{"id":33,"date":"2025-10-14T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T19:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=33"},"modified":"2025-10-19T09:04:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T09:04:25","slug":"the-bureaucracy-in-exile-trotskys-limited-anti-stalinism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/the-bureaucracy-in-exile-trotskys-limited-anti-stalinism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bureaucracy in Exile: Trotsky\u2019s limited Anti-Stalinism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An article exploring Trotsky\u2019s (limited) opposition to Stalinism and showing that it reflected Bolshevik orthodoxy in terms of advocating the dictatorship of the party and one-man management. Needless to say, almost all Trotskyist accounts fail to mention this. It first appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review<\/em><\/a> Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Bureaucracy in Exile: Trotsky\u2019s limited Anti-Stalinism<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This year marks the 100th<\/sup> anniversary of Trotsky\u2019s \u201cNew Course\u201d articles which saw the beginnings of his opposition to developments within the USSR which led to the rise of Stalin, his exile in February 1929 and eventual assassination in 1940.[1]<\/a> We can expect a raft of articles from what remains of the Trotskyist sects across the world marking the event and suggesting it represented more than it actually did. Here, we will clarify the nature of Trotsky\u2019s opposition to Stalinism and debunk the exaggerations and selectiveness of previous hagiographies \u2013 not to mention the distortions and inventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky\u2019s \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d of 1923-7 is undoubtedly the best known of the various dissident groupings within the Russian Bolsheviks which developed after 1917. This is mainly because it spawned numerous Trotskyist sects across the globe as well as the \u201cFourth International\u201d. It is also the one most lauded by subsequent dissident Leninists \u2013 unsurprisingly, as earlier ones developed when Lenin and Trotsky held the reins and so are either ignored or dismissed in passing.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An American Trotskyist suggests that it was only \u201c[a]fter Lenin\u2019s death\u201d that \u201cthe Russian Revolution\u2019s goal of soviet democracy and the commitment to a liberating revolution worldwide gave way to a bureaucratic dictatorship under Joseph Stalin\u201d.[3]<\/a> Chris Harman likewise argued that it was after \u201cLenin\u2019s illness and subsequent death\u201d when the \u201cprinciples of October were abandoned one by one.\u201d He adds that \u201cthere was always an alternative to Stalinism. It meant, in the late 1920s, returning to genuine workers\u2019 democracy and consciously linking the fate of Russia to the fate of world revolution.\u201d The \u201chistorical merit of the \u2018Left Opposition\u2019\u201d was that it \u201cdid link the question of the expansion of industry with that of working-class democracy and internationalism.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Leninists make similar claims. Victor Serge, a member of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d in Russia and then Trotskyist in exile, stated that its programme was \u201cthe reform of the Soviet State by a return to working-class democracy.\u201d[5]<\/a> Discussing attempts to rehabilitate Trotsky in the 1980s, Hillel Ticktin asserted that \u201c[a]lthough the left opposition is history, a working-class critique is not, and the left opposition produced the first such critique.\u201d[6]<\/a> David McNally proclaims its importance in rousing rhetoric:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Grouped around Leon Trotsky were the forces known as the \u2018Left Opposition\u2019\u2026 By the mid-1920s, the programme of the Left Opposition had two central planks. First, democracy had to be re-established in the Bolshevik party and in the mass organisations such as the trade unions and the soviets. Secondly, the Soviet government had to abandon all such retrograde notions as socialism in one country\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the terrible decades of the 1920s and 1940s when Stalin was committing barbarous crimes in the name of \u2018socialism\u2019, the lone voice of Leon Trotsky kept alive some of the basic elements of socialism from below\u2026 It was Trotsky\u2019s great virtue to insist against all odds that socialism was rooted in the struggle for human freedom\u2026 Throughout the 1920s and until his death at the hands of Stalinist agent in 1940, Trotsky fought desperately to build a revolutionary socialist movement based on the principles of Marx and Lenin\u2026 Trotsky\u2019s contribution to keeping alive the socialist flame during the 1930s\u2026 insured him a lasting place in the history of international socialism[7]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, such claims are not true. As Serge himself noted elsewhere, Trotsky may have \u201cever since 1923 [been] for the renovation of the party through inner party democracy and the struggle against bureaucracy\u201d but \u201cthe greatest reach of boldness of the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party was to demand the restoration of inner-Party democracy, and it never dared dispute the theory of single-party government\u201d.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we show that this was, indeed, the case and that Trotsky was no advocate of freedom or \u201cSocialism from Below\u201d. He did not question the fundamental features of the Soviet Union and sought a change in who was in charge rather than its class structure. This should be unsurprising as he was a leading Bolshevik who, like others (and before Stalin) had had two towns named after him: Ivanshchenkovo from 1919 until 1929 and Gatchina between 1923 and 1929.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before The<\/em> New Course<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Space precludes discussing the Bolshevik regime in detail nor its onslaught on workers\u2019 democracy \u2013 in the soviets, factory committees and armed forces \u2013 which started in early 1918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky \u2013 just appointed as People\u2019s Commissar of Army and Navy Affairs \u2013 ended democracy within the armed forces in mid-March 1918: \u201cthe principle of election is politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by decree.\u201d[10]<\/a> The following month saw him arguing that once elected the government was to be given total power to appoint people as required as it is \u201cbetter able to judge in the matter than\u201d the masses. The workers were expected to simply obey their public servants until such time as they \u201cdismiss that government and appoint another.\u201d Trotsky raised the question of whether it was possible for the government to act \u201cagainst the interests of the labouring and peasant masses\u201d and answered no for \u201cthere can be no antagonism between the government and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the administration of the union and the general assembly of its members\u201d.[11]<\/a> The weakness of this can be seen from the history of trade unionism which is full of examples of committees betraying their membership.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within months of these comments, the regime had become a state-capitalist party dictatorship with the imposition of \u201cone-man management\u201d within industry and the gerrymandering, packing and dissolving of the local soviets in the spring of 1918 as well as the packing of the 5th<\/sup> All-Russian Soviet Congress of early July 1918 which denied the Left-SRs their rightful majority. With the building of a new State and a centralised vision of \u201csocialism\u201d based on State ownership and control, the numbers, power and privileges of the bureaucracy rose and rose. The new regime met with worker and peasant resistance which \u2013 like the State repression protest faced \u2013 started before the outbreak of the Civil War at the end of May 1918 nor linked to its phases nor did it end with the defeat of Wrangel in November 1920 for its continued well into the 1920s.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideology soon followed practice, with Victor Serge later recalling how \u201cat the start of 1919 I was horrified to read an article by Zinoviev\u2026 on the monopoly of the party in power.\u201d[14]<\/a> He failed to mention how well he hid that horror.[15]<\/a> Trotsky, as a leading Bolshevik, embraced the party\u2019s political and economic policies. This can be seen in his infamous book, Terrorism and Communism<\/em>. Written in 1920 to refute Karl Kautsky\u2019s critique of Bolshevism from a pre-war Marxist orthodox position, Trotsky has no qualms defending the party\u2019s dictatorship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control\u2026 it has the final word in all fundamental questions\u2026 the last word belongs to the Central Committee of the party \u2026 Such a regime is possible only in the presence of the unquestioned authority of the party, and the faultlessness of its discipline\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible\u2026 The revolutionary supremacy of the proletariat pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political supremacy of a party, with a clear programme of action and a faultless internal discipline \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organisation that the party has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this \u201csubstitution\u201d of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He argued against those who suggested that the dictatorship should be carried out by the whole class: \u201cIt is not easy to understand what actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and, where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head.\u201d[17]<\/a> This rejection of democracy also applied to the workplace:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

our Party Congress\u2026 expressed itself in favour of the principle of one-man management in the administration of industry\u2026 It would be the greatest possible mistake\u2026 to consider this decision as a blow to the independence of the working class\u2026 It would consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at the head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in the means of production\u2026 and not at all in the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered\u2026 I consider if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less painfully.[18]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus the workers were excluded from economic power which rested in the hands of the State (that is, its bureaucrats) and, as under private capitalism, had two roles \u2013 follow orders and work hard. In this, as with party dictatorship, he was simply repeating Bolshevik orthodoxy \u2013 Lenin had been arguing for state-appointed one-man management (armed with \u201cdictatorial\u201d authority) since the spring of 1918.[19]<\/a> Trotsky did not deny how authoritarian this regime was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions\u2026 the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State\u2026 Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction\u2026 No organisation except the army has ever controlled man with such severe compulsion as does the State organisation of the working class in the most difficult period of transition. It is just for this reason that we speak of the militarisation of labour.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An example of this regime was provided in early 1920 when Trotsky argued that the working class \u201ccannot be left wandering round all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers\u201d and that \u201c[d]eserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps\u201d.[21]<\/a> It would be churlish, but essential, to note the links of this draconian regime to the \u201c[e]stablishment of industrial armies\u201d and the need to \u201ccentralise all instruments of production\u2026 of credit\u2026 of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State\u201d advocated by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto<\/em>.[22]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a regime was beneficial in all aspects of life for \u201cthe striving of the military organization to bring clearness, definiteness, exactness of relations and responsibilities, to the highest degree of development\u201d meant that \u201cevery class prefers to have in its service those of its members who, other things being equal, have passed through the military school\u2026 This experience is a great and valuable experience. And when a former regimental commissary returns to his trade union, he becomes not a bad organizer.\u201d[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against those who argued that by \u201c[d]estroying or driving underground the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of the possibility of testing your line of action\u201d Trotsky replied by pointing to the efficiency of Bolshevik repression: \u201cIn a period in which\u2026 the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the Mensheviks and the SRs \u2013 and they have disappeared. This criterion is sufficient for us.\u201d From this he concluded that Bolshevism \u201cexpresses the interests of historical development.\u201d[24]<\/a> Needless to say, he did not repeat this \u201cmight-makes-right\u201d criteria when the Stalinists made the Trotskyists disappear in the 1920s and 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this was written during the Civil War and may be excused in terms of the circumstances in which it was written. However, this ignores the awkward fact that Trotsky\u2019s arguments reflected the theoretical conclusions required to produce what was considered as a successful<\/em> revolution by him and other leading Bolsheviks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dismissal of working-class democracy was party orthodoxy, as can be seen from the awkward fact that Trotsky continued to argue for party dictatorship after the end of the civil war in November 1920. Thus we discover him in early in 1921 arguing again for Party dictatorship at the Communist Party\u2019s Tenth Congress:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Workers\u2019 Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans, making a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers\u2019 right to elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers\u2019 democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the revolutionary birth right of the party, which is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes. This awareness is for us the indispensable element. The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers\u2019 democracy.[25]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that Trotsky was being too generous to the Workers\u2019 Opposition, for \u201cwhile demanding more freedom of initiative for the workers\u201d in economic matters, \u201cit was quite content to leave untouched the state of affairs in which a few hundred thousand imposed their will on many millions\u201d and it \u201chad no wish to disturb the communist party\u2019s monopoly of political power.\u201d[26]<\/a> So even limited industrial democracy was considered too much by Trotsky:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Formally speaking this [the creation of factory committees] is indeed the clearest line of workers\u2019 democracy. But we are against it. Why? For a basic reason, to preserve the party\u2019s dictatorship, and for subordinate reasons: management would be inefficient[27]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Note well, the necessity to secure the party dictatorship was paramount and even a slight increase in worker democracy (rigorously controlled by the party) was a danger. In terms of his \u201csubordinate\u201d reason, it should suffice to note the waste and inefficiency (not to mention corruption) in the economy which occurred after he and Lenin imposed \u201cone-man management\u201d and the \u201cmilitarisation of labour\u201d.[28]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky re-iterated this position In late March 1921, in relation to the crushing of the Kronstadt revolt for soviet democracy by asserting that the \u201ceconomic, political, and national independence of Russia is possible only under the dictatorship of the soviets. The backbone of this dictatorship is the Communist Party. There is no other party that can play this part, nor can there be.\u201d[29]<\/a> The following year saw him stating that \u201cwe maintain the dictatorship of our party!\u201d[30]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 1923, he argued that \u201c[i]f there is one question which basically not only does not require revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision, it is the question of the dictatorship of the Party, and its leadership in all spheres of our work.\u201d He stressed that \u201c[o]ur party is the ruling party\u2026 To allow any changes whatever in this field, to allow the idea of a partial\u2026 curtailment of the leading role of our party would mean to bring into question all the achievements of the revolution and its future.\u201d He indicated the fate of those who did<\/em> question this: \u201cWhoever makes an attempt on the party\u2019s leading role will, I hope, be unanimously dumped by all of us on the other side of the barricade.\u201d[31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this he just expressed party orthodoxy for in March 1923 the Central Committee of the Communist Party (of which he was a leading member) summarised the lessons gained from the Russian revolution, namely that \u201cthe party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an unprecedented defeat for the proletariat.\u201d Vacillations are expressed by workers\u2019 democracy and so this was rejected: \u201cThe dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the dictatorship of the party.\u201d[32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was also the case in the economic domain and so we find him arguing in 1923 that the \u201csystem of actual one-man management must be applied in the organisation of industry from top to bottom. For leading economic organs of industry to really direct industry and to bear responsibility for its fate, it is essential for them to have authority over the selection of functionaries and their transfer and removal\u201d as well as \u201cappointment.\u201d[33]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Trotsky, economic democracy was not an issue and so it played no role in determining the socialist nature of a society. Consequently, he did not question one-man management in the workplace nor the capitalist social relationships it generated. For Trotsky, it was <\/em>\u201cnecessary for each state-owned factory, with its technical director and with its commercial director, to be subjected not only to control from the top \u2013 by the state organs \u2013 but also from below, by the market which will remain the regulator of the state economy for a long time to come.\u201d In spite of the obvious fact that the workers did not control their labour or its product, Trotsky asserted that \u201c[n]o class exploitation exists here, and consequently neither does capitalism exist.\u201d Moreover, \u201csocialist industry\u2026 utilises methods of development which were invented by capitalist economy.\u201d Ultimately, it was not self-management that mattered, it was \u201cthe growth of Soviet state industry [which] signifies the growth of socialism itself, a direct strengthening of the power of the proletariat\u201d.[34]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether on political or economic matter he was repeating arguments made during the civil war to defend the regime but by 1923 even he could not fail to see that something was going wrong.[35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Course<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This is the context of the launching of The New Course<\/em> \u2013 an ideological commitment to party dictatorship and one-man management. Yet The New Course<\/em> \u2013 while generally accepted as being the first public expression of his opposition to the developing Stalinist regime \u2013 did not challenge any of this, quite the reverse, as he stated that \u201c[w]e are the only party in the country, and in the period of the dictatorship it could not be otherwise\u201d for this was \u201can epoch when the Communist Party is obliged to monopolize the direction of political life.\u201d Moreover, it was \u201cincontestable that factions [within the party] are a scourge in the present situation\u201d and so the party \u201cdoes not want factions and will not tolerate them.\u201d[36]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, confusion creeps into accounts of Trotsky\u2019s Opposition to Stalin because of his use of the words \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d. However, a close reading of his argument soon clarifies this issue: he simply redefined \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d to mean \u201cparty democracy\u201d and so could talk about \u201cparty dictatorship\u201d and \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d without contradiction. As his supporter Max Eastman noted a few years later, Trotsky was in favour of the \u201cprogramme of democracy within the party \u2013 called \u2018Workers\u2019 Democracy\u2019 by Lenin.\u201d This \u201cwas not something new or especially devised\u2026 It was part of the essential policy of Lenin for going forward toward the creation of a Communist society \u2013 a principle adopted under his leadership at the Tenth Congress of the party, immediately after the cessation of the civil war.\u201d[37]<\/a> The \u201cNew Course Resolution\u201d passed in December 1923 stresses this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Workers\u2019 democracy means the liberty of frank discussion of the most important questions of party life by all members, and the election of all leading party functionaries and commissions by those bodies immediately under them. It does not, however, imply the freedom to form factional groupings, which are extremely dangerous for the ruling party, since they always threaten to split or fragment the government and the state apparatus as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a party, which represents a voluntary union of people on the basis of definite ideals and practice, it is obvious that there can be no toleration of the formation of groupings whose ideological content is directed against the party as a whole and against the dictatorship of the proletariat, as for instance the Workers\u2019 Truth and Workers\u2019 Group.[38]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These two groups, it should be noted, actually advocated genuine<\/em> workers\u2019 democracy \u2013 that is, they opposed the party\u2019s monopoly of power and supported multi-party elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there was talk of \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d but the \u201cNew Course Resolution\u201d was clear that that term in fact meant only internal party democracy as per the current orthodoxy. Likewise with the banning of factions within<\/em> the Communist party, with Trotsky keen to stress at the 13th<\/sup> Party Congress in 1924 that \u201cparty democracy in no way implies freedom for factional groupings which are extremely dangerous for the ruling party, since they threaten to split or divide the government and the state apparatus as a whole. I believe this is undisputed and indisputable\u201d. He re-iterated his position for the decisions of the Tenth Party Congress: \u201cI have never recognized freedom for groupings inside the party, nor do I now recognise it\u201d.[39]<\/a> He even went so far as to declare his faith in the party in spite of the corruption long manifesting itself due to its social position:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Comrades, none of us wants to be or can be right against the party. In the last analysis, the party is always right, because the party is the sole historical instrument that the working class possesses for the solution of its fundamental tasks. I have already said that nothing would be simpler than to say before the party that all these criticisms, all these declarations, warnings, and protests \u2013 all were mistaken from beginning to end. I cannot say so, however, comrades, because I do not think it. I know that no one can be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the party and through it since history has not created any other way to determine the correct position.[40]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He did acknowledge that \u201c<\/em>even the party itself can make occasional mistakes\u201d but argued that the duty of a party member was to follow its decisions if they could not convince the party that it had made one of these.[41]<\/a> He seemed unaware of how these arguments gave his opponents weapons they happily later used against him and other members of the opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As can be seen, Trotsky\u2019s opposition was a loyal one, initially accepting defeats and following party discipline. In fact, he made a great deal of being the true heir of Lenin and so not only did not question Bolshevik orthodoxy but instead championed it in every detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Of course, the foundation of our regime is the dictatorship of the class. But this in turn assumes that it is the class not only \u201cin itself\u201d but also \u201cfor itself,\u201d that is, that it is a class that has come to self-consciousness through its vanguard, which is to say, through the party. Without this, the dictatorship could not exist. To present matters as though the party were only the teacher, while the class puts the dictatorship into effect, is to prettify the truth of the matter. Dictatorship is the most highly concentrated function of a class, and therefore the basic instrument of a dictatorship is a party. In the most fundamental respects a class realizes its dictatorship through a party. That is why Lenin spoke not only of the class dictatorship but also of the dictatorship of the party and, in a certain sense<\/em>, made them identical.[42]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This was the basis of his critique of Stalin, seizing upon such incredulous comments as \u201c[p]eople often say that we have a \u2018dictatorship of the Party\u2019\u2026 some comrades think that ours is a dictatorship of the Party, not of the working class. But that is sheer nonsense, comrades\u2026 If the contention about \u2018dictatorship of the Party\u2019 were correct, there would be no need for the Soviets\u2026 very little thought is required to realise the utter absurdity of substituting the dictatorship of the Party for the dictatorship of the class.\u201d[43]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, Trotsky argued, meant that Stalin\u2019s policies were, in fact, a ploy to substitute the dictatorship of the party apparatus for the dictatorship of the party. Such a substitution had its roots in a \u201cdisproportion\u201d between the workers and peasants. As long as there were \u201cproper \u2018proportions\u2019\u201d between the two and \u201cthe advance of democratic methods in the party and working class organizations,\u201d then \u201cthe identification of the dictatorship of the class with that of the party is fully and completely justified historically and politically.\u201d Trotsky did not bother to ask how much democracy (of any<\/em> kind) was possible under a party dictatorship nor how a class could run society or have democratic organisations if subjected to such a dictatorship. For him it was a truism that the \u201cdictatorship of a party does not contradict the dictatorship of the class either theoretically or practically, but is an expression of it.\u201d [44]<\/a> Stalin was wrong not because he denied the reality of the Bolshevik regime and its ideology but because he was undermining both:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Stalin\u2019s way of putting the question of the dictatorship of the class, counterposing it to the dictatorship of the party, leads inevitably to the dictatorship of the apparatus, because a class with a disorganized vanguard (and the lack of free discussion, of control over the apparatus, and of election rights means a disorganized vanguard) cannot help but become a mere object in the hands of the leadership of a centralized apparatus, which in turn removes itself further and further from the party and is more and more bound to come under the pressure of hostile class forces.[45]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This \u2013 \u201con the question of the dictatorship of the party\u201d \u2013 was just one of a whole series of mistakes by Stalin, although \u201cthe most serious of all, which he is making now, is his theory of socialism in one country.\u201d[46]<\/a> This was because \u201c[w]e can get through this difficult period only on the condition\u2026 of the capacity of the proletarian party to manoeuvre decisively, for which absolute concentration of the dictatorship in its hands is necessary.\u201d[47]<\/a> This was the case internationally as well, with Trotsky commenting upon events in China in 1927 by stressing that \u201c[w]ith us the dictatorship of the party (quite falsely disputed theoretically by Stalin) is the expression of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat\u2026 The dictatorship of a party is a part of the socialist revolution\u201d.[48]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Platform of the Opposition<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Party dictatorship was <\/em>Bolshevik orthodoxy and it had existed in reality and in theory under Lenin. It is unsurprising, then, that the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d raised it in the 1927 Platform of the Opposition<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside demands for the \u201cconsistent development of a workers\u2019 democracy in the party, the trade unions, and the soviets\u201d and the need to \u201cconvert the urban soviets into real institutions of proletarian power\u201d, it attacked the \u201cgrowing substitution of the apparatus for the party [which] is promoted by a \u2018theory\u2019 of Stalin\u2019s which denies the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realized only through the dictatorship of the party.\u201d The \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat imperiously demands a single and united proletarian party as the leader of the working masses and the poor peasantry.\u201d The Opposition would \u201cfight with all our power against the idea of two parties, because the dictatorship of the proletariat demands as its very core a single proletarian party. It demands a single party.\u201d[49]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Platform did not bother to explain how workers\u2019 democracy could<\/em> develop within a party dictatorship nor how soviets could become institutions of power when real power would, obviously, lie with the party. But, then, it did not have to as by \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d the Platform meant inter-party democracy as can be seen when it \u201caffirm[s]\u201d the \u201cNew Course Resolution\u201d definition.[50]<\/a> So, again, \u201cworkers\u2019 democracy\u201d had a very specific meaning, namely one limited to within the party and not<\/em> a call for genuine<\/em> democracy in the unions or soviets. Such a definition, obviously, in no way undermines the dictatorship of the party \u2013 but it does allow the use of quotations by Leninists to bolster a false narrative on the nature of Bolshevism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, Trotsky gets the process by which Stalinism arose wrong. \u201cThe dying out of inner-party democracy,\u201d the Platform asserts, \u201cleads to a dying out of workers\u2019 democracy in general \u2013 in the trade unions, and in all other nonparty mass organizations.\u201d[51]<\/a> Rather, the destruction of workers\u2019 democracy under Lenin in the soviets, trades unions and other mass organisations means that political disputes had to be raised in the party, leading to the dreaded factions and groupings within it. The same necessity which saw workers\u2019 democracy destroyed \u2013 there was no passive \u201cdying out\u201d caused by some kind of natural force! \u2013 by the Bolsheviks to secure their rule arose in the party itself, so necessitating the banning of factions just as it had other parties and groups. In such, the causality flows in the opposite direction than that asserted by Trotsky.[52]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politically, then, the opposition urged the benevolent dictatorship of an internally democratic party. Economically, it was for a benevolent state capitalism, one which exploited the workers less harshly while they toiled for the party dictatorship. This can be seen by the Platform arguing that \u201cnationalization of the means of production was a decisive step toward the socialist reorganization of the entire social system based on the exploitation of some by others\u201d and that the \u201cappropriation of surplus value by a workers\u2019 state is not, of course, exploitation.\u201d However, it also acknowledged that \u201cwe have a workers\u2019 state with bureaucratic distortions\u201d and a \u201cswollen and privileged administrative apparatus devours a very considerable part of our surplus value\u201d while \u201call the data indicate that the growth of wages is lagging behind the growth of labor productivity.\u201d This, however, is not linked to the recognition that \u201c<\/em>[n]ever before have the trade unions and the working mass stood so far from the management of socialist industry as now\u201d and that \u201c[p]re-revolutionary relations between foremen and workmen are frequently found.\u201d[53]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Platform noted that the \u201cpresent rate of industrialization and the tempo indicated for the coming years are obviously inadequate\u201d and so it argued for an acceleration of industrialisation for the \u201cSoviet Union must not fall further behind the capitalist countries in the years ahead, but must catch up with them.\u201d Thus industrialisation \u201cmust be sufficient to guarantee the defense of the country and in particular the adequate growth of the war industries.\u201d[54]<\/a> Thus the surplus appropriated from labour was to increase and directed by the party to its ends \u2013 not least building up the forces which had been regularly used against worker and peasant protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, then, considered an economic regime marked by one-man management by state-appointed bosses under a party dictatorship as without exploitation even though someone other than the workers controlled both their labour and how its product (and any surplus) was used. That capitalist<\/em> class relations would result in both accumulation directed by the few and that few enriching themselves at the expense of many is not recognised, presumably because Bolshevik ideology excluded acknowledging that workers becoming wage-slaves to the state machine equated to state capitalism rather than \u201csocialism\u201d. Likewise, it did not discuss what would happen if the workers, in pursuing their class interests, struggled to lower the rate of accumulation decided upon by the party dictatorship \u2013 undoubtedly a repeat of previous Bolshevik repression of strikes and other protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is hardly surprising that the new master class sought their own benefit; what is surprising is that the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d could not see the reality of state-capitalism. Rather, it paid lip-service to the living standards of the working class while seeking to increase industrialisation and so extract more surplus from its labour; it paid no attention to the relations of production in the workplace and raised no proposals nor demands about establishing workers\u2019 control of industry; it did not question the party dictatorship. Given its self-proclaimed role as defender of Leninist orthodoxy and the social relations it had created, perhaps this is not so surprising after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Exile<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As is well known, the Opposition was crushed and Trotsky forced into exile. This did not lead to a fundamental re-evaluation of what caused the degeneration of the revolution nor the need for genuine soviet and economic democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key task was \u201c[t]o stop the dissolution of the party into the class in the USSR\u201d and so Soviet democracy went unmentioned.[55]<\/a> Repeating previous arguments, Trotsky was fundamentally concerned about the dangers \u201cif the vanguard is dissolved into the amorphous mass\u201d for \u201cthe party is not the class, but its vanguard; it cannot pay for its numerical growth by the lowering of its political level\u201d. There was \u201cthe demand of party democracy\u201d for the dictatorship of the proletariat \u201cis inconceivable without a ruling proletarian party\u201d but nothing on working class freedom or democracy. Perhaps this is unsurprising: \u201cWhat we mean by the restoration of party democracy is that the real revolutionary, proletarian core of the party win the right to curb the bureaucracy and to really purge the party\u201d. In other words, the first act of the successful Opposition would have been the reduction in numbers of those who had some kind of meaningful vote. Rest assured, though, because the new party regime \u201cmeans that the party directs the proletarian dictatorship but does not strangle the mass organisations of the toilers\u201d and the secret ballot is \u201cone of the most important means to discipline the entire apparatus and subordinate it to the party\u201d.[56]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1932, he was arguing that the \u201csame class can rule with the help of different political systems and methods according to circumstances. So the bourgeoisie on its historical road carried through its rule under absolute monarchy, bonapartism, parliamentary republic and fascist dictatorship\u2026 the Soviet regime means the rule of the proletariat, irrespective of how broad the stratum on whose hands the power is immediately concentrated<\/em>.\u201d This was justification for his denial that there was \u201ca small group in the Kremlin who exercise oligarchical powers\u201d (\u201cNo, that is not so\u201d).[57]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky seemed to have forgotten that the bourgeoisie was a minority class which controlled the economic life of a country. Given this, it is not surprising that it could still be the ruling class under dictatorships. The same cannot be said of the working class \u2013 particularly if, as under Lenin and Trotsky, its democratic control of work and so the economy was replaced by one-man management. Yet Trotsky had no alternative than to make such an obviously wrong assertion \u2013 to acknowledge the truth, that socialism needs meaningful workers\u2019 social and economic democracy to qualify as genuinely socialist \u2013 would have meant raising questions over the nature of the Bolshevik regime between 1918 and 1923 when he was at its commanding heights. Hence clearly incorrect assertions like the \u201cdictatorship of a class does not mean by a long shot that its entire mass always participates in the management of the state\u201d and \u201c[s]o long as the forms of property that have been created by the October Revolution are not overthrown, the proletariat remains the ruling class\u201d under Stalin\u2019s brutal regime (presumably proletarians in the forced-labour camps had imprisoned themselves).[58]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Revolution Betrayed<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In 1936 Trotsky finally appeared to revise his ideas in The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, although his revisionism in terms of democracy was combined with revisionism in the events of the Russian Revolution. It would be fair to suggest that Trotskyist account of Trotsky\u2019s ideas may be based solely on this work for in stark contrast to his early arguments he now stated that when \u201cthe Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism\u201d then it \u201cwould begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade unions and the Soviets\u201d and it \u201cwould be able to, and would have to, restore freedom of Soviet parties.\u201d[59]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given his previous comments on the matter, the reader would be justified in wondering whether, rather than a sincere change of heart, Trotsky\u2019s position was a limited and temporary aberration. Indeed, Victor Serge, who later broke with Trotsky over this issue, stated that he \u201chad prevailed on him to include in\u201d this book \u201ca declaration of freedom for all parties accepting the Soviet system.\u201d[60]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence suggests the latter, that it was a temporary aberration \u2013 particularly given the book\u2019s misleading account of the rise of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Thus we find Trotsky suggesting that it was 1924-26 that saw \u201cthe complete suppression of party and Soviet democracy\u201d when, as noted above, he publicly acknowledged the reality of party dictatorship in 1920. Unsurprisingly, the acknowledgement of party dictatorship as a principle of Leninism was overlooked in favour of the suggestion that the civil war resulted in the opposition parties being \u201cforbidden one after the other\u201d and while this was \u201cobviously in conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy, the leaders of Bolshevism regarded [it] not as a principle, but as an episodic act of self-defence.\u201d[61]<\/a> It would be churlish to note that it was<\/em> considered a principle (a \u201cLeninist principle\u201d, no less!) and that the final abolition of opposition parties \u2013 like factions within the ruling party \u2013 occurred after<\/em> the end of the civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be remiss to not note that Trotsky\u2019s position was limited to the Soviet Union and so does not automatically negate his previous arguments on party dictatorship made to the international socialist movement. Indeed, a close reading of his argument suggests that this argument can be reconciled with his previous ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy\u201d, proclaimed Trotsky, and that meant \u201cfreedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of the Bolsheviks\u201d.[62]<\/a> So, initially, only his<\/em> party would be free and in power \u2013 and we would again have the dictatorship of the party which would, at its leisure and whim, decree which other groupings constitute true \u201cSoviet parties\u201d and be allowed to exist and participate in elections. If the opposition parties gain influence \u2013 as the Mensheviks did under the Bolsheviks \u2013 then the party can decide they are no longer \u201cSoviet parties\u201d and so it maintains its rule. As such, there is no guarantee that once the Bolsheviks had been revived (i.e., his faction took over) they did not conclude, as before, that none of the other parties were, in fact, Soviet parties after all \u2013 \u201cfreedom of Soviet Parties\u201d could begin and end with his faction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this manner the apparent Soviet democrat of 1936 can be reconciled with the advocate of party dictatorship of the previous years. After all, did he not suggest that the \u201cdictatorship of the Bolshevik party proved one of the most powerful instruments of progress in history\u201d?[63]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, the economic structure of the regime appears to present no qualms to Trotsky. There is no discussion of workers\u2019 management of production although there is a comment about the \u201crestoration of democracy in the trade unions\u201d. For Trotsky \u2013 reflecting Marxist orthodoxy stretching back to at least The Communist Manifesto<\/em> which likewise made no comment about workers\u2019 control \u2013 the \u201cnationalization of land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange\u201d shows \u201cthe nature of the Soviet Union as a proletarian state\u201d. Trotsky artificially divided distribution and production, seeing the bureaucracy as a gendarme<\/em> which appears in the process of distribution, controlling the distribution of goods and \u201c[n]obody who has wealth to distribute ever omits himself\u201d. There was a \u201ccontrast between forms of property and norms of distribution\u201d, the first being a \u201csocialist property system\u201d and the second reflecting \u201cbourgeois\u201d norms.[64]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the bureaucracy did not only control the product (distribution) but also the workplace (production). Trotsky acknowledged that \u201cthe transfer of the factories to the State changed the situation of the worker only juridically\u201d and that \u201cmeans of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, \u2018belongs\u2019 to the bureaucracy\u201d. He also admitted the reality faced by the worker in Stalinist Russia: \u201cIn the bureaucracy he sees the manager, in the state, the employer.\u201d The bureaucracy was \u201cin the full sense of the word the sole privileged and commanding stratum\u201d in the society and that state property under its command was \u201cthe source of its power and income\u201d, yet bizarrely concluded that it was \u201cthis aspect of its activity\u201d which meant it \u201cremains a weapon of proletarian dictatorship\u201d.[65]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, if the relations of distribution in Russia were not socialist then neither were the relations of production. The reason why he failed to recognise the class nature of the regime is obvious enough \u2013 to do so would mean recognising that this class structure existed when he was in power and that Bolshevism created the very bureaucracy Trotsky denounced as betraying the revolution.[66]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The revisionism of Trotsky\u2019s work is also of note. For example, he asserts that the \u201ccommanding staff needs democratic control\u201d and that the \u201corganizers of the Red Army were aware of this from the beginning\u201d[67]<\/a>, apparently forgetting that he had abolished soldier\u2019s committees and elected officers in March 1918 when he organised the Red Army. He noted the wider impact of this decision with the \u201cdemobilisation of the Red Army of five million played no small role in the formation of the bureaucracy. The victorious commanders assumed leading posts in the local Soviets, in economy, in education, and they persistently introduced everywhere that regime which had ensured success in the civil war.\u201d[68]<\/a> That he praised the introduction of such a regime everywhere in 1920 went unmentioned \u2013 along with the fact that the bureaucracy existed and grew from the moment the Bolsheviks seized power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, then, \u201cthe social conquests of the proletarian revolution\u201d[69]<\/a> he points to in order to justify his view that the USSR should be defended were the very source of the power and privileges of the bureaucracy he denounced (and which made it a \u201cdegenerated workers\u2019 State\u201d rather than a state-capitalist regime). Ultimately, the limitations of his critique are rooted in the fact that any serious analysis of the class structure of the USSR would see its roots in the regime of Lenin and\u2026 Trotsky. The same can be said of neo-Trotskyist suggestions (like Tony Cliff\u2019s) that Stalinism was \u201cState capitalist\u201d \u2013 indeed it was but, by whatever criteria used, so was the Leninism which preceded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reiterating Orthodoxy<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Any apparent support for Soviet Democracy expressed in The Revolution Betrayed<\/em> was short-lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing in 1937, Trotsky was again reiterating the privileged position of the party. In his essay \u201cBolshevism and Stalinism\u201d he argued quite explicitly that \u201cthe proletariat can take power only through its vanguard\u201d and that \u201cthe necessity for state power arises from an insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity.\u201d Only with \u201csupport of the vanguard by the class\u201d can there be the \u201cconquest of power\u201d and it was in \u201cthis sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of the vanguard.\u201d Thus, rather than the working class as a whole seizing power, it is the \u201cvanguard\u201d which takes power \u2013 \u201ca revolutionary party, even after seizing power\u2026 is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society.\u201d Note, the party is \u201cthe sovereign ruler of society,\u201d not<\/em> the working class and state power is required to govern the masses<\/em>,<\/strong> who cannot exercise power themselves as \u201c[t]hose who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the Bolshevik leadership were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat.\u201d[70]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that same year he repeated this position clearly and unambiguously:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective necessity imposed upon us by the social realities \u2013 the class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory. The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history\u2026 The revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution\u2026 Abstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the \u2018dictatorship\u2019 of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions.[71]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

His advice on what to do during the Spanish Revolution followed this pattern: \u201cBecause the leaders of the CNT renounced dictatorship for themselves they left the place open for the Stalinist dictatorship.\u201d[72]<\/a> He repeated this plea for party power the year before his murder by Stalinist agents:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves\u2026 if the dictatorship of the proletariat means anything at all, then it means that the vanguard of the proletariat is armed with the resources of the state in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from the backward layers of the proletariat itself.[73]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yet everyone, by definition<\/em>, is \u201cbackward\u201d when compared to the \u201cvanguard of the proletariat.\u201d As it is this \u201cvanguard\u201d which is \u201carmed with the resources of the state\u201d and not<\/em> the proletariat as a whole we are left with one obvious conclusion, namely party dictatorship rather than working class freedom. This is because such a position means denying exactly what workers\u2019 democracy is meant to be all about \u2013 namely that working people can recall and replace their delegates when those delegates do not follow the wishes and mandates of the electors. If the governors determine what is and what is not in the \u201creal\u201d interests of the masses and \u201covercome\u201d (i.e., repress) the governed, then we have dictatorship, not democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky, of course, made no attempt to reconcile this with his passing comment in The Revolution Betrayed<\/em> that a workers\u2019 state required \u201cactive control by the masses\u201d.[74]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

International implications<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It is considered a truism amongst dissident Leninists that the failure of the Russia Revolution to spread to the West ensured its degeneration. Without a wider Revolution then the shoots of socialism planted by the Bolsheviks were doomed by an inhospitable environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, the nature<\/em> of any such revolution is what counts. If Trotsky\u2019s Opposition had succeeded, it would have encouraged revolutions which followed (to re-quote its Platform) the \u201cLeninist principle\u201d (\u201cinviolable for every Bolshevik\u201d) that \u201cthe dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the dictatorship of the party.\u201d It would have urged centralisation. It would have opposed workers\u2019 self-management in favour of nationalisation and one-man management. And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, the influence of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d would have been as detrimental to the global workers\u2019 movement and other revolutions as Stalin\u2019s was (or, for that matter, Lenin\u2019s) although, of course, in different ways. Generalising Lenin\u2019s state capitalism would not have resulted in socialism, no matter how many revolutions in the west the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d encouraged. Hence Ida Mett:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Some claim that the Bolsheviks allowed themselves such actions (as the suppression of Kronstadt) in the hope of a forthcoming world revolution, of which they considered themselves the vanguard. But would not a revolution in another country have been influenced by the spirit of the Russian Revolution? When one considers the enormous moral authority of the Russian Revolution throughout the world one may ask oneself whether the deviations of this Revolution would not eventually have left an imprint on other countries. Many historical facts allow such a judgement. One may recognise the impossibility of genuine socialist construction in a single country, yet have doubts as to whether the bureaucratic deformations of the Bolshevik regime would have been straightened out by the winds coming from revolutions in other countries.[75]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is indeed the case \u2013 from the start, the Bolsheviks were considered by many socialists across the globe as showing the correct path in terms of revolutionary strategy and actions. This included the dogma on the necessity of party dictatorship which had become Bolshevik orthodoxy by the start of 1919 at the latest (reflecting its practice by mid-1918).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus we see, for example, during the Hungarian Revolution which had seen libertarians form the first workers\u2019 councils in December 1917 by 1919 they \u201cfelt that the powers of the [Communist] Revolutionary Governing Council [of Bela Kun] were excessive\u2026 For the syndicalists the legitimate holders of proletarian sovereignty were the workers councils\u2026 It was not long before they saw their cherished ideals defeated by the united party\u2019s oligarchy. On April 7, 1919, elections were held for the Budapest Council of Workers\u2019 and Soldiers\u2019 Deputies. The syndicalist controlled Budapest Eighth district elected a slate consisting solely of syndicalist and anarchist write-in deputies in place of the single-party ticket. The Revolutionary Governing Council voided the results of the election and a week later the official slate \u2018won\u2019\u201d.[76]<\/a> As in Russia, the \u201cwrong\u201d people had been elected to the soviets and so the Communist regime simply nullified workers\u2019 democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Second Congress of the Communist International, held in July-August 1920, leading Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev told the assembled revolutionaries that \u201cpeople like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do not have the dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship of the party. They think this is a reproach against us. Not in the least!\u2026 the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of the Communist Party.\u201d[77]<\/a> Trotsky repeated the argument when he told the delegate from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT who made the important decisions during a Revolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We have the Council of People\u2019s Commissars but it has to be subject to some supervision. Whose supervision? That of the working class as an amorphous, chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of the party is convened to discuss\u2026 and to decide\u2026 Who will solve these questions in Spain? The Communist Party of Spain.[78]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This perspective was repeated in other countries. In Italy the pro-Bolsheviks raised the necessity of party dictatorship and were being opposed by the libertarians during the revolutionary crisis in 1920:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Up to now, when we said that what the socialists call the dictatorship of the proletariat<\/em> is in reality nothing other than the dictatorship of a few men who, with the assistance of a party, place themselves above the proletariat and impose themselves on it, we have been treated as slanderers\u2026 Moscow has become the Mecca of the proletariat; the source of light, and\u2026 peremptory orders concerning the ideas that those who, with permission from their superiors, wished to call themselves communists ought to profess and the conduct they should follow\u2026 the official journal of the Italian Socialist Party, the most important organ authorised, so far, for the voice of Moscow,\u2026 Avanti!<\/em> of the 26th<\/sup> [September, 1920]\u2026 writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018In Russia, under the soviet regime, the Party really directs all State policy and all public activities; individuals as well as groups being utterly subordinated to the decisions of the Party, so that the dictatorship of the proletariat is really the dictatorship of the party and, as such of its central committee.<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now we know what awaits us: the dictatorship of the leadership of the Socialist Party, or of the as yet unborn Communist Party\u2026 a revolution made with an authoritarian outlook with dictatorial objectives\u2026 by measures arbitrarily imposed from above.[79]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This was reflected in the defences of the suppression of the Kronstadt Revolt of early 1921, which was used as evidence for the necessity of party dictatorship in any revolution. Thus leading German Communist Karl Radek expounded the lesson that the mass \u201cmay well hesitate in the days of great difficulties, defeats, and it may even despair of victory and long to capitulate\u201d and so \u201cthere can arise situations where the revolutionary minority of the working class must shoulder the full weight of the struggle and where the dictatorship of the proletariat can only be maintained, provisionally at least, as the dictatorship of the Communist Party.\u201d The party\u2019s \u201cfirm decision to retain power by all possible means\u201d is \u201cthe greatest lesson of the Kronstadt events, the international lesson.\u201d He linked this lesson to \u201cour discussions with that faction of Communists [in Germany] who wished to oppose\u2026 the dictatorship of the Communist Party\u201d as it illuminated \u201cthe problem of the relationship between the Communist Party and the mass of the proletariat and the form of the dictatorship: dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class\u201d.[80]<\/a> Radek significantly referred to the resolutions on the role of the party made at the Second Comintern Congress and his argument reflected Lenin\u2019s comments in \u201cLeft-Wing\u201d Communism: An Infantile Disorder<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These positions were held by Trotskyists across the globe. The first issue of the official American Trotskyist journal, for example made its position clear by seeking to refute the notion that the dictatorship of the party was an alien concept brought into Bolshevism by Stalin. It did so by \u201cquotations from Lenin, Trotsky and others so as to establish\u2026 the dictatorship of the party is Leninist\u201d rather than \u201ca Stalinist innovation\u201d.[81]<\/a> The very American Trotskyists whom Paul Le Blanc proclaimed were \u201cstanding as a beacon\u201d for the \u201crevolutionary-democratic ideals of early Communism against the corruptions, cynicism, and murderous authoritarianism of Stalinism.\u201d[82]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the reality was that any Bolshevik-style revolution in Western Europe or America \u2013 and least we forget, Trotskyists are convinced that only a Bolshevik-style revolution can succeed \u2013 would have followed Bolshevik ideology with regards to the necessity of the dictatorship of the party, nationalisation, one-man management and so. In so doing, it would have also resulted in the political and economic dispossession of the working class by \u201cits\u201d party. As such, a successful revolution in the West would not<\/em> have seen the Russian dictatorship over the proletariat ended but rather reinforced as the non-Russian Leninist parties would have simply repeated the \u201clessons\u201d learned by the Bolsheviks and communicated internationally via the Comintern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Conclude<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Trotsky\u2019s \u201copposition\u201d in no way presented any real alternative to Stalinism. At no time did he question the fundamental social relationships within Soviet society. He saw Stalinism as the victory of the state bureaucracy over the party and its<\/em> dictatorship. While he, like Lenin, railed against bureaucracy, he did not question the Bolshevism ideology and policies which increased its numbers, powers and privileges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This explains his continual self-imposed role after his exile of loyal opposition to Stalinism in spite of the violence applied to him and his followers. It also explains the lack of excitement by the Russian working class over the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d for their choice was between two factions within the master class. As Serge acknowledged, the bureaucrats were \u201c[o]utraged by the Opposition, [as] they saw it as treason against them; which in a sense it was, since the Opposition itself belonged to the ruling bureaucracy.\u201d[83]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Lenin, the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d did not<\/em> question the Bolshevik\u2019s monopoly of power and explicitly supported the idea of party dictatorship. This fact helps explains what Harman was puzzled by, namely that Trotsky \u201ccontinued to his death to harbour the illusion that somehow, despite the lack of workers\u2019 democracy, Russia was a \u2018workers\u2019 state.\u2019\u201d[84]<\/a> Strangely, Harman does not explain why Russia was a \u201cworkers\u2019 state\u201d under Lenin and Trotsky, given its \u201clack of workers\u2019 democracy\u201d from mid-1918 onwards. Like Trotsky, he avoided looking at the social relations under Lenin in case obvious similarities were noticed to those under Stalin. Yet this is a common feature of Leninists \u2013 who somehow manage to combine statements on how socialism has<\/em> to be democratic to count as socialist with support for the Bolshevik dictatorship under Lenin and Trotsky because it was \u201csocialist\u201d. Such double-think is allowed because of nonsense by their party\u2019s leading members about the regime only abandoning the \u201cprinciples of October\u201d after Lenin\u2019s death.[85]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Trotsky like the rest of the Communist Party including its \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d, genuine<\/em> workers\u2019 democracy was not<\/em> considered important and, in fact, was applicable only<\/em> within the party. The privileged place of the party explains Trotsky\u2019s unwillingness to call on social forces outside it to resist the bureaucracy (which existed in spite of the Bolshevik regime\u2019s longstanding repression of strikes and other protests). Likewise with the capitulation of many of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d to Stalin once he started a policy of industrialisation. As Ante Ciliga saw first-hand in the prison camps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

the majority of the Opposition were\u2026 looking for a road to reconciliation; whilst criticising the Five Year Plan, they put stress not on the part of exploited class played by the proletariat, but on the technical errors made by the Government qua<\/em> employer in the matter of insufficient harmony within the system and inferior quality of production. This criticism did not lead to an appeal to the workers against the Central Committee and against bureaucratic authority; it restricted itself to proposing amendments in a programme of which the essentials were approved. The socialist nature of State industry was taken for granted. They denied the fact that the proletariat was exploited; for \u201cwe were in a period of proletarian dictatorship.\u201d[86]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Serge noted, \u201c[f]rom 1928-9 onwards, the Politbureau turned to its own use the great fundamental ideas of the now expelled Opposition (excepting, of course, that of working-class democracy) and implemented them with ruthless violence.\u201d While acknowledging that the Stalinists had applied these ideas in a more extreme form than the Opposition planned, he also acknowledged that \u201c[b]eginning in those years, a good many Oppositionists rallied to the \u2018general line\u2019 and renounced their errors since, as they put it, \u2018After all, it is our programme that is being applied.\u2019\u201d Nor did it help that at \u201cthe end of 1928, Trotsky wrote to [the Opposition] from his exile\u2026 to the effect that, since the Right represented the danger of a slide towards capitalism, we had to support the \u2018Centre\u2019 \u2013 Stalin \u2013 against it.\u201d[87]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serge\u2019s comments on \u201cworking-class democracy\u201d are somewhat incredulous, given (as noted above) that he knew fine well that the Opposition did not stand for it. This conviction was so strong that, even in the prison camps, \u201calmost all the Trotskyists continued to consider that \u2018freedom of party\u2019 would be \u2018the end of the revolution.\u2019 \u2018Freedom to choose one\u2019s party \u2013 that is Menshevism,\u2019 was the Trotskyists\u2019 final verdict.\u201d The similarities did not stop there, for the Trotskyists \u201cwho were in prison for anti-Stalinism could find nothing better to do than to indulge in Stalinism themselves [in their political groups] while in prison. This absurdity was only apparent; it merely served to prove that between Trotskyism and Stalinism there were many points in common\u201d. The outlook of the Trotskyist majority \u201cwas not very different from that of the Stalinist bureaucracy; they were slightly more polite and human, that was all.\u201d[88]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These similarities reflect that both shared the same Bolshevik ideological legacy and same class position. Yet even within these limits, Trotsky\u2019s opposition was by far the weakest politically as it questioned far fewer things. As Cornelius Castoriadis points out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

From the beginning of 1918 until the banning of factions in March 1921, tendencies within the Bolshevik party were formed that, with farsightedness and sometimes an astonishing clarity, expressed opposition to the Party\u2019s bureaucratic line and to its very rapid bureaucratisation. These were the \u2018Left Communists\u2019 (at the beginning of 1918), then the \u2018Democratic Centralist\u2019 tendency (1919), and finally the \u2018Workers\u2019 Opposition\u2019 (1920-21)\u2026 these oppositions were defeated one by one\u2026 The very feeble echoes of their critique of the bureaucracy that can be found later in the (Trotskyist) \u2018Left Opposition\u2019 after 1923 do not have the same signification. Trotsky was opposed to the bad policies<\/em> of the bureaucracy and to the excesses of its power. He never put into question its essential nature. Until practically the end of his life, he never brought up the questions raised by the various oppositions of the period from 1918 to 1921 (in essence: \u2018Who manages production?\u2019 and \u2018What is the proletariat supposed to do during the \u2018dictatorship of the proletariat,\u2019 other than work and follow the orders of \u2018its\u2019 party?\u2019).[89]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While previous oppositional groups like the \u201cLeft Communists\u201d and \u201cWorkers\u2019 Opposition\u201d had challenged Lenin\u2019s state capitalist economic policies while upholding the Bolshevik monopoly of power (implicitly or explicitly), Trotsky did not even manage that. His opposition was firmly limited to internal reforms to the party which he hoped would result in wider participation in the soviets and trade unions. Just as he did not bother to explain why continuing party dictatorship would reinvigorate the soviets or unions, he did not explain how benevolent dictatorship was possible nor why an economic regime marked by wage-labour employed by the state rather than by capitalists would not be exploitative. Instead, these positions were simply asserted \u2013 for they were, after all, Leninist orthodoxy. That the Bolshevik vision of socialism was simply state-capitalism was something he could never see and this produced a limited critique:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When Trotsky wrote (6 September 1935): \u201cThe historical absurdity of an autocratic bureaucracy in a \u2018classless\u2019 society cannot and will not endlessly endure,\u201d he was saying an absurd thing about the \u201chistorical absurdity\u201d. In history there is no absurdity. An autocratic bureaucracy is a class, therefore it is not absurd that it should exist in a society where classes remain: bureaucratic and proletarian. If the USSR were a \u201cclassless\u201d society, it would also be a society without a bureaucratic autocracy, which is the natural fruit of the permanent existence of the State\u2026 The bureaucratic wound has not been opened and infected by Stalinism: it is contemporaneous with the Bolshevik dictatorship.[90]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It may have been that if the Trotskyists had won the inter-bureaucracy struggle in the mid-1920s then the Soviet Union could have avoided the horrors of Stalinism but it would have remained a state capitalist party dictatorship and, as such, a class system in which the few exploit, oppress and repress the many. That this few would have exploited the many less ruthlessly and aimed to impose similar regimes internationally rather than concentrating on building \u201csocialism in one country\u201d does not mean much. As Emma Goldman noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In point of truth I see no marked difference between the two protagonists of the benevolent system of the dictatorship except that Leon Trotsky is no longer in power to enforce its blessings, and Josef Stalin is\u2026 Stalin did not come down as a gift from heaven to the hapless Russian people. He is merely continuing the Bolshevik traditions, even if in a more relentless manner\u2026 I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin\u2019s rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama[91]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This was hidden by various Left Oppositionists \u2013 including Trotsky himself \u2013 who revised history to exclude their own role in creating the evils they now denounced. All that they could argue is that their industrialisation would have been less brutal, less oppressive and with fewer privileges for the bureaucracy\u2026 yet a nicer ruling class is still a ruling class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given this, it is easy to understand why we will ignore as fundamentally meaningless the pseudo-scientific comments on the relative weight of \u201csocial forces\u201d (such as Russian \u201ceconomic backwardness\u201d) in the rise of the bureaucracy so beloved by certain Trotskyists. This is because, ultimately, it is speculation on what could be the \u201cobjective\u201d conditions required for a benevolent (party) dictatorship and state-capitalist economy to exist \u2013 a pointless task, for obvious reasons. While popular resistance and protest can make a ruling class less oppressive and exploitative, it is something else completely to suggest that it can stop a ruling class being exploitative and oppressive as such<\/em>. However, as Trotsky refused to recognise the class nature of the bureaucracy \u2013 and the identical social relations that existing under Lenin and which Trotsky did not question \u2013 perhaps this is unsurprising after all. Indeed, perhaps all the talk of \u201csocial forces\u201d and such like is just an attempt to obscure the real issue \u2013 the actual, objective, class relationships under the Bolshevik regime (the state bureaucracy as a class in itself with its own interests).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, it should be basic materialism that it is a person\u2019s real social position which shape their consciousness. As such, it is illusory to expect the rulers of a party dictatorship, the managers of state-capitalist firms or bureaucrats in a highly centralised apparatus to act in any other fashion than according to their social position \u2013 yet Trotsky does so. Apparently being part of the vanguard party \u2013 or being part of an immense social institution policed by this small body \u2013 negates the objective pressures created by such hierarchies and the authoritarian (and so inevitably exploitative) social relations they produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, Trotsky failed to understand the \u201csocial forces\u201d at work in Russia for he failed to understand the class nature of the bureaucracy. He failed to understand that the bureaucracy overcame the party because the party itself was \u2013 inevitably \u2013 corrupted by the social position it held. Moreover, it does<\/em> matter if workplaces are run by their workers for if they do not then someone else does \u2013 replacing capitalists with state bureaucrats just changes the face of the boss as anarchists have been arguing since Proudhon. That the political power of the party could not withstand the economic power given to the bureaucracy by that party\u2019s policies should not come as a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the identical social relations between Leninism and Stalinism, all that is left to the supporters of Leninism seeking to differentiate it from Stalinism is to focus on the regime within the Communist Party itself. It is stressed that the Bolshevik party under Lenin was far more democratic than under Stalin and, moreover, the repression of the late 1920s onwards simply did not exist. True, although the suppression of opposition currents within Bolshevism did not start under Stalinism for it had existed to some degree from the start. Indeed, \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d faced the same bureaucratic manoeuvres used under Lenin and Trotsky to weaken oppositional groups within the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the Stalinists did not stop there. Its members experienced the same repression by the secret police faced by non-Bolshevik groups as well as the dissident Bolsheviks of the Workers Group and Workers Truth in 1923 (as sanctioned by Trotsky[92]<\/a>). Some were simply murdered, many more arrested and joined anarchist, Menshevik, Social Revolutionary and other dissidents in prison camps from which few returned. Outside the USSR, the same slanders made against earlier anarchist critics of Bolshevism were now made against Trotsky and his followers, often by the very same people.[93]<\/a> When they had power, such as in Spain, they murdered their critics whether anarchists or dissident Leninists like the POUM. Which shows a difference between Lenin\u2019s and Stalin\u2019s regime: under Lenin, the opposition outside<\/em> the party was brutally repressed, under Stalin these methods were applied to oppositions within<\/em> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, it must be stressed that anarchists like Emma Goldman had no difficulty in recognising that Stalin\u2019s Russia was \u201can absolute despotism politically and the crassest form of state capitalism economically\u201d and had been under Trotsky when a \u201cbureaucratic machine was created, appalling in its inefficiency, corruption, brutality.\u201d[94]<\/a> Indeed, her accounts of the regime are more useful to understanding its degeneration than Trotsky\u2019s post hoc<\/em> apologetics for they were informed by Bakunin\u2019s prescient polemics with Marx and the critiques of Marxism raised by later anarchists like Kropotkin and Malatesta. As Kropotkin said: \u201cWe have always pointed out the effects of Marxism in action. Why be surprised now?\u201d[95]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

End Notes<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> These articles were published in Pravda<\/em> in December 1923 and issued, with additional material appended, as a book in January 1924.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Space excludes discussing these oppositions beyond noting that they tended to focus their critique on the economic policies of the regime and supported the party\u2019s monopoly of power. This includes the best known of these earlier groups, the \u201cWorkers\u2019 Opposition\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Paul Le Blanc, Left Americana: The Radical Heart of US History<\/em> (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 218.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe<\/em> (London: Pluto Press, 1974), 14, 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941 <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 256.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Origins of the crisis in the USSR: essays on the political economy of a disintegrating system<\/em> (London: M.E. Sharpe, 1992), 78.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Socialism from Below<\/em> (Chicago: International Socialism Organization, 1984). This pamphlet is mostly a rehash of Hal Draper\u2019s The Two Souls of Socialism<\/em> (1966), including Draper\u2019s diatribe on anarchism based on distorted account of the ideas of Proudhon and Bakunin (the former based on J.S. Schapiro\u2019s knowingly misleading account of Proudhon\u2019s ideas \u2013 see \u201cPierre-Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Anarchism\u201d, Black Flag Anarchist Review<\/em> Volume 1 Number 2 [Summer 2021]).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> The Serge-Trotsky Papers<\/em> (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 201, 181.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> G.R.F. Bursa, \u201cPolitical Changes of Names of Soviet Towns\u201d, The Slavonic and East European Review<\/em>, Vol. 63, No. 2 (April 1985), 165, 169. Ivanshchenkovo served as a base for secret military production until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. This renaming after Trotsky was quite fitting, as he had sanctioned the use of chemical warfare against the Kronstadt rebels in 1921. (Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921<\/em> [New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 1970], 211-2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> How the Revolution Armed: the military writings and speeches of Leon Trotsky <\/em>(London: New Park Publications, 1979) 1: 47.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Leon Trotsky Speaks<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1972), 113.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Interestingly, Marx dismissed Bakunin\u2019s prophetic warnings that the \u201cdictatorship of the proletariat\u201d would become the \u201cdictatorship over<\/em> the proletariat\u201d by asking: \u201cCan it really be that in a trade union, for example, the entire union forms its executive committee\u201d. (The Marx-Engels Reader<\/em> [London: W.W. Norton & Co, 1978], 544)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> See section H.6 of An Anarchist FAQ<\/em> (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2008). This is summarised in \u201cThe State and Revolution: Theory and Practice\u201d, Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution<\/em> (Edinburgh\/Chico: AK Press, 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> The Serge-Trotsky Papers<\/em>, 188. In his memoirs, Serge dates the article as January 1919 and notes its title: \u201cThe Monopoly of Power\u201d. (Memoirs of a Revolutionary<\/em>, 69)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> See: \u201cVictor Serge: The Worst of the Anarchists\u201d, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review <\/em>61 (Winter 2014); \u201cThe Trotskyist School of Falsification\u201d, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em> 79 (Spring 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> Terrorism and Communism<\/em>: a reply to Karl Kautsky <\/em>(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), 107-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> Trotsky, 110.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Trotsky, 161-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Maurice Brinton, \u201cThe Bolsheviks and Workers\u2019 Control\u201d, For Workers\u2019 Power: The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton<\/em> (Chico: AK Press, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Trotsky, 169-170.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> Quoted by Brinton,<\/em> 451.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> Marx-Engels Reader<\/em>, 490.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23]<\/a> Trotsky, 172-3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[24]<\/a> Trotsky, 109-110.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[25]<\/a> Quoted by Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy<\/em> (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990), 209.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[26]<\/a> Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State: The First Phase, 1917-1922<\/em> (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 294.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[27]<\/a> Quoted by Alec Nove, \u201cTrotsky, collectivization and the five year plan\u201d, Socialism, Economics and Development<\/em> (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[28]<\/a> Not to mention that the vast majority of studies on workers\u2019 control have concluded it leads to increases in efficient and productivity (these experiments have usually been ended by management fearful of losing their power and privileges, not because of economic considerations).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[29]<\/a> Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt<\/em> (New York: Monad Press, 1986), 73.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[30]<\/a> The First Five Years of the Communist International<\/em> (London: New Park Publications, 1974) 2: 255<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[31]<\/a> Leon Trotsky Speaks<\/em>, 158, 160.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[32]<\/a> \u201cTo the Workers of the USSR\u201d, included in Grigorii Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party: A Popular Outline<\/em> (London: New Park Publications, 1973), 213, 214.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[33]<\/a> Quoted by Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism <\/em>(New York: Vintage Books, 1960) 1: 237.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[34]<\/a> The First 5 Years of the Communist International<\/em> 2: 237, 245<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[35]<\/a> For a good discussion of the similarities between the Stalinists and the Trotskyist Opposition and the latter\u2019s limitations, see John Eric Marot, \u201cTrotsky, the Left Opposition and the Rise of Stalinism: Theory and Practice\u201d, Historical Materialism<\/em> Vol. 14 No. 3 (2006).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[36]<\/a> \u201cThe New Course\u201d, The Challenge of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d (1923-25)<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1975), 78, 79, 80, 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[37]<\/a> Since Lenin Died<\/em> (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925), 35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[38]<\/a> \u201cThe New Course Resolution\u201d, 408.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[39]<\/a> \u201cSpeech at the Thirteenth Party Congress,\u201d Op. Cit., 153, 154.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[40]<\/a> Trotsky, 161.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[41]<\/a> Trotsky, 162.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[42]<\/a> \u201cParty bureaucratism and party democracy\u201d, The Challenge of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d (1926-27) <\/em>(New York: Pathfinder, 2014), 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[43]<\/a> Stalin, \u201cThe Results of the Thirteenth Congress of the RCP(B)\u201d, Works<\/em> 6: 270<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[44]<\/a> \u201cParty bureaucratism and party democracy\u201d, Op. Cit., 86-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[45]<\/a> Trotsky, 88.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[46]<\/a> \u201cSpeech to the Seventh Plenum of the ECCI\u201d, Op. Cit., 227<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[47]<\/a> \u201cThesis on Revolution and Counterrevolution\u201d, Op. Cit., 215.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[48]<\/a> Leon Trotsky on China<\/em> (New York: Monad Press, 2002), 251.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[49]<\/a> \u201cThe Platform of the Opposition\u201d, The Challenge of the \u201cLeft Opposition\u201d (1926-27)<\/em>, 440, 441, 453, 503, 506.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[50]<\/a> \u201cThe Platform of the Opposition\u201d, 461.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[51]<\/a> \u201cThe Platform of the Opposition\u201d, 453.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[52]<\/a> This was later admitted by Trotsky: \u201cA struggle of groups and factions [within the ruling party] to a certain degree replaced the struggle of parties.\u201d (The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going<\/em> [London: Faber and Faber, 1937], 251).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[53]<\/a> \u201cThe Platform of the Opposition\u201d, 398, 399, 401, 406, 405.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[54]<\/a> \u201cThe Platform of the Opposition\u201d, 423-4. Harman\u2019s party \u2013 the British SWP \u2013 argues that the USSR under Stalin was \u201cstate capitalist\u201d due to \u201cinternational arms competition.\u201d (Harman, 17) He does not explain why Trotsky not an advocate of state capitalism in the 1920s nor why Lenin\u2019s regime during the civil war was not. Suffice to say, explaining Russia\u2019s State capitalist nature without reference to its internal social relations is doomed to failure, although understandable as to do so would mean concluding that it had been so under Lenin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[55]<\/a> Writings 1930<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder Press, 2003) 148.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[56]<\/a> Writings 1930-31<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 2002), 241, 244, 247, 255-6, 70, 130.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[57]<\/a> Writings 1932<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1999) 217.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[58]<\/a> Writings 1933-34<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 2003), 124, 125.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[59]<\/a> The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, 238-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[60]<\/a> Memoirs of a Revolutionary<\/em>, 348.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[61]<\/a> Trotsky., 34, 96.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[62]<\/a> Trotsky, 273.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[63]<\/a> Trotsky, 104.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[64]<\/a> Trotsky. 239, 235,<\/strong> 111, 231-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[65]<\/a> Trotsky, 228, 229, 235-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[66]<\/a> Trotsky\u2019s attempt to refute the state-capitalist analysis of the Soviet Union in The Revolution Betrayed<\/em> rested on the notion that capitalism is marked by individual ownership and as the members of the bureaucracy did not own nor bequeath to its children the means of production, it could not be a ruling class. As this ignored the bureaucracy\u2019s socio-economic position and role, it completely missed the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[67]<\/a> Trotsky, 211.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[68]<\/a> Trotsky, 89-90.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[69]<\/a> Trotsky, 249.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[70]<\/a> Writings 1936-37<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1978), 490, 488, 495.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[71]<\/a> Trotsky, 513-4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[72]<\/a> Trotsky, 514.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[73]<\/a> \u201cThe Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism\u201d, 53-66, Their Morals and Ours<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), 59.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[74]<\/a> The Revolution Betrayed<\/em>, 62.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[75]<\/a> \u201cThe Kronstadt Commune\u201d, Bloodstained<\/em>, 203.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[76]<\/a> Rudolf L. Tokes, Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic<\/em>: The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918-1919<\/em> (London: Pall Mall Press, 1967), 38, 151-2<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[77]<\/a> Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite <\/em>1 :151-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[78]<\/a> Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite: Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920<\/em> (New York: Pathfinder, 1991) 1: 174.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[79]<\/a> Errico Malatesta, \u201cAt Last! What is the \u2018dictatorship of the proletariat\u2019?\u201d<\/em>, Anarchistes, Socialistes et Communistes<\/em> (Annecy: Group 1er Mai, 1982), 208-10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[80]<\/a> Karl Radek, \u201cCronstadt\u201d, Bulletin communiste <\/em>(12 May 1921), 324-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[81]<\/a> Max Shachtman, \u201cDictatorship of Party or Proletariat? Remarks on a Conception of the AWP\u2026 and Others\u201d, New International<\/em>, July 1934.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[82]<\/a> Left Americana<\/em>, 218.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[83]<\/a> Memoirs of a Revolutionary<\/em>, 225.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[84]<\/a> Harman, 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[85]<\/a> Likewise with notions that there was state-capitalist \u201ccounter-revolution\u201d only when Stalin came to power in 1928, an event which was \u201cnot violent in the classic sense\u201d due to the working class having \u201cfew forces with which to resist the growing power of the bureaucracy.\u201d (Harman, 14) In reality, the Bolsheviks had been repressing working class resistance (strikes, protests) from 1918 onwards which reached a climax with the martial law imposed across Russia in early 1921 \u2013 a counter-revolution in the \u201cclassic sense\u201d of troops in the streets which secured the bureaucracy in its position against the only force which could displace it, the working class. The regime continued to repress workers\u2019 strikes and protests after 1921 and so the \u201cfew forces\u201d Harman bemoans was not a natural occurrence but rather the product of ten years of Bolshevik rule. That Stalinist repression was undoubtedly worse does not mean the class structure of the regime somehow changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[86]<\/a> Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma<\/em> (London: Ink Links Ltd, 1979), 213.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[87]<\/a> Serge, 252, 253.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[88]<\/a> Ciliga, 280, 218, 263.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[89]<\/a> \u201cThe Role of Bolshevik Ideology in the Birth of the Bureaucracy\u201d, Blood-Stained,<\/em> 289.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[90]<\/a> Camillo Berneri, \u201cThe State and Classes\u201d, The State \u2013 Or Revolution: Selected Works of Camillo Berneri<\/em> (London: Freedom Press, 2023), 87.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[91]<\/a> \u201cTrotsky Protests Too Much\u201d, Writings of Emma Goldman: Essays on Anarchism, Feminism, Socialism, and Communism<\/em> (St. Petersburg, Florida: Red and Black Publishers, 2013), 251-2<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[92]<\/a> \u201cTrotsky, in the very letters to the politburo in which he fired his first broadsides against the \u2018unhealthy regime\u2019 and lack of internal party democracy, supported repressive action against the far left.\u201d Indeed, he \u201cwelcomed an instruction by Dzerzhinskii to party members immediately to report \u2018any groupings within the party\u2019, i.e. the Workers Group and Workers Truth, not only to the CC [Central Committee] but also to the GPU [the secret police], and emphasized that making such reports was \u2018the elementary duty of every party member\u2019.\u201d (Simon Pirani, The Russian revolution in retreat, 1920-24: Soviet workers and the new Communist elite<\/em> [New York: Routledge, 2008], 215)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[93]<\/a> Emma Goldman recounts how she was accused of being well-paid by the capitalist press for her warnings and she had \u201creceiving support from the American Secret Service Department\u201d while in Russia (Living My Life<\/em> [New York: Dover Books, 1970] 2: 938, 954). The source of the latter claim, William Z Foster (a former anarchist-syndicalist) later denounced Trotsky, \u201ca petty bourgeois individualist intellectual\u201d, for making a \u201cbargain with the fascists\u201d, being \u201cpaid highly for his writings by the bourgeois press\u201d and becoming \u201cone of [the] hired capitalist slanderers of the Soviet Union.\u201d Foster compared him to Goldman, who he said was \u201creaping a golden harvest from Hearst for her counter-revolutionary attacks\u201d upon the Soviet Government and who, \u201clike Trotsky, covered [her] political surrender with a cloud of revolutionary phrases.\u201d (Questions and Answers on the Piatakov-Radek Trial<\/em> [New York City: Workers Library Publishers, 1937], 10, 11, 30, 16-7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[94]<\/a> \u201cThere Is No Communism in Russia\u201d, To Remain Silent is Impossible: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in Russia<\/em> (Atlanta: On Our Own Authority!, 2013), 226, 220.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[95]<\/a> Quoted by Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia<\/em> (London: Active Distribution, 2017), 58.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article exploring Trotsky\u2019s (limited) opposition to Stalinism and showing that it reflected Bolshevik orthodoxy in terms of advocating the dictatorship of the party and one-man management. Needless to say, almost all Trotskyist accounts fail to mention this. It first appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 2023)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,27,15,37,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxism","category-russia-countries","category-russia","category-trotsky","category-trotskyism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}