Can Stalinist parties make revolutions?
Socialist Outlook magazine1980sPhil HearseScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
The discussions now raging on the left over the political assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev, his reforms in the Soviet Union, and of the dramatic developments unfolding in other bureaucratically deformed workers' states are not the only items of controversy in the analysis of post-war Stalinism.
In our supplement on the 50th anniversary of the Fourth International (November 1988), a special article by Dave Packer included an assessment of the contradictions involved in the post-war overturns of capitalism under the leadership of Communist Parties.
Pursuing this question, here FINN JENSEN presents a rejoinder, while DAVE PACKER and PHIL HEARSE develop the debate, which will continue in future issues of Socialist Outlook.
Mao's break from Stalin's line
In his article in Socialist Outlook no 10, Dave Packer dealt with an important question. How can we explain that communist parties coming from the Stalinist tradition have been able to lead successful revolutions?
The question is not one of only of historic interest, because the answer has consequences for today: can any of the existing parties from the Stalinist (or Maoist) tradition lead a successful revolution? If some of them might be able to do it, what should be our relation to them?
Dave takes in his article the example of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):
'In the 1930s Trotsky did not expect Mao's Red Army to come to anything. However, momentous conditions – revolutionary war against the Japanese invasion and the nationalist Guomindang armies, huge revolutionary pressures from the workers and peasants, economic catastrophe, the inability of imperialism to intervene at the end of the world war and so on – allowed the Mao leadership to make a decisive break with the bourgeoisie. All other openings (some of which were tried) were progressively closed off to it.' (Page 18).
Trotsky's view of the Red Army was much more nuanced than that of the Chinese Trotskyists. In 1931 and 1933 in letters to the Chinese Left Opposition he advocated sending comrades into the Red Army, in order to get a precise picture of the nature of these armies and the territory they controlled. (See pp 498 and 528 in Leon Trotsky on China, Pathfinder Press, 1976). Unfortunately the Chinese Trotkyists did not follow this advice – and the 1949 revolution came as a surprise to them and to the Fourth International.
But were Mao and the Red Army forced to make a proletarian revolution by the objective circumstances, or was the 1949 revolution the result of a revolutionary leadership that consciously used the objective situation to lead a socialist revolution? Dave's article is not clear on this important issue.
In the 1930s there was a faction fight inside the CCP, which Mao won in 1935. The pro-Stalin faction around Wang Ming lost. Mao did not make an official break with the line of the Communist International (which was under Stalin's control). But he did not carry out Stalin's line in practice either.
Mao would not let the CCP be subordinated to the Soviet bureaucracy, but wanted to lead a proletarian revolution to victory. In that sense Mao was a revolutionary, and not a counter-revolutionary Stalinist. At the same time the CCP was a party with severe bureaucratic deformations.
So although the CCP was part of the Communist International it had a leadership that developed its own line in opposition to Stalin's and implemented that line.
That was also the case with the communist parties in Vietnam and Yugoslavia and that is why they were able to lead successful revolutions. The Vietnamese Communist Party led a struggle for 40 years, which after 1954 threatened the very existence of North Vietnam in its war to liberate South Vietnam. Not a very typical behaviour for Stalinists!
To recognise that a few communist parties from the Stalinist tradition have been able to break with that tradition and lead successful revolutions should of course not make us jump to the conclusion that that could be a pattern for a lot of other communist parties.
It is unlikely to be the case in the imperialist countries. In the third world countries we have to analyse each of the communist parties concretely in order to judge whether any of them have the potential to lead socialist revolutions.
The Philippine CP could be one of them.
Finn Jensen
The way out of a tangle on Stalinism
Finn Jensen's argument that Stalinist parties cannot lead revolutions because stalinism is the subordination of the interests of the world revolution to the narrow interests of the counter-revolutionary Soviet bureaucracy. Therefore he argues, where successful socialist revolutions have occurred, the parties that led them must have broken with stalinism.
This line of argument proceeds from a self-justifying definition, which is based on circular reasoning. In effect it says: Stalinist parties can't lead revolutions, therefore where revolutions have occurred, the parties that led them can't be stalinist. QED.
Comrades who hold this view get themselves in a tangle because the question is badly posed. If we formulate the question slightly differently, then it is easier to get at the solution. If we ask ourselves: can stalinist parties under certain conditions, break with their local bourgeoisie and lead a struggle which results in the destruction of local capitalism? – then the answer can only be 'yes'. That does not lead us to rethink our conception of stalinism as counter-revolutionary in an overall sense.
Let us look at things a bit more concretely. In eastern Europe, quite obviously stalinism, – under Stalin no less – did break with the bourgeoisie and destroy local capitalism. Stalin's main interest here was to construct a ring of 'friendly' states and it is by no means clear that he set out to destroy capitalism there. In all probability he would have preferred a ring of 'Finlands', capitalist states friendly to the Soviet Union. In any case, the intransigence of the local bourgeoisies excluded this option. In Austria Stalin withdrew his troops and handed power back to the capitalist class. Elsewhere, faced with a choice between hostile capitalist classes taking power and installing his own stalinist puppets, he chose the latter course. Only in Czechoslovakia, and to a lesser extent Poland, were there mass Communist parties with large support among the masses.
You can argue that this military-police action of the stalinist bureaucracy is different to stalinist parties taking power on their own – although of course in Czechoslovakia the local CP did have something to do with coming to power itself – but at least what happened in eastern Europe constitutes some evidence for the fact that stalin*ism* can in fact break with capitalism to defend its own specific interests.
Now, if we look today at a whole number of regimes, like the Chinese, Albanian, North Korean and Vietnamese, then we have to ask the question – is this stalinism? Are there stalinist parties in power in these countries?
Ernest Mandel, who holds the same theory as Finn Jensen, is quite consistent when he says 'no'. According to him, these are not stalinists in power, these are 'bureaucratic centrists' who have a qualititively less manipulative and authoritarian attitude to the masses than the stalinists per se – the soviet bureaucracy and their allies. Now we think that this is an uncomfortable theory to hold, but at least it has internal consistency. For if you were to assert that these parties are stalinist today, you would be left with the obviously self-justifying and tendentious notion that these parties were originally stalinist, broke with stalinism to make the revolution, and then returned to stalinism when in power!
Ernest Mandel's version is uncomfortable because it leads to asserting, as he does, that the Chinese, Albanian and Vietnamese are less authoritarian and manipulative towards the masses – less bureaucratic. In our opinion you would be very hard put to prove that Kim Il Sung's North Korea, or Enver Hoxha's Albania, or even Deng's China were less bureaucratic, authoritarian, stalinist than Gorbachev's Soviet Union!
The real problem with Finn's and Ernest Mandel's position is their restrictive definition of stalinism as subordination to the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. Why just Soviet? Why not the bureaucracy of any workers state? For example, our movement has habitually analysed the Indonesian CP, whose popular frontist opportunism in 1965 led to the biggest defeat of the world workers' movement since 1933, as a stalinist party. Aidit's party was almost a walking definition of the term, but by 1965 it had, for at least two years, broken its links with Moscow and was a pro-Chinese party with Peking warmly supporting its policies. Had the PKI therefore broken with Stalinism? Or was it not, on the contrary, a stalinist party which subordinated itself to the interests of the (counter-revolutionary) Chinese bureaucracy. Finn's theory is unable to cope with this example.
What has led stalinist parties, parties of stalinist origin if you prefer, to break with the bourgeoisie in certain conditions? Most of the examples are from the 'third world'. The politics of popular frontism, however sincerely held, have been much more difficult to apply in many of these countries because in many cases no section of the bourgeoisie has been willing or able to play the role of counter-revolutionary ally in the popular front. From the Shanghai massacre onwards, the Guomindang in China refused Mao's advances, and posed the Chinese CP directly with the question – capitulation or relentless struggle? The same is true for Yugoslavia where the would be bourgeois allies sided with the Nazi invaders rather than fight alongside Tito. You can't make a counter-revolutionary popular front, in traditional stalinist sytle, with those who refuse it. Or rather, you can try, you can pretend it exists, and be massacred. Like Aidit did in Indonesia.
In certain cases these parties, when they came to power established perfectly stalinist regimes, did make a positive choice at a certain stage in the struggle – against being massacred and for the struggle to the finish.
The Greek CP, at the end of the 1940's, took up armed struggle again in a civil war against its native bourgeoisie and US and British imperialism. It never ceased being a stalinist party, and never stopped professing adherence to the goal of a popular front government. It was 'armed popular frontism'. But if the Greek CP had won their struggle in the civil war, would they not have been propelled along the road of establishing their own bureaucratic power, having defeated the local bourgeoisie? And would latter day theorists claim they must have 'broken' with stalinism in order to do it?
It should be clear that we do not believe the idea, put forward in some quarters, that parties like the Chinese seized power 'under pressure from the masses' and against their own will. The pressure of the masses, one way or the other, was undoubtedly there, but not the decisive thing. A party can be led to a more radical break with capitalism than it had intended in its original programme and practice: it can't be made to do it against its own will!
To develop a satisfactory explanatory framework it is better to abandon the narrow definition of stalinism as subordination to the soviet bureaucracy – which for example an utterly stalinist regime like the Albanian is clearly not. Stalinism is a group of movements and parties which are subordinated to the interests of the bureaucracy of a deformed workers' state, or have their origin in such subordination and today retain the characteristic bureaucratic theories and practices of the stalinists.
This is a much more complex, nuanced and problematic definition of stalinism than 'subordination to the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy' – but much less schematic, and much more in tune with reality. After all, if Finn, like comrade Ernest, wants to insist on his theory as the essence of the matter – where today is there a stalinist party, strictly subordinate to Moscow, in the sense of the old Stalintern and Cominform? You will hardly find such a party. The links that most stalinist parties have directly with the Soviet Union are either very attenuated, non-existent, or heavily mediated through their links with their own bourgeoisie. But we cannot conclude from this that stalinism is disappearing, although of course it is in massive crisis. Right wing stalinist parties like the French, or Italian, maintain a relationship with the masses, with the trade unions and municipalities and have a type of organisation and cadre development and an ideological formation which makes them characteristically different from social democratic or bourgeois parties.
This is a complex debate, which ranges over social reality in most parts of the globe. It is a shifting reality, as eastern Europe and China are in the throes of major upheaval, and as the western CPs themselves go through organisational collapse and political transformation. It is therefore a discussion which we should continue. But first off, we want to pose the question – what difference does it make in practice?
Political line cannot be deduced directly from theory. But the view that 'bureaucratic centrist' parties have a less bureaucratic attitude than the stalinists led to the notion that we are not for political revolution in Vietnam. The position of the Fourth International on this question is unclear: it has never adopted a position. Until 1963, and maybe later, many forces in world Trotskyism did not have a position for political revolution in China. But the main directly political issue of disagreement has of course been the overall course of the world revolution since 1945, as Dave Packer explained. The understanding of stalinism put forward here enables us, we think, to better grasp the long historical detour of the world revolutionary process in the post war period, the period of the long imperialist boom and the beginning of the unravelling of stalinism.
Forward with the struggle, the discussion continues!
Phil Hearse and Dave Packer