The Revolution Betrayed

Trotsky’s argument, in The Revolution Betrayed, that the Soviet State had degenerated into bureaucratic totalitarianism and a new political revolution was necessary in order to establish a pluralist, democratic proletarian USSR

Michael J Shon

University of Cardiff

In the Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky argued that the Soviet Union had been betrayed by Stalin and the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. In 1936 Stalin had claimed that his theory of ‘socialism in one country’ had been effectively achieved, implying that the development towards a higher stage of communism was making strides accordingly. Trotsky completely rejected these claims on both theoretical and material grounds, arguing that what Stalin deemed ‘socialism’ was in fact a complete distortion and divergence from the original Marxist-Leninist principles of the October Revolution. Trotsky saw the Soviet Union as having degenerated into bureaucratic totalitarianism, a regime that he believed not only hindered the international progress of socialism but also actively sought to perpetuate conditions whereby social antagonisms, inequality and poverty were sharpened and exacerbated. Against claims, by both non-Marxists and Stalin himself, that this state of affairs was but an organic development of Bolshevism (or even Marxism) and that ‘the October Revolution could only end in the dictatorship of the bureaucracy[1]’, Trotsky sought to a provide a Marxist account of the development of the Soviet Union in order to explain how this powerful bureaucracy came into being and gain such control, how Stalinism was theoretically bankrupt with regard to the socialist cause and thus what was needed to be done in order to regenerate the socialist revolution.

Fundamentally underpinning Trotsky’s analysis was his insistence of the international character of socialism, which derived itself from his theory of Permanent Revolution. According to Marxist theory in such backward countries like Russia a bourgeois revolution and a prolonged stage of capitalism would have to be achieved first in order to develop the conditions for a subsequent socialist revolution. Trotsky’s theory sought to surpass this distinct stage by holding that the proletariat, in the face of an unwilling bourgeoisie, could both implement a bourgeois democratic and then a socialist revolution simultaneously. As such this was the theory adopted by the Bolsheviks in 1917. However according to Trotsky such a revolution could not survive unless simultaneous socialist revolutions took place in the more advanced capitalist countries; socialism both materially and theoretically could not be achieved but on an international scale owing to the immediate hostility of capitalist nations and the need for the advanced productive forces that Marxist socialism required. Following the failure of the German proletariat in 1921, in actuality the Soviet Union found itself isolated. As such an alternative theory, ‘socialism in one country’ proposed by Stalin, began to argue that such internationalism was impotent in such hostile conditions and the main task of the Soviet Union thus should be the internal consolidation of the revolution and the construction of a socialist society within one country. Trotsky saw this as completely diverging from both Marxist theory and the material premises underlying the whole October Revolution, asserting ‘the sooner [we hasten revolution in Europe] the sooner will that revolution enrich us with world technique and the more truly and genuine will our socialist construction advance as a part of European and world construction[2]’. The adoption of this policy as Stalin’s power grew thus represented for Trotsky one of the first contradictions the Soviet regime. Whilst initially basing itself on the premise that an international revolution would occur, the Soviet Union found itself both isolated and economically backward yet with a socialised mode of production and socialist property relations and attempting to achieve socialism in one country. It was this backwardness and error in policy that Trotsky argued formed the material basis for the growth of the bureaucracy.

Trotsky held that the USSR, owing to its backwardness and underdeveloped productive forces, would have to go through a process of ‘catching up’ with the capitalist economies in order to have the advanced levels of productivity required for a socialist society. He thus saw the Soviet regime as a ‘preparatory regime transitional from capitalism to socialism[3]’. As such until its productive forces could meet the need for consumer goods, scarcity would ensue. This transitional stage for Trotsky thus had a ‘dual character’ in that whilst the means of production and property were socialised, scarcity meant the necessity of retaining a capitalist mode of distribution and measure of value. It was this scarcity that provided the initial conditions for the emergence of a bureaucracy, which arose in order to carry out the bourgeois mode of distribution in allocating scarce goods, a process that would be decided by the market under capitalism.

‘The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in the objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all…It ‘knows’ who is to get something and who has to wait.’

It is this control over the means of distribution that, Trotsky argued, gave the bureaucracy an increasingly powerful footing as a social group. Similarly he noted that scarcity also created social divisions between the different strata of society. For example under NEP, in order to stimulate industry and agriculture by the reintroduction of the market a class of petty bourgeois Kulaks emerged whose interests were antagonistic to both the proletariat and the lower strata of the peasantry. Trotsky asserted that the bureaucracy, in its role as mediator, was able exploit such antagonisms to procure more power for itself, in this case the later destruction of the Kulaks in the name of liquidating capitalist elements of society. Similarly during this transitional stage the retaining of bourgeois wage payment as an incentive to raise productivity meant a difference in distributive income in Soviet society based on bourgeois norms of technical skill and intensity of work. The technical backwardness of the majority of the Soviet proletariat meant that as such ‘there grew up a corps of slave drivers[4]’ in the form of managers, specialists and bureaucratic officials, that not only exploded in numbers with the growth of industry but also formed a dominant social minority, who essentially paid themselves for their ‘intellectual labour’. ‘the management of industry became superbureaucratic. The workers lost all influence whatever upon the management of the factory.[5]’ Thus, as Krygier notes, the need for a bureaucracy and the retaining of the bourgeois wage system needed in order pay them during this transitional stage of scarcity gave it ‘an institutional base for the power and privilege which they [then sought] to protect and enhance.[6]’ The bureaucracy thus became a self-serving group, ‘an uncontrolled caste alien to socialism[7]’ who had a vested interest in maintaining social divisions and the power of the state.

However Trotsky was not inherently against bureaucracy. As Michael Lynch writes, ‘although [Trotsky] believed in the revolutionary potential of Russian workers as a class, he was under no illusions as to their social backwardness as a people; they required direction, and direction involves bureaucracy[8]’ and as such Trotsky was not opposed to the notions of political dictatorship or centralisation. What Trotsky was against was the growth of the bureaucracy as an unrestrained group for-itself. He saw that in such a transitional country as Russia the country’s development was ‘uniquely dependent on talented, dedicated and ideologically sound political leadership[9]’; a bureaucracy was necessary, but it had to be ruthlessly controlled by a revolutionary political party whose own socialist vision would curb and protect against bureaucratic excess and the re-emergence of bourgeois elements in society. Furthermore Trotsky cites Marxist-Leninist theory in describing what nature bureaucracy, under a dictatorship of the proletariat, should take. According to Lenin, a state by definition is only necessary in order to uphold inequality and the interests of the minority; as such it is raised above society in order to mediate social antagonisms. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat therefore, the main program of which is to abolish inequality and social antagonisms, the state holds only a temporary character and begins to ‘die away’ parallel to the removal of social antagonisms and the liquidation of capitalistic contradictions within society. Bureaucracy moreover should resemble ‘a regime in which all will fulfil the functions of control and supervision so that all may for a time become ‘bureaucrats’, and therefore nobody can become a bureaucrat[10];’ in that, when the majority democratically govern themselves, there will be no need or cause for a separate bureaucratic apparatus above society. Trotsky admitted that the immense economic contradictions within Russia had essentially prolonged this development and forced it to retain a capitalistic bureaucratic structure, but charged Stalin with actively seeking to fortify and institutionalise what essentially should have been a temporary construction, by both centralising the bureaucracy, thereby removing any possibility of democratic self-governance, and by destroying the internally democratic and revolutionary structure of the ruling Bolshevik party.

Trotsky thus argued, on a political level, that the strength of the bureaucracy in Russia developed parallel to the degeneration of the Bolshevik party, in terms of both personnel and in its adherence to the socialist cause. With the supposedly temporary banning of political parties during the civil war, and the rise of a Stalinist faction in the party who ‘profoundly believed that the task of creating socialism was national and administrative in its nature[11]’ the Soviet Union subsequently saw the dilution of the political vanguard. As Trotsky argues, the opening up of the membership of the party by Stalin ‘dissolved the revolutionary vanguard in raw human material, without experience, without independence and yet with the old habit of submitting to authorities,’ as such freeing the bureaucracy from the party by effectively turning the latter into the former. Thus as Mendel writes ‘the ‘party’ was more and more reduced to the empty shell of the party apparatus, more and more cut off from the living proletariat[12].’ It was the creation of this uncontrolled and self-serving bureaucracy, now merged with the political leadership of the country as one powerful, monolithic strata of society, which Trotsky saw as detrimental to the Soviet program.

With this new found power, the Stalinist bureaucracy was able to continually exploit the social and economic conditions of a ‘society in transition’ so as to maintain and perpetuate its material wealth and power and hijack the Soviet Union’s development away from socialism and towards bureaucratic totalitarianism. It was thus ‘fully content with the existing situation’ of social inequality and contradiction, as long as it remained the ruling apparatus of the state, justified under the banner of achieving ‘socialism in one country’. For Trotsky therefore Stalinism embodied ‘how specific historical conditions... the weariness of the proletariat, the lack of decisive support from the West, prepare for a “second chapter” in the revolution, which is characterized by the suppression of the proletarian vanguard and the smashing of revolutionary internationalists by the conservative national bureaucracy.[13]’ However Trotsky argued that this ‘second chapter’ would not be able to consolidate itself in the long term.

Trotsky argued against the idea that the bureaucracy had established itself as a ruling ‘class’ and thus overthrown the proletariat revolution. For Trotsky the bureaucracy could not be a ‘class’ in the scientific Marxist sense because it had neither property relations nor owned the means of production, nor was its ‘exploitation’ scientifically similar to any systematic ‘class exploitation’. Similarly he categorised the Soviet Union as, despite its distortions, still essentially a worker’s state, constituted by a socialist economic basis, ‘the nationalization of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly on foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure…Through these relations the nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state is…basically defined.[14]’ Trotsky does acknowledge that the Soviet bureaucracy uniquely had risen above and achieved an unheard of level of independence from the ruling class but argues that as such, without the definite crystallisation of this in the form of new property relations ‘it is compelled to defend state property as the source of its power and income,[15]’ out of fear of the ruling class, the proletariat. Thus its own position and methods of appropriation under such socialised property relations become explicitly contradictory. It cannot continually defend socialist property relations and at the same time continually appropriate its income through abusing its power in defence of its own privileged caste. Trotsky therefore posits two potential scenarios arising from this unstable contradiction. Either the Soviet Union will backslide into capitalism by virtue of the bureaucracy overthrowing such socialised property relations for private property relations by means of a necessarily social revolution; Or, the proletariat, noting the contradictions of the bureaucracy, seek to overthrow it and restore soviet democracy, and what with it not being a ‘class’, could do so by means of political revolution alone. Such a revolution would only need to be political in nature as the economic relations of society would still rest on a socialist base. The development of either scenario would depend on the conditions at such a time. However Trotsky nevertheless emphasised the unstableness of a bureaucratic dictatorship by asserting how its existence, and therefore social disharmony, would become increasingly contradictory with the material development of the socialist productive forces. The increasing necessity for efficiency and rationalisation in the economy, in terms of the stabilisation of currency and a more transparent distribution of income, would bring bureaucratic excess and corruption into increasing dispute. Furthermore Trotsky notes that ‘under a nationalised economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers[16]’ in that the quality of production under a planned economy increasingly requires democratic criticism and participation so as to determine the most efficient productive technique and quality products, a need in contradiction with the absolutism of the bureaucracy. In basic Marxist materialist terms therefore, the need for ‘Soviet democracy become[s] a life-and-death need of the country[17]’.

Trotsky acknowledged that such a political revolution against the bureaucracy would depend on many factors, most notably the state of the international proletariat struggle. However he does assert that firstly, the overthrow of the bureaucracy would have to require violent revolution, as ‘no devil ever yet voluntarily cut off his own claws;[18]’ a bureaucratic absolutist regime cannot but fight for its survival. Secondly he outlines the necessary political program a secondary revolution must adopt in order to rid itself of the contradictions and degenerated aspects of society that the bureaucracy had upheld. The complete dismantling of the bureaucratic apparatus, the democratisation of the political, industrial and agricultural spheres, the reestablishment of a plurality of political parties, the restriction of bourgeois means of distribution in accordance with the growth of social wealth and the adoption of revolutionary internationalism as foreign policy[19] would all be necessary, according to Trotsky, to both remove the contradictions that originally gave birth to the bureaucracy and regenerate the Soviet Union back in accordance with the October Revolution.

Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union as being a degenerated worker’s state under bureaucratic totalitarianism has come under criticism by those who claim his analysis is both defensive and ignores the possibility that the country had reverted into a form of ‘State Capitalism’. Jules Townsend in The Politics of Marxism posits the main contention in this debate as residing between two Marxist theorists, Tony Cliff and Earnest Mandel.

Tony Cliff argued that, far from being in the ‘transitional state’ Trotsky had posited, the Soviet Union had in fact undergone a capitalist restoration. His argument rests on two key premises, firstly that the bureaucracy was a ‘class’ in the Marxist sense and secondly therefore that the proletariat were no longer the ruling class in Soviet society. Trotsky had insisted that the bureaucracy was not a class as it had no ‘special property relations of its own[20]’ or control over the means of production, but instead derived its power solely from the means of distribution. However Cliff argued that Trotsky in this analysis ignores the ‘intimate connection between the realms of production and distribution and ignored in un-Marxist fashion the dependence of the latter upon the former[21]’ in that within a state economy production relations are inherently linked and subordinate to consumption relations. Thus for Cliff, in controlling the relations of distribution and consumption the bureaucracy also therefore controlled the relations of production, and therefore was a ‘class’ in the Marxist sense. Secondly Cliff criticised Trotsky’s assertion that the bureaucracy was not a ruling class and was thus forced to maintain socialised production relations out of fear of the actual the ruling class, the proletariat. Cliff argued that such a notion was absurd, as it assumes that the proletariat was apparently strong enough to resist any encroachment by the bureaucracy on socialised property relations but were at the same time unable to counter its severe mode of distribution[22]. Given these premises, Cliff argues that key aspects of The Soviet Union thus correspond to Marx’s analysis of capitalism. He stated that the USSR was essentially being run like a company by the bureaucracy for ‘accumulation for accumulations sake[23]’ specifically in the process of militarisation under the five year plan. Agriculture was subordinated to industry and labour was subordinated to the needs of heavy industry and military accumulation in competition with foreign military accumulation. Cliff thus argued that there existed a capitalist ‘law of value’ regarding labour within the Soviet Union, in that, as Townsend notes, ‘the planning of total labour time was determined by military competition, that is competition in arms ‘use values’…[thus] subordinating the labour process to these dictates;[24]’ The Soviet Union according to Cliff was thus being run under capitalistic methods of production by the bureaucracy, and the regime could therefore be deemed a form of ‘bureaucratic state capitalism’. Any revolution to regenerate socialism therefore would require another social revolution, not merely a political one.

In response to the state capitalist claim, Earnest Mandel sought to defend Trotsky’s analysis by arguing that Marx’s conception of capitalism did in fact not correspond to the Soviet Union and that much of the problems it faced arose, as Trotsky had argued, from it being a ‘transitional’ society. Mandel contra Cliff argued that the defining characteristic of capitalism was that ‘commodity production becomes generalised[25]’, resulting, due to competition, for the necessary accumulation of exchange value in order for reinvestment and subsequent ‘epidemics of overproduction[26]’ as Marx had observed. Mandel argues that as such the Soviet Union did not correspond to this pattern as ‘its principle impulse was not the accumulation of exchange values, but use values.[27]’ Under the Soviet controlled economy, according to Mandel, such effects as found in capitalist countries of the accumulation of exchange value did not take place. Furthermore he noted that the ‘exploitation’ of the worker in the Soviet Union did not correspond to capitalist ‘exploitation’, as the workers, under the planned system, neither were forced to sell there labour as a commodity nor were they subject to cycles of unemployment and gradually diminishing wages as they would under capitalism. As such Mandel also claimed that the bureaucracy could not then be considered a ‘capitalist class,’ as it ‘was under no compulsion to maximise output and optimise resource allocation[28]’ in order to necessitate its survival and material wealth. Mandel thus argues that Trotsky’s analysis, in its essential form, stands.

The debate surrounding Trotsky’s argument that the Soviet Union had degenerated into bureaucratic totalitarianism illustrates the immense difficulty in attempting to analyse a highly complex and historically unique social construct in purely Marxist terms. Difficulties arise on both sides of the argument in trying to encapsulate the Soviet Union wholly in terms of either ‘State Capitalism’ or ‘Bureaucratic Totalitarianism’, which in a way reflects Trotsky’s original assertion of the dual and contradictory nature of the Soviet program. Nevertheless, the argument put forward in The Revolution Betrayed is both rigorous and powerful, and reflected the optimism of Trotsky as a revolutionary.

Bibliography

Trotsky, Leon, The Revolution Betrayed, translated by Max Eastman, (Dover Publications 2004)

Trotsky, Leon, The Writings of Leon Trotsky [1938-39] (Pathfinder Press 1974)

Lynch, Michael, Trotsky The Permanent Revolutionary (Hodder & Stoughton 1998)

Mandel, Earnest, Trotsky A Study in the Dynamic of his Thought (NLB 1979)

Kamenka, Eugene & Krygier, Martin, Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept (Edward Arnold 1979)

Townsend, Jules The Politics of Marxism: The Critical Debates (Leicester University Press 1996)

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The Communist Manifesto, ed. Eric Hobsbawm (Verso 1998)

Internet Sources

www. Marx.org

Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism (marx.org) at:

http://marx.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm

Lecture Handouts

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[1] Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism (marx.org) at:

http://marx.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm

[2] Trotsky, Leon, The Revolution Betrayed, translated by Max Eastman, (Dover Publications 2004) p. 225

[3] The Revolution Betrayed, p. 37

[4]The Revolution Betrayed p.182

[5] The Revolution Betrayed p. 182

[6] Kamenka, Eugene & Krygier, Martin, Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept (Edward Arnold 1979) p. 92

[7] The Revolution Betrayed p. 192

[8] Lynch, Michael, Trotsky The Permanent Revolutionary (Hodder & Stoughton 1998) p. 87

[9] Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept p. 91

[10] The Revolution Betrayed p. 39

[11] The Revolution Betrayed p. 74

[12] Mandel, Earnest, Trotsky A Study in the Dynamic of his Thought (NLB 1979) p.81

[13] Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism (marx.org) at:

http://marx.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm

[14] The Revolution Betrayed p.187

[15] The Revolution Betrayed p.188

[16] The Revolution Betrayed p.208

[17]The Revolution Betrayed p.208

[18] The Revolution Betrayed p. 217

[19] The Revolution Betrayed p.218

[20] The Revolution Betrayed p. 188

[21] Townsend, Jules The Politics of Marxism: The Critical Debates (Leicester University Press 1996)

p. 127

[22] Summarised from Townsend on Cliff

[23] The Politics of Marxism p 128

[24] The Politics of Marxism p. 130

[25] The Politics of Marxism p.131

[26] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels The Communist Manifesto, ed. Eric Hobsbawm (Verso 1998) p. 42

[27]The Politics of Marxism p.131

[28] The Politics of Marxism p.132