Goldman Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 44, 2 November 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghanfor ETOL.
The Russian Revolution continues to live in two ways. It lives because nationalized property continues to exist within the Soviet Union. It lives also by virtue of the existence of an organized section of the working class devoted to the task of defending the Soviet Union through the overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the extension of the October Revolution throughout the world.
Leon Trotsky’s analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers’ state makes it possible for us to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, knowing that. not all of its achievements have been destroyed. Trotsky’s defense of the principles underlying the Russian Revolution is responsible for the existence of a movement devoted to those principles and therefore able to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
And therein lies the greatest of all of Trotsky’s great contributions to the cause of working-class emancipation.
Trotsky’s analysis of the nature of the Soviet Union and the causes for its degeneration is the most important single factor in preventing the advanced section of the working class from giving way to the deep disillusionment that demoralized such a large section of the group formerly connected with the revolutionary movement.
The idealistic interpretation offered by the middle-class intellectuals amounts to this: “The Revolution failed because cunning and unscrupulous people pushed aside able idealists. Every revolution must meet the same fate. Hence there is no use to struggle for the socialist revolution.” In contradistinction to the idealistic interpretation of the middle-class intellectuals, Trotsky furnished us with a materialistic explanation of the nature of the Soviet Union and the causes for its degeneration. This is not the place to go into a detailed explanation of that analysis. A bare outline will suffice to indicate the tremendous difference between a Marxist and an idealistic approach to this all-important social problem.
What was the main social conquest of the Russian Revolution? The nationalization by the proletarian state of the means of production. Have the new property relations created by the Revolution been destroyed and has private property in the means of production been re-established? The answer is in the negative.
True, the political superstructure has been radically altered since the Revolution. The democratic rule of the masses in all Soviet institutions has been destroyed. The backwardness of the country, the death of the best proletarian elements during the Civil War, the weariness of the masses, the failure of the proletarian revolution to arise in the more advanced countries, enabled the bureaucracy to concentrate all power in its hands and destroy all forms of Soviet democracy. But nationalized property still remains and the bureaucracy depends for its existence on nationalized property.
The social rule of every class can and does assume different political forms. The capitalist class can and does rule under democratic, monarchical and fascist forms. Proletarian rule must have democracy in order to achieve its objectives but that does not mean that under certain historic conditions and for a certain length of time the rule of the working class cannot be represented through the dictatorship of a bureaucracy or even of an individual.
Then why, asks the superficial person with an air of profundity, do you blame Stalin if conditions made his victory possible? For the same reason that we place the blame upon the imperialists of the different nations for the imperialist war even though we recognize that, in the last analysis, imperialism and not the imperialists are responsible.
Trotsky is not the only one responsible for the existence of nationalized property in the Soviet Union. To him, of course, history will allot a tremendous share of the credit for the Revolution which was the cause of nationalized property coming into existence. Trotsky, however, is responsible for the fact that we understand the nature of the Soviet Union at the present time.
And it is our knowledge of the nature of the Soviet Union that gives so much more meaning to our celebration of the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Above all Trotsky drew logical conclusions from his basic premises. To consider the Soviet Union as a workers’ state meant to assume an obligation to defend it in any struggle against the forces of imperialism, even though the Stalinist bureaucracy was guiding the destinies of the workers’ state, and even though the bureaucracy committed a political crime in initiating the struggle. Any other conclusion would make the concept of workers’ state completely meaningless from the point of view of a political attitude towards the Soviet Union.
The major part of his writings in the last nine months of his life dealt with the controversy then raging in the ranks of our party. In essence his polemics against the minority that split away from the ranks of the Fourth International was a continuation of his struggle against those who denied the character of the Soviet Union as a workers’ state.
Fortunate indeed was our party, and consequently the whole revolutionary movement, that the GPU did not succeed in murdering Trotsky before the controversy between the majority and the minority of the Socialist Workers Party took place. Trotsky’s articles against the minority-splitters constitute some of his most powerful polemical writings.
Reduced to its simplest terms the question involved in the struggle was: Should a Marxist party defend higher forms of property relations against lower forms? Stated in this manner (and that is the only correct way of stating it) it becomes difficult to see how it was possible for such a controversy to occur in a Marxist party. But the circumstances were such that a group composed mainly of middle-class intellectuals lost its bearings and, under the pressure of the democratic bourgeoisie, it adopted a purely idealistic position.
Most of those who, because of their disillusionment with the Soviet Union under Stalinist control, rejected the theory that the Soviet Union was still a workers’ state, did not end there. Their disillusionment brought them to the point of breaking with all the fundamental principles of Marxism.
Repelled by the ugly totalitarianism of the Stalinist bureaucracy the middle-class intellectuals confused the bureaucracy with the workers’ state and with the socialist revolution and rejected all three.
In this period of reaction the revolutionary movement would have been completely demoralized and destroyed (to be revived no one knows when) had not Trotsky been with us to fight fiercely and effectively against this reactionary disillusionment and on behalf of the principles that made the Russian Revolution possible.
Did any one of the disillusioned intellectuals attempt to show that there was an effective substitute for revolutionary Marxism? They had nothing to offer except – bourgeois democracy. Some talk about “democratic socialism” but essentially their theories reduce themselves to defending bourgeois democracy.
Rejecting the principles of the Russian Revolution the disillusioned ones could find nothing better to embrace than capitalist democracy. In the very period when that democracy was proving its complete impotence in solving a single major problem confronting mankind! In the very period when history placed before us the sole alternatives of fascism or proletarian democracy, the disillusioned ones began to crawl back to the bosom of the bourgeois democracy that was being destroyed before their very eyes.
From this the disillusioned intellectuals jumped to the conclusion that any disciplined party must of necessity degenerate regardless of social conditions. Because Stalin chronologically followed Lenin therefore Stalinism is the logical and inevitable outcome of Leninism.
It devolved mainly upon Trotsky to shatter every one of the arguments which the intellectuals attempted to present. Consciously he saw it as his duty, in the midst of disillusionment and reaction, to save the best elements for the proletarian revolution to come.
In this task personal friendship or previous services to the proletarian movement counted for naught with Trotsky. Every one who dared raise any doubts and thus weaken the revolutionary movement felt the lash of his pen. To him the socialist revolution was everything and its achievement was impossible without a Bolshevik party – democratic, centralized, disciplined. The very mistake that he made in his early years on the question of such a party made him all the more determined to prevent others from making similar mistakes.
Against the disillusionment of the intellectuals he pitted his Marxist analysis of the period in which we are living, his explanation of the reaction, his undying faith in the proletarian revolution, his firm conviction that only a disciplined party grounded on the principles of revolutionary Marxism could achieve that revolution.
To educate the vanguard in the midst of the deepest reaction the working class has ever passed through and to keep that vanguard loyal to the principles of the Russian Revolution were Trotsky’s tasks. The very existence of our party is eloquent testimony that he accomplished those tasks.
Celebrating the anniversary of the Russian Revolution without accepting and defending the principles underlying that Revolution is impossible. That we are celebrating the anniversary of that Revolution at the present moment when all around us rage pessimism and disillusionment is due solely to the work of Leon Trotsky.
Main NI Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 16 November 2020