1¥
We have cast doubt on the assertion that the U.S.S.R. requires a merely political revolution to effeet the transition to socialism. We have stressed that a dialectical appreciation of the revolutionary process understands it as one which includes phases of ebb, and ossification into transitional forms permeated by contradiction at all levels, which forms become fetters needing to be overthrown by a new revolutionary upsurges. We have rejected the official ideology which attempts to conceal the alienation of the state from the proletariat - its transformation into a bureaucratic hierarchy of a terrifying impersonality worthy of Kafka himself.
The more difficult task is now to proceed to a concrete analysis of Soviet social structure. (By the way, throughout this essay I refer to the U.S.- S.R.rather than to the 'Workers' States' as a whole, because there are great differences between them which would enormously complicate the analysis. Discussion of the oldest, most structured, and probably most degenerated, of these transitional forms seems the best starting point. Inevitably the different circumstances of formation of the others has provided resultant struetures needing different analysis.)
The key question is the social status of the bureaucracy vis-a-vis the workers which, for Marxists, has to be ascertained by a study of the mode of production.
As previously mentioned, the Stalinist bureaucracy appears to have 4 preponderant role in social life beyond anything previously experienced in history. This is what makes facile comparisons between it and previous etatist formations located within class systems so. misleading. The Stalinist bureaucracy has not only state power but all power in its hands. As Trotsky noted, the class in whose name it rules is utterly without any means whatever of exerting hegemony over this formation that has separated itself from the class and opposed itself to it. Indeed some commentators have gone so far as to say that, following the liquidation of the old proletariat (itself a tiny minority in Russian society) in the Civil War and the gradual displacement, and final liquidation, of their representatives, the Bolsheviks, the Stalinist bureaucracy created and moulded the expanding proletariat that is supposed to furnish its basis.
It is worth repeating again the other important point made by Trotsky -
",.ethe very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country
where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state,
creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and
the rules of the nation." (12)
Trotsky characterises this new and hitherto unknown relation as one of a gigantic parasitism. However this metaphor strikes me a giving rather 4 too passive a picture, and one too oriented towards distribution. This metaphor implies that attached to an otherwise whole and healthy body is a separate organism exacting tribute. However it is clear that there is no such distinct separation to be made in Soviet society. The bureaucracy is as much constitutive of the body of Soviet society as is the working class. It does
not simply levy a toll on the produce of the economy - it organises production itself, it alone projects the course of the economy. Of course there are sectors of the bureaucracy solely employed on non-economic functions necessary for the general rule of the stratum (army and political police, including thought police) and this represents an enourmous waste of resources surpassing capitalist advertising budget wastes. Nevertheless it is incontestable that the bureaucracy does not simply exact tribute with the mailed fist, but has a basis in production itself right down to factory level. The mode of production itself is bureaucratic.
In this connection it is interesting to look at what Marx has to say about the managerial stratum -
"The labour of superintendence and management will naturally be required
whenever the direct process of production assumes the form of a combined
social process, and does not rest on the isolated labour of independent
producers. It has, however, a twofold character.
On the one hand, all work in which many individuals cooperate necessarily
requires for the coordination and unity of the process a directing will,
and functions which are not concerned with fragmentary operations but with
the total activity of the workshop, similar to those of the conductor of
an orchestra. This is a kind of productive labour that must be performed
in every mode of cooperative production.
On the other hand, this labour of superintendence necessarily arises in
all modes of production which are based on the antagonism between the
worker as a direct producer and the owner of the means of production.
The greater this antagonism the more imprtant is the role played by
superintendence. Hence it reaches its maximum in a slave system. But it
is indispensible also under the capitalist mode of production, since the
process of production is at the same time the process by which the capit-
alist consumes the labour power of the worker. In the same way, in des-
potic states, the labour of superintendence and universal interference by
the government comprises both the discharge of community affairs, the
need for which arises in all societies, and the specific functions arising
from the antagonism between the government and the mass of the Resa Tt:
13 This dual function is also apparent in the case of the Soviet bureaucracy. Some of its functions and functionaries are concerned with organising production, others with keeping the workers subjugated. Only here this is not done in the interests of a third group - the rentiers - but, via the mediation of state property, simply in the interests of defending the materialprivileges of the bureaucracy itself.
This direct organisation of production by the bureaucratic stratum as an independent power, serving no class but itself, represents a new historical situation.
The only sound point in Tony Cliff's book Russia : A Marxist Analysis is that with a nationalised economy the distinction between the political and the social revolution is put into question. Of course he gives away more than he realises here, since if this is the case in the U.S.5.R. then it must have undergone a profound transformation which makes it absurd to classify it as
capitalist because, I take it Cliff accepts, in the latter system the distinction can be made.
Postponing the precise way in which such a distinction might be made ( I suspect there is no absolute distinction), there seems to me no question but that, because of the role the bureaucracy plays in the 'base', production ite self, its fettering of the most important productive forces, it represents a social layer related to production in a definitive way (i.e.control), and one which is opposed to the working class - which latter naturally has an interest in controlling production for its own benefit.
Before leaving Cliffcompletely, a digression on a common criticism of his position might be useful. The state-capitalist theory is said by orthodox Trotskyists to involve "running the reel of reformism backwards". This means that, just as the reformists evisage the peaceful growing over of capitalism into socialism, so the theory of state-capitalism seems to be unable to date the counter-revolution which replaced the conquests of the proletarian revolution with a form of capitalism again, so they must therefore believe in the peaceful transition from socialism to capitalism - hence “reformism backwards". The date 1928 has been mentioned, but this is so obviously arbitray that I will spend no time on it. Also it has been pointed out that the Stalinist bureaucracy climbed to power over the bodies of the Left Opposition (though let us not forget the Right Opposition, and the Kulaks and middle peasants) so that it was hardly a peaceful process. Nevertheless the important point is that it was a process. What seems to have been lacking is that grand historical hiatus which characterises the classic revolution or counter-revolution, the confrontation of distinct social forces, the moment when everything seems in the balance. One thinks for example of the Communards desparately defending the gates of Paris against Thiers' army. The parallel here would have been if the White armies had stormed revolutionary Petrograd. But they didn't. Moreover the "csounter-revolutionaries" were already inside the gates! Their leader was soon to sit in the General Secretary's chair of the Communist Party! So the "counter-revolution" thesis would seem to run the reel of reformism backwards.
But is this a conclusive argument? What are the considerations which lead revolutionaries to reject the reformist strategy? Do these considerations apply with equal force to the reverse movement?
Crudely put, we ®gect reformism because no ruling class can be expected toe give up without a fight; because the institutions mediating the ruling-class are not neutral ground, especially the state machine; and because the general Adgoipeicals elatigal, and econopig hegemony oectae FaLeeg, “bPeanfoarfans, °° and institutional forms. History has confirmed this analysis of the imposs-~ ibility of reformism over and over again. In every case reformist end up defending capitalism against the attacks of the working class (e.g. the P.C.F in France in 1968), or in extreme cases go over to the other side and lead the capitalist class in its attacks on the workers' pasitions (as the Wilson-Castle gang is at present).
Now it does seem plausible to argue that the above considerations do not carry so much weight in the case where a revolutionary overturn has only just occurred,so that the hegemony -ideological and institutional - of the new
power is relatively precariously established and the mass upsurge has
T
exhausted itself and begun its long ebb. It is not inconceivable that old ideas with much historical weight, only recently owerlaid by new ones, can rapidly re-establish themselves, that deserters from the former ruling class cross the lines again, that the recently defeated classes, with their cultural and other resources, recuperate quickly, lift their heads and, finding the revolutionary body politic exhausted and disheartened, begin to take the opportunities open to them, even capturing strong-points in the revolutionary institutions themselves. It is often said that there are some situations of social crisis in whichthe oppressed masses and their leaders have power in their hands if they only had the confidence to grasp it. May it not be conceivable that, even after ostensibly grasping power, the magnitude of the task appears so great; the resources, moral and material, so scarce; that confidence falters, the masses and their leaders lose their nerve? The rapidly recuperating oppressors, become bolder, then perhaps push forward, re-establish their hegemony, wisely integrating into it the numerous existing cadres, demoralised and place-hunting, willing to come over?
It does not seem to me such a picture can be ruled out a priori. However I do not think it gives the key to what happened in the post-October developments. True the exhaustion did produce & social and political vacuun. But it does not seem to have been filled by the former capitalist or feudal elements, though if allowed to proceed unchecked the N.E.P. may have led to it. The negation of the revolution was not one which returned affairs to the status quo ante, but one which was brought forth by, was internal to, the revolution itself. Just as in developing its power and strength the bourgeoisie produced its own gravediggers, the revolutionary proletariat, so the proletariat produced its own butchers who would strangle revolution and build a society in their image rather than the proletariat's. However because this negation developed within the movement itself, on the basis oi the new conditions and structures, it could not be simply a reinstallation of the former regime.
Once again & movement in the name of humanity has negated conditions which were the negation of humanity. But, once again, instead of this negation of the negation growing over into the self-sustaining positive’, free of contradiction, it has developed its own contradictions, and established a new negation of humanity in the shape of the repressive bureaucratic machine.
But that this system, permeated as it may be by contradiction, is different from capitalism can only be denied by those who have no dialectical sense and simply lump together all conditions that are formally opposed to * "...atheism is the negation of God and seeks to establish by this negation the existence of man. Socialism no longer requires such a roundabout method eeelt is positive human self-consciousness no longer...attained through the negation of religion; just as the real life of man is positive and no longer attained through the negation of private property, through communism. Communism is the phase of negation of the negation...the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism is not itself the goal of human development." (Marx 1844 E.P.Mss.)
truly human ones, as indifferently hostile, thus in effect eliminating history as a form of knowledge and going back to utopianism.
Vv
A difficult problem now faces us of locating the new contradiotions in the hierarchy of the dialectic. Is the contradiction between the bureaucratic stratum and the workers on the same level as that between capitalists and proletarians? Or is it a subordinate contradiction soon to disappear as part of a general working out of the proletarian revolution?
But before this I must expand on my thesis that the degeneration cannot be simply dismissed as capitalist restoration. What the ultra-left critics simply refuse to recognise is the origin of authoritarian strata in the workers' own organisations - they simply spirit in a state-capitalist class from nowhere, without explaining its origins. It is useless to point to the old Czarist officers, the working class can and did provide plenty of its own bureaucrats. It is not accidental that the same ultra-lefts that view the Soviet bureaucrats as a state-capitalist class, generally see in the T.U. bureaucrats in the West nothing but capitalist lackeys, without locating their specific role in the fact that they have to depend also on a working class basis. Conceiving of the proletariat in an essentially idealist way as the bearers of simon-pure socialist values, they persistently duck the problem of bureaucratisation which must be understood as a problem internal to the workers! movement.
It was relatively easy to duck the problem in the analysis of the prerevolutionary period by seeing bureaucratic formations, even including the labour bureaucracy, simply as servants of capital. Thus, denying that there is here any authentic problem in its own right, this crude approach in the case of Russia results in either denying there is a problem (i.e. idealist whitewashing of the bureaucracy) or saying that since bureaucracy was an epiphenomenon of capital before, so it must be now, ergo capitalism still exists! Even formal logicians should be able to spot the error here.
Although taking state-power enormously facilitates the opportunities for bureaucracy, the gorm of this development can easily be seen in existing proletarian organisations. The most well-documented study of this that has appeared is Robert Michels Political Parties written before the first world war and based mainly on a study of continental social-democratic parties, which provided the empirical. basis for his well-known ‘iron law of oligarchy.'
Michels argues that in trying to overthrow authoritarian structures the masses are forced to organise themselves and hence to produce a bureaucracy which very soon takes advantage of its position to pass beyond the control of rank and file and develop conservative interests.
"Inspired with a foolish selfsatisfaction, the ex-worker is apt to
take pleasure in his new environment, and he tends to become indiffer-
ent and even hostile to all progressive aspirations in the democratic
sense. He accommodates himself to the existing order, and ultimately,
weary of the struggle, becomes even reconciled to that order. What
interest for them now has the dogma of social revolution? Their own
social revolution has already been effected. At bottom, all the
thoughts of these leaders are concentrated upon the single hope that
there shall long continue to exist the proletariat to choose them as.
delegates and to provide them with a livelihood." (14)
Furthermore in order to answer those who assert that the turn towards conservatism in proletarian parties is due to their becoming infected by petty-bourgeois recruits, Michels devotes space to proving conclusively that the most conservative and reactionary bureaucrats were of proletarian origin. He sums up his position as follows:
"It is organisation which gives birth to the dominion of the elected
over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the
delegates over the delegators. Who says organisation says oligarchy."(15)
Michels does not clearly distinguish between three different theses, though he asserts them all. (a) The bureaucracy developed in workers! organisations becomes conservative and joins the existing establishment. (b) The workers displace the existing establishment but in doing so adapt themselves to existing structures so that a change of personnel is effected but the structures remain. (c) The workers organisations break up existing structures but inevitably the new structures provide yet another form of oligarchy.
He does not clearly distinguish these because, although he counts himself an historical materialist, his conceptual apparatus is very crude, more or less exhausted by the categories oligarchy/democracy: Thus his final paragraph embodies a circular model of history.
"The democratic currents of history resemble successive waves. They
break ever on the same shoal. They are ever renewed. This enduring
spectacle is simultaneously encouraging and depressing. When
democracies have gained a certain stage of development, they undergo
a gradual transformation, adopting the aristrocratic spirit, and in
many cases also the aristocratic forms, against which at the outset
they struggled so fiercely. Now new accusers arise to denounce the
traitors; after an era of glorious combats and inglorious power, they
end by fusing with the old dominant class; whereupon once more they
are in their turn attacked by fresh opponents who appeal to the name of
ene It is probable that this cruel game will continue without
end." (1
In a direct reference to Marx he denies the possibility of classless society and we will return to this later.
Returning to the question of the origin of the Stalinist bureaucracy let us note an underemphasised point in Marxist theory of revolution. This is that the model of proletarian revolution differs significantly from that of former revolutions. This can be obscured in such dichotomous models of class struggle as is given in the opening passage in the Manifesto.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles,
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster
and journeyman, in a word oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant
opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden,
now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary
reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes."
What is immediately obvious here is that society was never reconstituted under the leadership of the subordinate partner of these pairs. To take the destruction of feudalism for example. This was accomplished under the leadership of the bourgeoisie - itself an oppressing class - not the serfs who were directly exploited by the lords. It is of course true that the nobility seemed to concentrate in itself all the cvils of society and that the bourgeoisie was restricted in its development by it, and had various grumbles about taxation etc. Thus the revolt against feudal arbitrariness was carried out under the bannor of a universal emmancipation rather than of undisguised bourgeois interests. Nevertheless it is obvious that the underlying reality was the displacement of one oppressing class by another already existing one. The bourgoisie had been able to develop up to a point its own mode of production, and on this economic basis develop its own class power, financial, political and, above all, ideological, before taking on the existing order in a more or less sharp period of confrontation. The bourgeoisie in fact were the social owners of new productive forces. Instead of a simple contradiction of forces of production and relations of roduction, we have a complex insertion in a decomposing mode of production iee. both forces and relations) of a subordinate mode of production Crue. both forces and relations) gathering strength, like a grub in an apple.
The case of proletarian revolution is strikingly different. If it was analogous one would project a gradual increase in the weight of the co-ops in the economy etc., but though Marx sometimes cites the co-ops as evidence that capitalists are not needed, he does not base his perspective on them, as is well known,
Whereas the bourgegisie strove for power with tangible evidence in their hands of their own capacities, power, and potential superiority over the traditional mode of production, the proletariat has to challenge the existing mode of production from within, and go, more or less, from nothing to everything. Indecd it is precisely because they have "nothing to lose" i.e. no existing privileges, that Marx is confident that they must institute a classless society without exploitation.
If the 'handmill gives you the feudal lord, the steam-mill the industrial capitalist! what new productive force does the proletariat control and base its thrust for power on? At first sight, because of the location of the proletariat in the existing mode of production, it does not seem possible that the proletariat could claim any productive ferces at all, never mind new and superior ones, since by definition the capitalists own them all. However, there is one extremely important productive force that is not the capitalist's until the proletariat sells it to him - labour. The productive force that is destined to make socialism superior to capitalism is that of a& superior organisation of labour. Also only socialism based on this is capable of taking the development of techniques to their limit, so that eventually labour as such disappears and the economy rests simply on, the application of science and knowledge, socially acquired and applied.
*uto the degree that large-scale industry develops, the creation of real wealth comes to depend less on labour-time, and on the quantity of labour expended, and more on the power of the instruments which are set in motion
The problem from the point of view of the proletariat is that this superior organisation of labour is only potentially theirs. They know that everything stops when they withdraw their labour but they don't themselves control their labour - they can only be productively active by alienating it to the capitalist. Given this, one can understand the extreme difficulty of raising to social hegemony a class which economically, politically, and ideologically, is almost a nullity. This is the underlying reason for the otherwise surprising phenomena noted by Lenin of the need to bring revolutionary leadership 'from outside' the class.
"We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic
consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them
from without. The history of all countries shows that the working
class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only Trade
Union consciousness i.e. the conviction that it is necessary to combine
in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the Government to
pass necessary labour legislation etc. The theory of socialism, how-
ever, grew out of the philosophical, historical, and economic theories
that were elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied
classes, the intellectuals.
In the very same way in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social
Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the
working class movement, it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome
of the development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist
intelligentsia." (18)
(It is necessary to distinguish carefully this point about the origin of Marxist theory from the question of the class composition of the vanguard party. As a matter of fact this insight of Lenin's was not isolated. Michels quotes several writers of the 1890's on the essential role played by anes of bourgeois origin - although he appears not to have heard of Lenin.
At this point some may put forward a much more radical revision. If the superiority of socialism over capitalism is supposed to be based on a superior organisation and ability to apply science and technology - may this not imply that the bearers of the new productive forces inside capitalist society are not the proletarians at all but the managers, technocrats, and scientists? Hence the thesis of 'managerial revolution' and a new class society based on a ‘bureaucratic collectivist' mode of production. Variants of this thesis identify fascism and Stalinism; consider the mode progressive during labour-time, and whose powerful effectiveness...depends...on the general state of science and the progress of technology...With this transformation, the cornerstone of production and wealth is neither the labour which man directly expends, nor the time he spends at work, but rather the appropriation of his own collective productive power, his understanding of nature and his mastery over nature, exercised by him asa social body - in short it is the development of the social individual...As soon as labour in its direct form has ceased to be the great well. spring of wealth, labourtime...must cease to be its measure...With that the system of production based on exchange-value collapses..." (17)
only for the backward countries unable to develop in the imperialist nexus; or simply condemn it as historically retrogressive - though on what criteria is not clear.
Certainly such a regime would be a million miles away from the appropriation of society's " collective productive power" envisaged by Marx because ex hypothesi most people would be reduced to carrying out the orders of the technocrats. This means that their initiative/ creativity would be wasted and their exclusion from power would in fact result in gross inefficiency.
The main problem with the thesis of managerial revolution is that it has not happened. The existing managerial strata seem content to follow the programme of 'modernising capitalism' and are certainly not flocking in great numbers to lead the revolutionary circles of the proletariat ina ‘hegemonic bloc'! (Of course, some of them, e.g. scientists and lower technical and office strata have nothing to fear from anti-capitalist revolution.) Equally there is no evidence that in any of the genuine revolutions e.g. Russian, Chinese, this stratum as a whole was very much involved as a leading and independent force. =
One problem in picking this stratum as the leaders of revolution, bearers of a new mode of production, and as a new ruling class, is that Marxism does not seem to be a very good choice to use as an ideology. One would have expected something akin to St.Simonism or Fabianism.
These considerations lead one to the conclusion that even the sharp social inequalities and antagonism between the bureaucracy and the workers must still be understood as the result of a process of internal differentiation going on within the institutions established by.the proletariat. In order to establish their legitimacy the new layers have / e way to found it on the form of consciousness associated with those institutions i.e. Marxism. Thus the ideology of the bureaucracy is parasitic on Marxism. Thus while the main area of distortion is their account of State and Party they cannot take this to its limit because everyone knows about the ‘withering away of the state', They have to admit therefore that their own rule is exceptional and temp orary. This makes them peculiarly unconfident for a ruling class heralding a new epoch distinct from socialism. It also means that it is much easier for the proletariat to find its intellectual weapons in official doctrine than when it is under the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie. Like the structures the ideology is a transitional one (substitution of 'the' party for the class; socialism is one country etc.) which attempts to justify the ossified deformation of the revolution. (There is plenty of scope for an extensive analysis of the relation of the idelogical distortions of Marxism to the precise nature of the transitional regime).
V1
In dealing with the question of ‘whether or not the bureaucratic layer should be termed a class we are in a bit of a quandry because it is not entirely clear how a class is defined. Does any group with special interests constitute a class? Or is property essential? Both Michels and Trotsky seem to think inheritence is impo rtant. Thus Michels argues against Marx as follows:
",..s0cial wealth cannot be satisfactorily administered in any other man-
-ner than by the creation of an extensive bureaucracy. In this way we
are led by an inevitable logic to the flat denial of the possibility of
a state without classes. The administration of an immeasurably large
capital, above all when this capital is collective property, confers
upon the administrator influence at least equal to that possessed by the
private owner of capital. Consequently the critics in advance .of the
Marxist social order ask whether the instinct which today leads the mem-
bers of the possessing classes to transmit to their children the wealth
Which they (the parents) have amassed, will not exist also in the admin-
istration of the public wealth of the socialist state, and whether thcse
administrators will utilise their immense influence in order to secure
for their children the succession to the offices which they themselves
hold." (20)
Trotsky argues that the bureaucracy is not a class because "The individ-~ ual bureaucrat cannot transmit to his heirs his rights in the exploitation of the state apparatus." (21) ~
Certainly Michels' predictions seem to have been pera by experience. in the USSR the nepotism that undoubtedly exists has not reached the point that on the death of an official his heir is judged to have the right to that position. Rather this event will tend to signal a downturn in the sons' fortunes, now he hes lost his protector.
However as against Trotsky's position, it has been argued that the clerie cal estate formed part of the exploitative class in feudalism in virtue of their relation to the serfs on the Church lands, independently of the fact that recruitment to the hierarchy was not hereditary. The point here is that the serf is tied to the land and only through this to the landowner. It is a matter of indifference: to him whether the owner is a person or an institution. (Incidently I once read in Readers Digest that Russian agriculture is State Feudalist!
Marx laid great stress on the freeing of the serfs from the land as 4 precondition of capitalism. It made their labour available for exploitation while also putting them under the necessity to sell it - though nominally they were free agents.
The basic problem in defining class in such a way as to include all the ruling classes in history is that the different systems under review vary enormously in the way the domination of the so-called 'ruling class' is mediated. In this sense the concept does not appear to work as a’ suprahistorical static concept but is a way of referring to a phenomenen which itself has an historical development. As productive systems change so do the possible mechanisms of domination. As you move from feudalism to postcapitalist societies the more accidental does the relationship between your person and your social position appear. In feudalism it is in your blood and birthplace. Membership of the nobility can hardly be separated from the individuality of its bearer. He just is_. a nobleman. In capitalism,
although we have an hierarchical society, the relationship is less rigid. ‘Personal freedom! exists - by which is meant the possibility of finding your own class position. To be sure property determines this - but it is possible to gain - or to lose - property. However the rigidities of pro-
perty
inheritance limit this considerably and place enormous obstacles in the way of someone born into a lower class being able to change his class.
In the case of the Soviet Union we have a hierarchy of administrative or political function. Here the personal and the social function have become almost completely detached. People can gain or lose positions at the stroke of a pen.
From another point of view capitalism appears as the extreme term; from original community we have been splintered into atomic individuals. Postcapitalist regimes recognise the social character of production and thus represent 2 partial return of man to himself. However this occurs in a paradoxical way because, as previously noted (Pt. III), the social is still alienated from the individual. The institutions of the collectivity are a happy-hunting ground for careerists in search of power and privilege.
The possibility of basing dominance on an all-pervasive state administration appears in previous societies only as a hidden potentiality. It could be argued that just as it was possible for the masses to do the dirty work for the bourgeoisie so it was possible for them to do it for the bureaucracy. The emmancipation of society from the common enemy, feudalism, brought out into the light of day other inequalities. Just so in Russie. Hidden antagonisms became open. In previous systems commodity markets were fringe phenomena apparently not basic to the social relations defined by slavery and serfdom. So previously the state functionary and his interests were seen as subordinated to other classes based on associated modes of production (in spite of state organisation of certain branches of production, munitions, Bismarck's railways, modern nationalisations) but suddenly the bureaucratic function is able to move in and take the centre of the stage when the collectivisation of property destroys the power of those it formerly served. Just as the irrational feudal restrictions on labour (i.e. guilds, serfdom) and on money (usury) condemned the merchant to a marginal role, until breakdown and the introduction of reasonable property law gave him and his capital the chance to flower, so the manager, technocrat, or bureaucrat, has to put up with the irrationalities of private property, its deadwood in the boardroom, its inability to be satisfactorily co-ordinated by the state, until when rational planning emerges, the bureaucratic function now appears as the only centre of power and the bureaucrat is unhampered by any other allegience than to his ow interest,
(Notice I refer to the capture of by the "bureaucratic function", not the bureaucracy. This is meant to correspond to the point previously made that, by and large, the capitalist bureaucracy, in spite of, certain conflicts of interest with the property owners, remains under the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. Also there is considerable mutual recruitment from one layer to the other - managers acquire shares, wealthy men go in for politics etc. It is not the old bureaucracy that takes power so much as the men exercising bureaucratic functions that emerge from the differentiation taking place in the new regime.)
Incidentally great play is made by the orthodox about the way in which the bureaucracy "guards" the collective property against counterrevolution. However it does not necessarily follow that it exercises the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. After all the bourgeois state "guarded" freedoms
against the ambitions of the monarchy but this does not mean it represented anybody but the bourgeoisie and it was quite possible to have another class oppressed even while they assisted Cromwell cut off a King's head.
The truth is the bureaucracy exercises its dictatorship in its own interest. It is conservative and thus comes continually into collision with the proletarian forces, but also, in the main, wishes to protect "its" state and economy against out and out capitalist forces.
This section has been somewhat tentative, but I owe it to the reader to try and produce a firm position which I will now do in the conclusion.
VIT
The root cause of the consolidation of a bureaucratic stratum in the Soviet state and economy is undoubtedly the low level of productive forces in the country. From the point of view of world revolution this kind of intermediary formation in a particular country is not surprising when one considers its long period of isolation before the process as a whole got under way again. Nevertheless even after the overthrow of capitalism on a world scale the problem will still exist because it is, at bottom, internal to the nature of postrevolutionary society and its struggle to move towards abundance. Michels' 'Iron law of oligarchy' remains a permanent danger, though one which becomes less acute as the material basis of society improves, thus allowing the masses to express more of their energy in controlling the direction of social life, and as they learn from experience of the danger.
The further development of the productive forces in the Soviet Union will bring present contradictions (economic political cultural etc.) toa head, and the future history of the U.S.S.R. and the establishment of socialism on a world scale will continue to develop on the basis of the working out of further contradictions.
The contradiction as far as the sphere of production is concerned is that between the productive force represented by the initiative of the workers and the command structure into which they are integrated and which stifles this force. The contradiction between social forces is that
between those who relate to the means of production as controllers and those who relate to it as its slaves. Associated with this are conspicuous differentials in income.
Given that, in spite of its primitive character and infection by bourgeois norms of distribution, consumerist ideology, etc., the U.S.S.R. is a crucial step beyond capitalism, it is still worth defending. Just as Marx said the proletariat could block with the bourgeoisie in the overthrow of feudalism, but must maintain its own organisation to fight its future enemies, so today capitalism is the main enemy, but we must be preparing to smash the existing bureaucracies (not least in order to fight capitalism more effectively) and fight the seeds of authoritarianism already evident in the workers organisations.
The bureaucracy (particularly once in power in society) is a social layer developed on the basis of functional differentiations in the workers organisations and post-revolutionary institutions, which soon develops interest of its own, becoming a conservative force strangling further revolutionary SS eS A RA ay 2 PE AST SOOO eR REC OR SCAT
development. However, precisely because of its origin in the process of proletarian revolution itself the distinction between the proletariat and the bureaucracy is more ill defined and variable than is the sharp distinction between capitalist property owners and the proletariat. This means that the ‘space! between capitalism and pure socialism, can be filled by an almost infinite variety of transitional forms, in assessing which more than one dimension has to be taken into account - inequalities in income, distribution of power, even ideological criteria which may help to determine the direction of change etc. I have concentrated on the U.S.S5.R. as an extreme case. Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, provide more complex, less severe cases, in which one should by no means assume howogenity in the bureaucracy. There is the political bureaucracy, the technocratic, even sections still in contact with the masses that might well come over if the latter launch a struggle.
Broadly these transitional regimes are ones in which proletarian power has been deformed and overlaid by bureaucratic powor; in which the programme of socialist revolution remains in the consciousness of the toilers, if in a distorted way, (so that the bureaucracy has to legitimate itself in these terms) ; in which more or less acute contradictions at all levels exist.
The order of the day is - overthrow the bureaucracy and establish workers! power.
The ‘programme of political revolution! is not a rich enough concept to do justice to this (even to sum what Trotsky himself said.) Instead we should understand our programme (and develop it) as one for a new upsurge of proletarian revolution. Permanent proletarian revolution must continue throughout the pre-socialist epoch. Its meaning will vary according to the precise nature of the fetters requiring to be overcome at each time and place. There is no general formula. It depends upon what is possible and where the contradictions are manifesting themselves, which demands revolutionaries will advance.
However the aim should always be to maximise the opportunities for the creative energy of the masses to express itself as far as possible. Communism, the fullest expression of human power and freedom, is not a state of affairs to be presented on a plate, it grows throughout history by the continual overcoming of obstacles, through the struggle of the masses. Marx has already replied to those who talk of the benignity of certain leaderships, or the possibility of reform from on top.
"For the production of this communist consciousness on a mass scale
and for the success of the cause itself, the alter ation of men on 4
mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place ina
practical movement, in a revolution. This revolution is necessary,
therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in
any other way but also because the class overthrowing it can only in
a revolution succeed in ridding itself of the muck of ages and become
capable of establishing society anew." (22)
Notes
(1). L.Trotsky : Revolution Betrayed pp 138-139 2) W.Leonhard : Child of the Revolution p377
Marx : Poverty of Philosophy p147
4) Rakovsky : The Professional Dangers of Power BMS No.3 23 Revolution Betrayed p237
ibid pp248-249
7 Marx : Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 p9g
ibid 100
ibid 104
(10) ibid 72
ee Marx : Capital Vol.1 Ch.X1V34
12) Revolution Betrayed p249
a Capital 111
14) R.Michels : Political Parties p305
15) ibid p401
16) ibid 408
17) Marx Grundrisse quoted by M.Nicolaus in New Left Review No.48 p58 18) Lenin : What is to be Done FLPH Moscow p50 19) Political Parties p237
20). ibid p383
os Revolution Betrayed p249
22) Marx : German Ideology p86