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Fourth International, May 1945

Lily Roy

Socialism Reaffirmed III

From Fourth International, vol.6 No.5, May 1945, pp.142-146.
Transcribed, marked up & formatted by Ted Crawford & David Walters in 2008 for ETOL.

How was the bureaucracy enabled to carry out this process? Precisely by reason of the isolation of the Soviet Union consequent on the failure of the international revolution. This deprived the Soviet proletariat of that aid from the proletariat of the advanced capitalist countries which would have enabled them to counteract the adverse effects of Russia’s economic and cultural backwardness. The backwardness reflected itself politically in the pull away from the socialist direction exercised, on the one hand, by the overwhelming peasant, i.e. petty bourgeois, mass of the population, and, on the other, by the body of trained functionaries, managers and skilled workers which was sharply differentiated from the general toiler mass. It was by an alliance between these two forces against the proletariat that the political expropriation of the working class was carried out.

It is to be stressed, however, that the bureaucracy which thus seized the political power was itself the product of the new property relations created by October and depended on them for its privileged position. Consequently, at the same time as it expropriated the workers politically, it continued to defend these property relations. Continued to defend them; but with a difference.

What was the difference? In this, that it administered the state property increasingly in the interests of itself and the labor and collective farm aristocracy on which it leaned for support. This fact expressed itself in the diversion, through unduly differentiated payments, of a disproportionate share of the national income to these sections. That is to say, the bureaucracy distorted the property relation resulting from the October Revolution.

Distorted, but not displaced them. If these property relations had indeed been displaced, i.e. if the bureaucracy and their allies had taken over to themselves the state property which the workers had seized from the capitalists, the Soviet Union would have reverted to capitalism. This the bureaucracy has not yet done. But, along this road the bureaucracy is fast drifting. Why? Because the very existence of these property relations constitutes a continuous threat to the political power and economic privileges of the bureaucracy and its allies. For, in the long run, property relations dominate, and determine, political relations. If the bureaucracy is to perpetuate itself in power, therefore, it must in the long run undermine the very property relations it brought into being and substitute therefore, a new set of property relations. And this, in its own way it is steadily doing; as is shown by that series of reactionary manifestations like the creation of a rentier stratum of Soviet bond-holders, the abolition of workers’ control, etc., etc., which Mr. Masani so tendentiously summarizes.

What is the conclusion all this leads to in regard to the class nature of the Soviet Union? To the conclusion of Trotsky, the ablest, severest, and yet most completely scientific analyzer of Soviet facts who has yet lived, namely, that the Soviet Union is a degenerate workers state; a workers state, because it is still based on the property relations created by October; but a degenerate one, because it is ruled politically by a bureaucracy which distorts these property relations.

This is what the contemporary Soviet state is. And, incidentally, this disposes of the last remnant of the managerial thesis, the term “Managerial State.” This proves, in the light of the above, to be merely a label stuck on the degenerate workers state with a view to assimilating it with the Fascist state. Now that we know the real class nature of the Soviet state even as we discovered earlier the true class nature of the Nazi state, the label becomes completely unstuck and falls into the dust heap of useless and therefore discarded political constructions.

We begin now to see the reason for the tremendous intensification of the coercive functions of the state which the Soviet Union has seen under Stalin. It is an expression not of the dictatorship of the proletariat over other classes but of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy over the working class itself. Hence the devastating purges, the frame-up trials, the sheer murders and the constant bloodletting, not to mention the falsifications of history and the rank lies, which have characterized the Stalinist regime. These constitute the desperate efforts of a bureaucratic caste to maintain itself in power against the increasing resistance and the growing revolt of the very class which created it and of whose control it has freed itself.

Now, Mr. Masani seeks to suggest that Marxists hold that this dictatorship, namely, the Stalinist dictatorship over the working class will “liquidate” itself voluntarily some day or other. Here are his sarcastic words on the subject:

Marxists often refer to socialist thought before Marx as Utopian. One wonders whether anything can be more Utopian than the touching faith of Communist, that a dictatorship like that in Russia, which has not hesitated to “liquidate” its political opponents in the party in lakhs for the past six or seven years in a bloody struggle for power, is going one fine day to awaken to the fact that it has served its historical purpose and must now liquidate the GPU and the coercive purpose of the state, which must then “wither away”! This makes Max Eastman indulge in the quip: “Marx described as Utopian the conception that good men can bring about socialism. Stalinists actually believe that bad men can be relied upon to do so.”

The sarcasm is certainly deserved – by the Stalinists. But if the opinion expressed in the above passage is attributed to revolutionary Marxists as distinct from Stalinist flunkeys, then it is utterly untrue. No Marxist holds that the dictatorship of the proletariat can be equated with the dictatorship of the Communist Party, i.e. in Russia today, of the bureaucracy, over the proletariat. No Marxist holds that this dictatorship, i.e. of the Stalinist bureaucracy, will “one fine day awaken to the fact that it has served its historical purpose and ... liquidate the GPU and all the coercive purpose of the state.” No Marxist holds this for the simple reason that the “historical purpose” of the Stalinist dictatorship is not the building of the international socialist society but the misapplication of the property forms created by the October Revolution to the benefit of the bureaucracy and the social strata on which it rests for support, viz. the labor and collective farm aristocracy of the Soviet Union. That is its historical purpose; a purpose which requires, as we have seen, the increasing intensification of the state and not its progressive abolition.

Looked at in this way, we can understand not only the nature of the problem but also its true solution. This solution plainly is not the Masanian formula of the abandonment of the proletarian dictatorship but precisely its restoration in full. That is to say, what is called for is the taking back by the working class into its hands the political power of which it has been expropriated by the very bureaucracy which it set up to manage the state property and administer the state apparatus. This is the solution, Mr. Masani – the overthrow of the political dictatorship of the bureaucracy before it can undermine the October gains from within, i.e. the restoration of the proletarian dictatorship in full, and not the abandonment either of the October gains or of the proletarian dictatorship, as you erroneously imagine.
 

Why the Class Struggle?

It is inevitable that a person who reconsiders the very necessity of setting up the proletarian dictatorship with its statified property, should also “reconsider,” i.e. abandon, the very process which brings these things into being, viz. the revolutionary class struggle. This, Mr. Masani does.

Here is how he puts it:

A third Marxist assumption that appears to be unable to stand a review of the past two decades is that socialism can be achieved by appealing to the collective selfishness of the working class and its collective hatred for the property owning classes. The fact of the clash of interests between different classes in society is, of course, obvious. But unfortunately the appeal to the collective selfishness of the ‘workers leads quite as often to their becoming a party to exploitation and injustice. We have already seen how the British working class, being given a minor share in the profits of the Empire, becomes through the Labour Party a party to the perpetuation of Imperialism, which is the very antithesis of a world socialist order. Besides, can one ever get to a superior society based on co-operation and love by appealing to selfishness and hatred?

So, Mr. Masani, the fact of the clash of interests between different classes is ... “obvious!” What then of the fact of the class struggle? Not so obvious, is it? During a strike, for instance, or a lock-out? Or is the former to be traced, not to the clash of interests you mention, but merely to the “collective selfishness” of the working class and its “collective hatred for the property owning classes” which you find so horrifying?

It is, then, merely a question of morals, apparently. Substitute a little love and much co-operation – with a dash of state compulsion, of course and everything will be lovely in the neo-Gandhian garden. Yes, lovely. But lovely for whom? Co-operation by the working class with the capitalist class is co-operation by the exploited with their very exploiter. It connotes, therefore, acquiescence by the working class in its own exploitation. Which, Mr. Masani, is all that your capitalist, being no neo-Gandhian himself, wants. “Permit me to exploit you and I don’t care whether you love me” – that is his philosophy; on which you go one better with your demand that the worker should love his exploiter.

Whither does such co-operation lead? Precisely to the abhorrent outcome which Mr. Masani has quoted from Britain. Co-operation by the British working class with the British capitalist class connotes, nay, necessitates, also co-operation with the latter in the exploitation of the colonies, i.e. an alliance of the British working class with its own exploiters against the toilers of the British colonies. That is where your “co-operation and love” lead, Mr. Masani.

Let us see whither it would lead, on the contrary, if the British working class, instead of applying the class co-operation theories of Mr. Masani and the British Labour Party before him, would only apply a little of the class struggle theory which Mr. Masani so violently abhors. If the British working class sets out to fight its British exploiters and to overthrow them, is it not inevitable that they would ally themselves for the purposes of that very struggle (or, as Mr. Masani would have it, in the selfish interests of their own struggle) with the very colonial masses who are also struggling against the self-same exploiter, the British capitalist class? And would not that be the disappearance of imperialism, instead of the perpetuation of it, to which, as we have seen, the theory of class co-operation leads? We ask the question; but we shall not give the answer because, just like the clash of interests between classes, it too is obvious.

What Mr. Masani forgets, overlooks or knowingly seeks to smear over is the fact that the class struggle is inherent in capitalist society. Marxists do not create the class struggle, Mr. Masani: it is already there. Recognizing this fact, however, they seek to develop it as a means, the only means, to the ultimate abolition of the class system itself and therewith the class struggle. The only means, Mr. Masani – as we shall finally see in the concluding sections of this book.
 

Socialism the Only Alternative

Mr. Masani holds – and this is the fourth and last “assumption” in Marxist theory that he wishes to “reconsider,” i.e. to abandon – that socialism is not the only alternative to capitalism. Let us quote his own words, as we have always done in this book:

Yet another belief – and one held till now by all socialists – is that socialism is the only alternative to capitalism. I must confess I held this view myself till round about 1937 or 1938. You had somehow to destroy capitalism and then as day follows night socialism must dawn. But must it? That old type capitalism is played out is obvious. But will socialism inevitably follow or is there not a third “something” that is likely to emerge? (His italics.)

Now, for Mr. Masani’s own sake we are bound to say that it is a pity he did not stop with his first sentence in the above passage; for, then, we would have been able to state for once that he had accurately described the position of all Marxists. Marxists do hold that socialism is the only alternative to capitalism. But – and that’s the pity of it, Mr. Masani – they do not mean thereby what you say you imagined they meant, viz. that “you had somehow to destroy capitalism and then, as day follows night socialism must dawn.” What they do mean we shall soon see.

When Marxists declare that socialism is the only alternative to capitalism, they thereby mean, firstly, that socialism is the next higher stage in society’s evolution; and, secondly, that it provides the only progressive solution of capitalism’s contradictions. Capitalism is not an eternal system which has existed from the beginning and will prevail to the end. On the contrary, it is only one system in an historical series (primitive communism – slave owning society – feudalism – capitalism), each of which evolved out of its predecessor, and each of which constituted a higher social stage than its predecessor inasmuch as each carried the development of society’s productive forces, and therewith also production which is the material basis of life and civilization, forward to a higher level. In this series, capitalism was the last and highest: in a comparatively brief historical period it developed society’s productive forces and production itself to a pitch unprecedented in human history.

Like all preceding social systems, however, capitalism too must die; it is indeed already dying – which is what Mr. Masani no doubt means when he says “that old type capitalism is played out is obvious.” It is dying because it is being choked by the working out of its inherent contradictions, the basic one of which is the contradiction between the associated labor process and the individual appropriation of the product. To put it differently, the very production relations which enabled capitalism to develop the productive forces of society to the highest level in human history are today strangling those productive forces, and therewith society itself.

Production relations, i.e. the relations of men to each other in the productive process, find their social expression in property relations, e. the relation of men to things, and the characteristic feature of capitalist property relations is private ownership of the means of production. This relation of men to things reflects itself socially in the emergence, or rather existence, of two opposed classes at the two poles of capitalist society: the capitalist owners of property, i.e. the capitalist class on the one hand, and the propertyless owners of labor power, i.e. the working class on the other.

The capitalist property relation described above has this important consequence, viz, that the actual producer, i.e. the worker, cannot have access to the means of production, i.e. cannot produce, except through the capitalist. That is to say, the worker has to hire himself out, i.e. sell his labor power, to the capitalist. And the capitalist buys this labor power of the worker only if he (the capitalist) can make a profit out of the transaction. No profits; no employment.

How can this profit be made by the capitalist? Only in one way. Only by compelling the worker to produce, in the course of the production process, more values than those he receives in the form of wages. The worker is compelled to produce surplus value for the capitalist; which is only another way of saying that he is compelled to do a certain proportion of unpaid labor for the capitalist. The capitalist relation is thus an exploitative relation. Which is why we had repeatedly to point out to Mr. Masani that if you preserve private profits, you are bound to preserve exploitation.

It is plain from the above that what enables the capitalist to exploit the worker is precisely private ownership of the means of production. Which, again, is why we pointed out to Mr. Masani that the only way to abolish capitalist exploitation is to abolish capitalist private property.

Now, capitalist private property is but the capitalist means to private profit. No profits; no production: that is the capitalist law. For, the whole purpose of the capitalist production process is – private profit, which is but another name for the self-expansion of capital. The capitalist throws into the productive process a certain quantity of capital as a means to expanding it. That is the whole point in the process – for the capitalist. If at the end of the process the capital thus thrown in has not expanded, i.e. increased in quantity, the whole process is, from his point of view, useless. Which is why we say that capitalist production is but a means to capitalist profit. Production, which is essential to society, is only incidental to the process; profit is its motive, and profit its purpose.

Now, a characteristic of capitalism is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall – a tendency which has been proved historically to be a fact. That is to say, the amount of profit realized on a given quantity of capital invested has been falling steadily. Caught in this falling rate of profit, yet driven by the insatiable thirst for profit, the capitalist class has had to pile capital investment on capital investment as a means of at least maintaining, if not increasing, the actual total of profit made, as distinct from the rate of profit realized. That is to say, the realization of a given amount of profit required an ever increasing quantity of capital investment. And this connoted an increasing development of the productive forces of society. Private profit, or rather the hitching of production to private profit, was thus the very secret of capitalism’s development of the productive forces of society.

It was, however, also the snag in the capitalist process For every development of the productive forces of society must ultimately lead also to an increase in the actual production of commodities. And on the sale of these commodities ultimately also depends the actual realization of the profits which are imminent in the product during the productive process. And here, capitalism regularly and inevitably stalled. For, the consumers’ commodities that are produced must in the end find their market in the very working mass from the exploitation of which surplus-value is extracted. And this very exploitation, the returning to labor of less than the equivalent it produces, ensures the incapacity of the working masses to purchase the very commodities they have produced.

Capitalism therefore moved periodically into crisis. This crisis manifested itself in an increasing mass of unsold goods in the capitalists’ hands at the one end, and in an increasing mass of pauperized and unemployed workers, at the other. Unable to sell the accumulating mass of goods, the capitalists had no alternative but to cut down or stop production. And this, in turn, connoted more and more men thrown out of work, and therefore a progressive intensification of the crisis.

In every crisis but the last, i.e. previous to the 1929-1932 crisis, capitalism broke through the vicious circle not only by the beating down of wages as a means to restoring profitability, but also by the opening of fresh foreign markets and by technical improvements which enabled greater production at lesser cost, i.e. by reducing the costs of production as a means to cheapening commodities and enabling them to be sold at a profit for a lower price. That is to say, capitalism rose out of the former depressions by developing the productive forces of society and extending the area of the world over which it had its grip. That was the secret of the capitalist colonial process.

With the complete extension of capitalism over the globe, however, the outlet of further colonial expansion, including intensified colonial exploitation, became progressively less available to capitalism as a whole. At the same time, the tremendous development of the productive forces of society, accompanied by the relative decrease in the labor force that technical improvement connoted, headed capitalism into the most tremendous crisis it had ever known. This was the depression of 1929-1932, which was unlike its predecessors in its universality, in the catastrophic precipitateness of the fall in prices, in the gigantic accumulation of unsold goods, and in the tremendous volume of mass unemployment.

The crisis of 1929-1932 proved to be different also in another fundamental way. Capitalism discovered that it could no longer restore its profitability by the development of its productive forces, but only by restricting their development. International restriction schemes, government-sponsored “rationalization” schemes involving the deliberate destruction of enterprises etc., etc., such were the new devices which, in addition to the perennial device of wage-cutting, capitalism employed to climb out of the crisis, i.e. to restore the profitability of capitalist enterprise, in 1929-1932. In other words, profits, the former driving force of capitalism’s development of the productive forces of society, had become an absolute fetter on, and an obstacle to, their development.

It is important to note a further feature of the 1929-1932 crisis, viz. that the boomlet which followed it was unable to pull capitalism back even to the level from which the depression had begun. Every previous depression under capitalism had been followed by a boom which pulled capitalism to levels higher than those reached previous to the depression. This time it was otherwise. The rise of 1934-1937 was only a boomlet, and a new “recession” was already becoming apparent at the time the present war began in spite of intensified world re-armament. Capitalism had plainly entered on the era of its general decline. [1]
 

Why Socialism?

This is precisely the outcome, which Marx had prophesied for capitalism as a result of his analysis of its inherent laws of development, viz. that capitalism was historically doomed by reason of its inherent contradictions. Marx, however, was no mere academic researcher; he was a dialectician, that is to say, he sought to discover not only the law of motion of capitalism but also the solution for capitalism’s problems. And this, he laid bare on the basis of the very contradiction which was driving capitalism to its doom.

The basic contradiction of the capitalist system, we have noted, was that between the associated labor process and the individual appropriation of the product. The former was the secret of the increase in the productivity of labor which capitalism has witnessed; the latter the snag that stalled and ultimately choked production. This contradiction itself flowed from the divorce of the actual producer, the worker, from the means of production; that is from the capitalist property relation – private property. The solution of the problem obviously lay in the restoration to the producer of free access to the means of production i.e. in the abolition of the capitalist property relation, viz. capitalist private property.

This restoration could, conceivably, be in one of two directions: the restoration of the means of production to the producers individually – a regressive “solution” which would connote the return of man to an earlier and lower stage of social development inasmuch as it would destroy the associated labor process with its enhanced productivity; or the restoration of the means of production to the producers collectively, i.e. socialization of the means of production, a progressive solution inasmuch as it would preserve the associated labor process while freeing the productive forces from the fetter of private profit.

It will be clear now why Marxists say socialism is the only progressive alternative to capitalism, the only solution of the contradictions of capitalism which can carry mankind to a higher stage of social organization. For, this solution alone preserves the technical gains of capitalism and enables them to be used as a basis for further development of the productive forces in the service of mankind.

Socialism is thus the road forward from capitalism, the next higher stage of progressive social evolution. This is what Marx proved scientifically by analyzing capitalism itself. He also did more. He showed that the direction of capitalism’s own development was towards the socialist solution; that is to say, he proved that within capitalism itself the technical basis for the socialist society was being created. How? By the increasing concentration of capital, on the one hand, which, on the other, connoted the increasing socialization of the production process. The economic basis for socialism was being created under capitalism. The world was ripening under capitalism itself for socialism.

Marx thus gave to socialism a scientific – and as we shall see, also a revolutionary – basis. There had been socialists before Marx, that is to say, imaginative thinkers who had conceived of the socialist society as a desirable and higher stage of social organization. These were the Utopian socialists. Marx was the first scientific socialist.

Marx was also a revolutionist. “Philosophers interpret the world in various ways,” he said, “the point, however, is to change it.” Wherefore Marx showed not only what the solution to capitalism’s problem was, but also how to implement it. For Marxism is a dynamic, and active philosophy of social change, and not a static and contemplative philosophy of social interpretation.

The final agent of social change is man. For, on the manner in which man acts on social forces depends the pace and outcome of their development. The recognition of this is fundamental to Marxism and relieves it of that mechanistic fatalism which would otherwise arise from the scientific demonstration of the twin facts that capitalism is developing towards its doom and that capitalism is creating within itself the economic prerequisites for the socialist society. When Marx spoke of the “inevitability” of socialism, he meant, on the one hand, that, given correct human action it could come into being, and, on the other, that he anticipated that this human action would be taken. He did not mean that socialism was bound to come, mechanically of itself, independent of human action. On the contrary, he expressly stated that the destruction of capitalism could lead to socialism – or barbarism.

That the latter could come out of capitalism’s disintegration, that it, too, is an alternative, the world has proof of already in the phenomenon called Fascism. Fascism is the product of capitalist decay; it is, indeed, organized capitalist decay. Should the socialist solution fail to be applied, capitalism is doomed to accelerated disintegration through an oscillatory process, interrupted and hastened by wars, of depression – boomlet – deeper depression, which is the reverse of the boom-depression – higher boom oscillation which characterized its rise. For, whatever else be possible, one thing is impossible – the stabilization of capitalism at any given stage of development or decay.

It is plain from the above how utterly shallow is Mr. Masani’s conception of the Marxism which he says he once believed. “You had somehow to destroy capitalism and then, as day follows night, socialism must dawn.” That is Marxism according to Mr. Masani. It certainly is not Marxism according to Marx. Which, no doubt, was why Marx said, as Mr. Masani alleges, “Thank God I am not a Marxist!” If he did say so, he must have been thinking of contemporary examples of Mr. Masani and his ilk.

No! Marx did not say or imply that if you somehow destroy capitalism socialism must dawn. That is a fatalist and mechanistic conception with which Marxism has nothing in common. What Marx did teach and demonstrate was that if you destroy capitalism in a certain way, that is, by a certain form of social action, the road to socialism would be opened. In what way? In the revolutionary way. As we shall briefly explain.

If socialism is to be the outcome of capitalism’s downfall, it is necessary that mankind take conscious action in that direction. Now, the governing law of social development is the class struggle. To ensure social development in a given direction, it is necessary to act appropriately on the class forces of society. The basic classes of capitalist society are the capitalist class and the working class. Between them there is already a struggle going on; the struggle by the capitalist class to maintain its system of exploitation, and the struggle by the working class to overthrow it. What Marx taught and demonstrated was that the road to socialism lay through the carrying forward to its logical conclusion of this struggle by the working class against the capitalist class. Why did he teach this? Not out of “selfishness” or “hate,” as Mr. Masani would have it; but by reason of scientifically established necessity.

Marx showed that the successful carrying forward of the struggle of the working class to free itself from capitalist exploitation would open the road to socialism by demonstrating that the working class could not emancipate itself without also emancipating all society. In order to emancipate itself, the working class would have to expropriate the capitalists and socialize their property. But the process of socializing the means of production, distribution and exchange is also the process of bringing in the “international, classless and democratic” society which Mr. Masani agrees is still the ideal to be aimed at – an ideal, however, which he postpones to the Greek Kalends. [2] The process of the working class emancipating itself from capitalism is therefore also the process of emancipating all mankind from exploitation.

Now, the carrying forward of the class struggle to success connotes the overthrow of the capitalist state power and the expropriation of the capitalist class. You cannot keep the capitalist state power and expropriate the capitalist class as Mr. Masani seems sometimes to assume with his managerial revolution and his trustee capitalism. You cannot, because the capitalist state power is precisely the instrument for the defense of capitalist property. It cannot be used for the opposite purpose. It must be replaced. Replaced – and not merely destroyed. By what can it be replaced? Only by the workers’ state power which will carry through to the end and consolidate the expropriation of the capitalists.

We thus see what Marx saw and demonstrated that socialism is the only progressive alternative to capitalism and that the bringing of the socialist society into being demands the carrying forward of the revolutionary class struggle to its logical conclusion, i.e. the overthrow of the capitalist class and its state, and the setting up of the proletarian dictatorship with its statified property. These are the necessary means to the given end. Abandon the end, and you abandon the means – which is really what Mr. Masani has done, and not the other way round as he seeks to imply by the order in which he has set out his four “reconsiderations” of Marxist “assumptions.” Yes, Mr. Masani – abandon the end, and you abandon the means. What is more, since you are so interested in the question of ends and means, abandon the means, and you imperil, nay miss the end. For ends determine means, and means condition ends. That is their dialectic interrelation; an interrelation which the masses understand from experience though you cannot understand it from too much reading of superficial philosophy. Therefore we can be sure, Mr. Masani, that although you may “reconsider,” i.e. abandon, socialism, the proletarian masses will not. While you and your mentors, the renegade intellectuals of putrefying capitalism, retreat along the road to reaction and Fascism, the workers of the world will go, via the class struggle, via the proletarian dictatorship and the “nationalization” of private property – FORWARD TO SOCIALISM!

Footnotes

1. In view of Mr. Masani’s remark “that old type capitalism is played out is obvious”; and of his strictures in another place on “laissez faire” capitalism, it is worth stressing that the capitalism which finds itself in the impasse we have described above is not merely “old type” capitalism or laissez faire capitalism but new type capitalism, monopoly capitalism. Laissez faire capitalism long ago, by the end of the 19th Century, evolved through the development of the capitalist competition process itself into finance-capital dominated monopoly capitalism, i.e. imperialism, whose characteristic form of organization is the capitalist trust. It was in this stage that capitalism reached its highest development; and it was also in this stage that capitalism entered on its decay.

2. A time which will never come, since the Greeks had no Kalends.

 
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