinist orthodoxy, Carrillo has dropped a bomb" (p. 71).

So says Mandel of the book Eurocommunism and the State by Spanish Stalinist chief Santiago Carrillo. That book was reviewed extensively in Socialist Press No 85. But Mandel's position is worthy of note. His criticism centres on the fact that Carrillo doesn't go far enough. He calls on the USFI rank and file to "centre their criticisms in fraternal discussion with the militants of the 'advancing wing' of Eurocommunism" Despite his subsequent talk of attacking the reformism of the Euro-CPs, Mandel's notion of "fraternal criticism" can do nothing but disarm USFI members in the face of Stalinism. In suggesting that Carrillo's politics have a "progressive side" he is opening the door for complete capitulation to the reactionary forces of the Spanish CP.

Carrillo's failure to 'go far enough' in criticising the USSR is regarded as a 'contradiction' which can apparent- ly be resolved by Stalinist militants, not through a thoroughgoing practical break with the Spanish CP, but through discussion of ideas while remaining within that party: "But while these contradictions cannot be overcome by the Eurocommunist leaders, they can be overcome by the militants of these parties. It is towards these militants that we must now turn for our increasingly promising dialogue.

Carrillo's book offers every revolutionary powerful ammu- nition [!] in this regard" (p. 86).

Far from exposing the counter-revolutionary treachery of the Moncloa Pact and the practical betrayals perpetrated by the Stalinist leaders, Mandel actually claims that the strategy of the Euro CPs: "acquires all its credibility in the eyes of the masses in precisely the phase in which the exacerbation of contra- dictions, tension, and class struggles inexorably places a frontal test of strength between capital and labour on the agenda" (p. 196). To suggest that the credibility in time of Stalin mass ists betrayals carry most struggles is effectively to

renounce any prospect of exposing and destroying these leaders. Instead of the Trotskyist approach, which sees the masses confronting in practice the class collaboration of their mass leaders, and the necessity of constructing an independent revolutionary party to offer the masses a clear programme and an alternative leadership, Mandel reduces the whole process to a "fraternal" debate on abstract ideas between different "currents" in the workers' movement.

Rather than issue a Trotskyist rallying-cry to destroy Stalinism-whether in its "Euro", Moscow or Peking varieties-Mandel offers the illusory hope that certain wings of the Stalinist bureaucracy can, under the influence of a "dialogue" evolve of their own volition towards revolution- ary politics. It is unclear whether or not Mandel includes Santiago Carrillo himself in this category.

But one thing is becoming clear to increasing numbers of Spanish workers, if not to Ernest Mandel: the only bomb that Carrillo is likely to drop is on the working class as he lines up openly with the Francoist Suarez regim defence of Spanish capitalism!

BAHRO

An important chapter of Mandel German dissident Rudoph Bahro.

The conditions for political revolution are clearly developing inside Russia and Eastern Europe. The open splits between rival national Stalinist bureaucrats in Eastern Europe show the weakness of the bureaucracy, as each section seeks to protect its own interests and defend itself against its own working class.

Most important of all, the productive forces creating material development in the deformed workers' states also create greater inequality and thus greater conflict between the masses and the parasitic bureaucracy. This emerged graphically a short time ago in Poland. The general instability of the bureaucracy has been proven historically in the East German uprising of 1953 and the 1956 rising in Hungary, as well as the hasty moves by the Kremlin to repress the Czech workers in 1968.

As the Stalinist bureaucracy-rejecting any development of workers' management of the nationalised economy and unable therefore to utilise the full creative potential of centralised planning-instead seeks increased deals, loans and agreements with the West, so its economy becomes increasingly affected by the crisis of capitalism. This can be seen clearly in the case of Yugoslavia.

As a result, the Stalinist bureaucracies are now driven to seek ways of increasing productivity-forcing workers to work harder. It is this conflict between the masses and their bureau- cratic leaders which must be the starting point for a communist opposition. Under these conditions, Trotskyist parties must be built inside the workers' states to create the conscious force fighting to mobilise the working class in a political revolution to displace the bureaucracy and reestab- lish the political power of the working class over the nationalised economy established in the October Revolution. The East German strikes of 1953, the workers' councils and militia created in the Hungarian events of 1956, the movement in the factories in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the subsequent struggles in Poland have all confirmed that, however heroic may be the opposition movements of intellectuals and occasional disaffected bureaucrats the key to political revolution is the indepen- also the Page Carrillo Rudolph Bahro dent strength of the working It is from this standpoint variety of oppositional curre the workers' states. They r class that nts t ange AL:- we must look at the wide at have developed inside from outright agents of position through bureau- seeking the path back to cratic repression) • to Lenin. A whole section of these oppositionists look to Carter's reactionary "human. rights" charade, and most seek in some some way to mobilise bourgeois public opinion in the capitalist states against the abuses carried out by the Stalinist regimes. Bahro's strength t he represents

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frustrated with the way that the working class in the workers' states appears to have been bought off by the manoevres of the bureaucracy -especially in Poland, where the various strike waves have each brought token economic "concessions" from the bureaucracy.

Mandel, however, praises Bahro's book the skies: "The Alternative is the most important theoretical work to come out of the countries that have abolished capitalism since Leon Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed... it is a source of elation that the German Marxist theoretical tradition is being reborn in East Germany."

In this way Trotsky's greatest and most decisive book, written as a part of the conscious struggle against Stalinism and for the development of revolutionary parties, is reduced to the level of being branded as simply a theoretical work", and actually compared to the confused efforts of an individual oppositionist to understand bureaucracy. Mandel in this way demonstrates the casual way in which ideas can be bandied about by USFI leaders once they are shorn of their material context and significance. What does Bahro really have to say?

His strength is that in denouncing what he calls "actually existing socialism" he declares that the only alternative is a socialist, or communist system. And he attacks the idea that the bureaucracy can reform itself. He calls for an upper limit on wages and for an end to privileges and decorations.

These strengths are obviously the reason why Bahro has recently been sentenced to 18 months in prison in East Germany. We must salute his courage in taking such a stand, and oppose such repression. But this does not oblige us to accept everything put forward in his book. In particu- lar any serious efforts to support or defend Bahro demand the development of a movement to overthrow the bureau- cracy. It is in this respect that Bahro's book has nothing to offer. Indeed his confusion and misdirection could even act as an obstacle to the development of revolutionary forces.

Firstly, Bahro specifically attacks the idea that the working class is the key to the overthrow of the bureau- cracy. Since 1914, he says, the European working class has only fought for trade union demands and immediate material gains. And this cynicism towards the working class links in with his complete acceptance of the "inevitability" of bureaucracy in Russia in the 1930s because of the lack of developed productive forces. A similar lack of productive forces would, he suggests, mean that bureau- cratic regimes in Africa and Asia today would be accept- able. So much for his "resolute internationalism", as praised by Mandel! Bahro's indifference to the working class means that historically he fails to mention Hungary 1956 and turns instead to the Czech events of 1968, where the Dubcek bureaucracy clashed with Moscow.

Change, he says, should take place through the "broad educational movement" of a "League of Communists".

This "League" would not be a democratic centralist organi- sation, nor would it agitate for the armed overthrow of the bureaucracy and establishment of workers' councils; although occasionally using the term 'political revolution' Bahro in most instances describes his idea of such change a "a cultural revolution, essentially non-violent" The force behind such a change is to be the prosperous petty bourgeois intellectual layers in the Stalinist states who he calls on to engage in "a collective renunciation of a continued material expansion". Such social layers overlap extensively with the state bureaucracy itself, and careful to avoid any undue stress on the conflict the working class and its parasitic rulers: Yet it is not the contradiction between the people and the functionaries, or, more accurately, between the masses and the apparatus, which one can establish by analysis, that gives us our basis of hope."

Bahro is between For Bahro, the solution to the problem of bureaucracy lies in what he calls surplus consciousness-something out- side the production process altogether. He calls for more university education. And this surplus consciousness he imagines coming into conflict with the bureaucracy.

No wonder Mandel's mouth waters at this kind of material. It is little different from his old discredited ideas about "student power" in the later 1960s. Mandel himself declared that the working class in the capitalist countries had been bouaht off by cars and refrigerators. and that students the revol Such idealist. oppositic Marxists "surplus working reflect a would therefore ution. approaches are and always have been entirely Because it appears that intellectuals are the main in forces at a particular point of time, non- attempt to "explain" this by inventing theories of consciousness" or theories as to why the class is "backward". But in reality, intellectuals developing movement in the working class. They be the source or "vanguard " of are a useful barometer but not in themselves a storm.

Similarly Bahro himself is important in that he must reflect a growing unease among the masses in Eastern Europe. Though he cannot understand this himself, the East German bureaucracy must clearly recognise in Bahro's confused writings a warning that they will shortly have to contend with the masses. This has driven them to the lengths of punitive action against Bahro in order if possible to intimidate further opponents.

The same pressures and forces clearly Soviet show trials and the handing penalties against almost insignificant opponents. If Bahro has no programme to offer the workers in the workers' states, does he at least show sympathy towards Trotsky and the struggle of the Left Opposition against the growing power of Stalinism? No! He goes out of his way to attack them: "We must, of course, free ourselves from the old ortho- dox Marxist sectarianism. We cannot learn the path to follow from that opposition which lost the fight against the rise of Stalinism. Every revolutionary communist since 1917 has had Trotskyist feelings at a certain stage in the move away from domination by the apparatus. But this position really does lack historical prospects."

So this is the real content of what Mandel calls the greatest "theoretical work" since Revolution Betrayed!

That book Trotsky himself described as a "basis for action". . It included the following crystal-clear explanation of the material forces that will emerge as the focus for political revolution: underly out of petty the recent draconian bourgeois "A raising of the productivity of labour on the basis of commodity circulation, means at the same time a growth of inequality. The rise in the prosperity of the commanding strata is beginning to exceed by far the rise in the standard of living of the masses. Along with an increase of state wealth goes a process of new social differentiation".

(P115 Revolution Betrayed) scant attention to material n. Instead he continues his Mandel ices, or of to cou pract rse ical pays actio Page 20

frantic search through the various "works" and confused ramblings of the oppositionists to search for ready-made answers that he hoped may offer a short-cut that avoids the hard, patient struggle for the building of Trotskyist parties in Eastern Europe. Trotsky says in the Transitional Programme: "There is but one party capable of leading the masses to insurrection--the party of the International". "The whole programme for the USSR is workers, rank and file collective farmers, Red Army men". The clarity of this programme is in that it is a policy for action to drive the bureaucracy and the new meritoc- cracy out of the soviets." He calls for the regeneration and devalanment of Soviet democrac" the "leaalisation Soviet Fourth based on the peasants and of soviet parties" content" This section winds up with three slogans: Down with the bureaucratic gang of Cain-Stalin Long live Soviet democracy! (notice Soviets organs) Long live the international socialist revolution!

Internationalism for Trotsky means support for revolution not adaptation to the counter-revolut Euro-Ps, or to oppositional intellectuals in the Union. We say and to return to the soviets their "class world ionary Soviet the greatest "work" towards developm ent of the political revolution in Russia and Eastern europe was the 1956 Hungarian uprising because it showed-in the way that the 1905 revolution showed Lenin the form of the 1917 revolution-the form which the power of the working class will take in its rise against bureaucracy.

It showed the worker councils and militia: it showed the ending of the secret police. Its failure came precisely because there weren't developed Trotskyist parties in Hungary, Poland and in Russia to take this forward.

simultaneously criticises aspects of the Stalinist bureauc- racy in the Soviet Union. And workers in Eastern Europe who look to Trotskyism for a perspective in their struggle against the bureaucracy will recoil in disgust from Bahro's idealist theories, which have no room for the working class and which focus exlusively on the mental activity of petty bourgeois intellectuals. In fighting the counter-revolutionary policies of both the pro Moscow and the "Euro" CPs, and for the destruction of Stalinism as an organised obstacle to prole- tarian revolution, Trotskyists must also enter the struggle against the revisionist perspectives of Ernest Mandel and the opportunist practice of the 'United' Secretariat of the Fourth International of which his book on Stalinism is a reflection. Only through such a fight to reassert the method, principles and programme of the Fourth International and to reconstruct it as the World Party of Socialist Revolution can the best elements of the working class be won to the banner of Trotskyism and led on the road of emancipation from the rule of decaying capitalism and parasitic Stalinism.

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Ever since the decision to torm the rour national. centrists have insisted that Stalinism finally gone over to counter-revolution. The Br held this position, and was therefore unable Stalinism. Isaac Deutscher in his biography of declares that the formation of the Fourth Internat a wrong step, and as a delegate from the Polish T cast the only vote against the foundation of International at the 1938 conference.

While Mandel would disagree verbally with forces, the essence of his approach is also to 'progressive forces within Stalinism who can has not itish ILP to fight Trotsky ional was otskyists the new all such seek out be won through "fraternal" debate Trotskyist movement. Thus, in the capitalist states of Europe, the turn by Mandel and the USFI to the "progressive side" of the "Eurocommunist ' parties comes at a time of the Stalinists' most brazen class collaboration with their "own" capitalist class. In the workers' states Mandel puts the confusion of isolated oppositionist on a par with Trotsky's definit writings on the nature of the Soviet Union.

Such opportunist positions will not attract serious class fighters to Trotskyism-it will drive them away. The most advanced layers of the Spanish masses will not be easily convinced that the same Carrillo who sells out their every struggle to the Francoist regime is 'progressive' because he Page 21 to the correct ideas or tne an ive I wo issue Name . Address uld like enc Send to. Sc Dartmouth London NWS 1 red Park 31 Hil

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