The World Prospect of Socialism: Resolution adopted by the Socialist Labour League, London 1961

[p003] PROSPECT .OF SOCIALISM Resolution adopted by the Socialist Labour League London 1964

[p004] The 22nd Congress of the CPSU—The Final Crisis of Stalinism: A AT the 22nd Congress of the Com- munist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev and the leaders of the bureaucracy were forced to return yet again to the theme of ‘the cult of the individual’ and its conse- quences. The resolutions and debates carried into the open the exposures begun in_ secret by Khrushchev in 1956. The Stalinist leaders all over the world have tried since 1956 to cheat history by ignoring the ‘secret speech’ and, more important, its political impli- cations. Their concern was simply to suppress the political questions arising from 1956, and to continue with Stalinist policies. Khrush- chev’s insistence that the truth about the ‘cult’ must be unearthed will reopen with even greater in- tensity the crisis which beset the ranks of the official world com- munist movement in 1956-57. All those who argued that ‘such things should not be gone into’ or that the ‘difficult period’ has passed will be rejected by millions of rank-and-file communists. It is clear from the Congress reports that there was enormous pressure from below to square accounts with the Stalinist past: the Leningrad party secretary, Spiridonov, reported resolutions for disciplinary action against the diehard Stalinists and for the re- moval of Stalin’s corpse from the Lenin mausoleum; a delegate from the textile industry gave a horrify- ing account of the visit of Kaganovitch to her district in the period of the purge, describing the disappearance of innumerable leading cadres of the party and saying that she and her comrades still referred to this period as ‘the black whirlwind’. Another delegate referred to Malenkov’s work with Yezhov in the repres- sions of 1935-37. There is not the slightest doubt that Communist Party members. in’ the USSR and all-over the world will ask, and demand an answer: _ *What was Khrushchev’s foleuin ~~ those years?? and ‘Was not Khrushchev’s suppression of the Hungarian revolution in the same tradition?’ ‘Can the settlement with the past possibly be left to Khrushchev and his collaborators?’ to fully In point of fact. all the political questions raised by the Left Opposition and Trotsky, and later by the Fourth International, must now be discussed in every Com- munist Party. It is impossible to complete the process which Khrushchev has been forced to begin in any other way. What right has the present Kremlin clique to claim leadership of the international working class? Are they a leadership selected and steeled in struggle and sacrifice, their political line and their re- volutionary determination tried and tested by the living movement over a generation? On the con- trary, all they can say to justify themselves in the political struggles of the last 30 years is, ‘We survived.’ The real opposition to Stalin’s rule in the USSR was liquidated by a system of torture and physical extermination, barely covered by the perfected process of judicial murder. The present leaders arrived at their positions through silence and active collaboration in these repressions. A new leader- ship will be built only on correct political strategy, and first and foremost by answering the politi- cal questions raised by the ‘revela- tions’ of the 22nd Congress. Khrushchev says of the Kirov assassination in 1934 that ‘The deeper we study the materials connected with Kirov’s death the more questions arise.” He goes on, along the lines of his 20th Congress speech, to promise a full investigation. It is not clear why this investigation has not yet been completed, since the ‘anti-party group’ which obstructed it was defeated four years ago. ‘Even on the material so far available, Khrushchev shows that this assassination, which was used to carry through the great purge “trials, at which Trotsky was the main defendant, was carried out with the active collaboration of the Stalinist secret police. The question which immediately arises for every member of the Com- munist Parties is: “Why was such a murderous act of provocation necessary?’ It is now necessary expose the political reasons for Stalin’s need of such an act, the necessary preliminary to the liquidation of his oppo- nents, and above all of the followers of Trotsky. The Congress delegates gave one example after another of the terrible depths of the purges, the destruction of a revolutionary generation. Khrushchev cannot go into the political reasons for this, nor can he complete the investiga- tion into the Kirov affair, for this would immediately place him where he historically belongs, in the bureaucratic counter-revolu- tionary caste which could only retain its rule by the destruction of the opposition in the ’30s. The Trotskyist attitude to the history of the revolution and of the Communist International has been fully vindicated by the pre- sent crisis of the bureaucracy itself. Despite the Stalinist bureaucracy’s insistence cn_ the contemporary constructional tasks in the Soviet Union, the great con- cern of the Congress was to press for the truth about the history of the Bolshevik movement. In opening the Kirov question, Khrushchev has opened the question of Trotskyism, no matter how much he wishes to arrest the process. All the arguments about the ‘historical justification’ for Stalin’s crimes have collapsed. Khrushchev’s plea for the estab- lishment of the historical facts will not satisfy the workers and the youtk of the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. Khrushchev says this truth is necessary in order that the same things shall not happen again. But after the 20th Congress came Hungary. The only way to pre- pare the future is to understand the political reasons for the de- generation of the workers’ state and the Party in Russia. In the course of this analysis, the Khrushchev strategy of ‘peaceful competition’ will be openly re- vealed as the continuation of the bureaucratic ideology of ‘Socialism in One Country’. Koslov’s reply to discussion showed that amendments to the Party rules had demanded a return to the democratic party regime of

[p005] Statement by the In the years before 1921. The ban on factions imposed in that year was a specific response to the conditions of breakdown caused by the Civil War, and was never intended as a permanent feature of Party life. The ‘anti-party group’ of Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovitch and Voroshilov has been con- demned by a Congress without any girculation of its policy docu- ments, and after the matter had already been settled by the bureaucratic apparatus. The new generation of Communists will not tolerate such methods once they have begun to understand the real traditions of Bolshevism. There must be built in Russia a Bolshevik Party which takes its place in the world Trotskyist movement, leading the Soviet working class to the return of Soviet democracy and a proper place beside the international working class in the struggle ‘against imperialism. Only the thorough defeat of Khrushchev and his gang can prepare the way. There must be a_ political reckoning with the past. Khrush- chev and the bureaucracy cannot do this, and it will only be done in struggle against the bureau- cracy, by constant opposition to its opportunist role. Khrush- chev’s aim is to persuade the Russian people that the benefits of industrialization and _ the ‘liberalization’ of the police regime offer them a ‘Communist’ future, isolated from the inter- national working class. The Fourth International must campaign for the working class of the Soviet Union to take up the banner of proletarian interna- tionalism against Khrushchev’s faction. Like the ‘anti-party group’ this faction is unable to solve in practice the problems raised by the Stalinist past. In establishing the truth about the history of Stalinism, the facts must also be brought to light about the fate of international Com- munists, the execution in 1937 by the GPU of Remmele, leading German Communist, who had escaped from Nazi Germany to Russia in 1933 and the handing over to Hitler of Margaret Buber- Neumann in 1940, the execu- tion of Bela Kun, the Hungarian leader, and of the entire leader- ship of the Polish Party in 1938 Two years ago, Tito demanded rehabilitation of 200 Yugoslav Communists who were executed in the 1930s. This demand has never been complied with.. But this will raise the whole question of the betrayal of the revolution in Europe and China by the Stalin- controlled Comintern, the bloody role of Stalinism in Spain, and the post-war capitulation to “Western democracy’. Once again it will be clear that only a thorough analysis of the past will prepare the re- generation of the Communist movement throughout the world. The International Committee fully supports the demands of the widow of the late Leon Trotsky, Natalia Sedova Trotsky, that a public investigation of the trials and the murder of her husband should take place immediately. We demand that her Soviet citizenship rights be restored immediately. Khrushchev wants to dispose of the Stalin heritage by Stalinist methods. He says the ‘anti-party’ group was dealt with by ‘ideolo- gical’ methods. In fact there was no discussion in the Party. When opposition came from the Left, as in Hungary, the methods used were not ‘ideological’. Khrushchev’s plea to the dele- gates to desist from creating a new ‘cult’? of the individual’ at the end of the Congress is in direct conflict with the actual state of affairs in the leadership, when in fact Khrushchev is immune to criticism, and where he is the only one to hand out criticism to others. The crisis will only be solved by the conscious political action of forces under the leadership of the ideas of Trotsky and the Fourth International, Khrushchev’s ‘ex- posures’ are the response to a great pressure from below for the restoration of Soviet democracy to correspond to the needs of the Soviet working class both econo- mically and politically, in the return to true internationalism. The Leningrad Party secretary ternational Committee(4th International) said at the Congress that the historical questions are now being raised ‘with greater insistence’— this process must go the whole way, and will meet inevitably with resistance from Khrushchev and the other bureaucrats. For de cades the Communist ranks have been educated only in opportunist methods, and the great need is for leadership. The International Committee of the Fourth International opposes all theories that the process of reform of the international move- ment is inevitable or automatic. It requires the building in every country, and certainly in the USSR of sections of the Fourth International. This is the way to prepare for the political overthrow of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. The bureaucracy’s despe- rate reaction to the great opposi- tion movement from below gives us every confidence in the forces for this overthrow. In every country we shall work with all members of the Com- munist Parties who strive for a real understanding of the history of the Communist movement and its revival. Everywhere we shall demand .a full investigation into the trial and assassination of Trotsky and all other opposition- ists. Trotsky’s own verdict on the Kirov assassination, written in 1935, remains true today: ‘No way out can be found except through the regeneration of the Bolshevik party. This problem can only be solved on an international scale. In order for the Russian workers to reject the opium of ‘socialism in one country’ and to turn en masse toward the world socialist re- volution, the world proletarian vanguard must consolidate itself around the banner of the Lenin- ist Party. The struggle against reformism, more _ intransigent than ever, must be supplemented by the struggle against the para- — lysing and demoralising influ- ence of the Stalinist bureaucracy upon the international working- class movement. The defence of the Soviet Union is inconceiv- able without the struggle for the FOURTH INTERNATIONAL.’ November 5, 1961

[p006] 84 THE WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM Resolution on the International Situation, adopted by the British Socialist Labour League at its 1961 Annual Conference, and subsequently amended. I The Necessity for the Socialist Revolution 1. Capitalism long ago reached the end of its progressive contribution to the history of mankind. Already at the beginning of the 20th century it had been driven into its final stage of Imperialism—an epoch of wars and revolutions. Having divided up the globe between themselves the rival capitalist states came into violent collision with each other in wars of terrible destructiveress. At the same time, the ruling classes of these states faced a persistent challenge to their domination both from the working class at home and from the movement for national independence in their colonies. As a result of these conditions bourgeois society was unable to assure the conditions for stable and peaceful development mapped out for it by its liberal ideologists in the preceding century. On the contrary, it manifested a permanent tendency towards decadence and violence, even in relatively peaceful periods. ‘‘sspite cumulative scientific and technological advance ve- presenting great conquests for the human spirit, imperialism proved unable to use these in a sustained way for constructive purposes. Capitalist production relations continually imposed barriers to production, distorting and misapplying the achievements of human knowledge. Under conditions of crises and war, scepticism and uncertainty for the morrow replaced the confident belief in progress character- istic of the bourgeoisie in its prime. 2. When geared to the needs of capitalist profit- making, scientific advance became the means for ever-greater accumulation of capital and concen- ' tration of economic power, as well as for the building up of massive destructive potential to defend or extend them. The manifestation of the new epoch in the history of capitalism, even in the most ‘democratic’ countries, was the growing power of finance-capital and monopoly, the synchronization of social and economic life through the medium of the state machine, as an instrument of the ruling class, and the increasing importance to industry of military contracts. While at particular times or in particular countries such developments may have — served to overcome some of the inherent problems of capitalism temporarily, thus providing a basis for opportunist trends in the Labour movement, the ultimate effect is to deepen social and economic contradictions and heighten the danger to mankind from the continued existence of capitalism. 3. The October Revolution in Russia, and the later defeats of imperialism in Eastern Europe and: China, have strictly limited the possibility of further capitalist expansion. Capital export continues and becomes no less urgent than in the past because capitalism experiences a chronic need for ever-new outlets for the realisation of surplus value. Threatened by the upsurge of the national liberation movement in the colonies, it becomes of the greatest _ importance for the ruling classes of the capitalist countries to arrive at an understanding with the petty-bourgeois leaderships of these movements so that capital export can continue, or alternatively to retain colonies by force where such a compromise does not seem to be possible. In appearance the methods of capitalism today, both through the

[p007] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 85 policy of ‘welfare statism’ in the advanced countries and in the policy of ‘colonial independence’, are more peaceable than in the past. In fact such - policies of so-called ‘neo-capitalism’ have precisely the same end and arise from the same needs as the pre-war resort to fascism and strong-arm methods. The option of creating fascist movements, taking a desperate gamble on the plebeian elements in such movements, is a dangerous one which the bourgeoisie prefers to avoid. It chooses, wherever possible, to operate through parliament, the bureaucracy, the political parties, and the organized Labour move- ment. Likewise, in the colonies, the imperialists fight desperately enough to conserve positions which cannot be held by other means than force, but the _ world balance of forces makes retention of political control over colonies by repression a course which os _ its intelligent representatives seek to avoid wherever possible. These changes in methods do not indicate any change in capitalism itself. Nor can it be assumed that the present course is a permanent one _ or that the bourgeoisie in the various countries will not, if need arises, resort once again to fascism or - . use force internationally to preserve, or regain, -. threatened positions. 4. Imperialism’s unremitting threat to humanity in the mid-20th century is made all the more dramatic because it is now possible for a single war to destroy the human race. _ It is no longer a question only of the violence and irrationalism of fascist mass movements brought into action by the monopolists, and the destruction of a single generation of class-conscious workers, nor even of a total war which exhausts but does not ruin the participants. The immediate prospect is that the contradictions of capitalism may issue into a world conflict of mutual total destruction which may destroy human life completely or throw it back thousands of years. There is only one difference - from the past wars of imperialism: now the question is raised that the whole capitalist world system may _be drawn into such a war of complete destruction rather than give up exploiting the working class and colonial peoples. 5. The very conditions which have enabled capital- -- ism to survive into the second half of the 20th - century produce a continual economic, political and moral crisis at every level and in all spheres of +. society which the threat of nuclear destruction serves <'s only to enhance. .- In the economic sphere, for example, there are <.. many signs that capitalism is once again confronting - the inescapable problem of finding outlets for . ‘surplus’ capital. Even the massive absorption of resources in building up the material pre-requisites “for nuclear war cannot provide a permanent solution to this problem. Resumption and continued increase of capital export by the main capitalist countries represents the search for a way of escape, but one which is progressively narrowed and thus contributes to the explosiveness of the situation as a whole. The inability of capitalism to make a planned and rational use of investment resources stands out clearly. If the conditions of the market do not offer a favourable profit rate such resources will be lost to the productive capacity of the economy. Hence the ability of the industrial machine to produce such resources adjusts itself, through all kinds of ups and downs, to the rate of profit. But capitalism is now no longer the only world system; it has to face the competition of countries which, while still on the average poorer, have the inestimable advantage of being able to plan for balanced growth and thus full utilization of the available resources. The differences in production relations explain the broad differences in rates of growth and hence the increasingly less favourable position of capitalism in the world confrontation between the two incom- patible systems. While it is true that the rate of growth and the general economic efficiency of the countries in the Soviet-China bloc are adversely affected by the predations and bunglings of the bureaucratic controllers and by their inability to make full use of the international division of labour, nonetheless, the more rapid rate of growth of these countries testifies to the advantages flowing from their nationalized and planned economic base. 6. Even the richest capitalist country, the USA, is unable to break out of an almost permanent economic stagnation, despite a high level of arms expenditure. Recessions now follow each other in rapid succession and after each recovery the permanent level of unemployment and unused capacity tends to rise. While some of the European countries, and Japan, have, owing to a combination of favourable factors, been able to achieve higher rates of growth and avoid serious recessions, it is clear that their prosperity hangs by a thread. It depends upon the continued buoyancy of the capitalist world market as a whole which is now expanding at a less rapid rate. Intensified com- petition in this market has been visible for some time. The market cannot expand indefinitely. Shocks or crises in any one part are liable to have far-reaching repercussions. The prospect for the 60s is not of steadily continued expansion, but rather increasing difficulty: a struggle for markets between the main capitalist countries punctuated by recessions and crises. In such conditions those sections of the capitalist world economy which are least well prepared are certain to experience heavy pressures. Events in Belgium in December 1960 and January 1961 were a foretaste of the kind of

[p008] * 86 problems likely to be experienced and the methods which the ruling class will employ to combat them. In different ways, varying with the internal situation, the capitalist class, and its governments, will be obliged to pass on their problems to the working class. Where possible this will be done without open conflict, by domesticating the working-class organi- zations. In other cases they may have to be broken, or their fighting capacity destroyed. The bourgeoisie adapts its methods skilfully to such situations. It may set out to wear down organizations, win over their leaders or destroy them by open war. The old- line leaderships lend themselves to such tactics. In France, for example, without destroying the workers’ organizations, without an open fight, the de Gaulle regime was able to reduce real wages for large sections of the working class by 15 per cent. Such defeats for the workers will be sought everywhere as economic problems become more acute. 7. In the backward countries, dominated for decades and even centuries by the imperialists, there are again specific contradictions. Imperialism is a decadent social system, it oozes corruption, in the colonies more than elsewhere. The national bourgeoisies which have come to the fore as the result of ‘de-colonization’ are steeped in a corrupt milieu of self-seeking and petty intrigue. They do not intend to make a real fight against imperialism. They are content, for the most part, to enjoy the fruits of office in politically independent, and economically unviable, states which provide today the necessary framework for continued exploitation by the imperialist monopolies. At the most these national leaders seek for themselves a bigger share of the spoils wrung by increasingly methodical exploitation from the subject peasants and workers or seek to turn part of the gains of the imperialists into ‘development’ programmes which lay the foundations for more complete, national capitalist development. It is true that the division of the world between two blocs offers them room for manoeuvre, of which the more skilful are able to take some advantage, and for obtaining aid from both sides. Essentially, however, and notwithstanding _ their protestations to the contrary, the new ruling classes in the backward countries have not broken their ties with imperialism. On the other hand, they have to face, at home, growing pressure from the working class which capitalist development increases in size and self-consciousness. Signs of new struggles are visible in which the very roots of imperialism in these countries will, for the first time, be in danger. This situation is made all the more explosive - precisely by the fact that the national bourgeoisie is unable to fulfil the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. It cannot carry through land reform, break with imperialist economic LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 domination or ensure an autonomous capitalist development. Meanwhile living conditions tend to deteriorate. Vast masses are thrown into the ranks of the proletariat; old social structures are disintegrating; poverty and desperation grow. This situation, a manifestation of the unevenness of development inseparable from the activity of imperialism on a world scale, accelerates the class struggle which prepares its final overthrow. 8. It is upon this revolutionary crisis, with its dialectical relationship between the struggle of the workers in the advanced countries and of those oppressed by imperialism in the colonies and former colonies, that Marxists base their revolutionary strategy. Reformists and opportunists of all varieties echo the spokesmen of the bourgeoisie in supposing, and hoping, that the separate manifestations of the fundamental world crisis can be taken one by one and separately remedied. Marxists claim that this is impossible. All such problems are related because of the inextricable connections between them established by imperialism itself. They do not assume, however, that imperialism will somehow collapse because the contradictions which it secretes will eventually bring the system to a halt. Such an idea of automatic downfall is no part of Marxism. The history of the last 40 years has driven home the lesson so often repeated by Lenin and Trotsky, that there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie. It survived the challenge of revolution and economic depression between the wars by resort to fascism, It survived the Second World War with the com- plicity of the Stalinist and Social Democratic leaderships—which ensured that the working class would not make a bid for power—and used the breathing space to elaborate new methods of rule and strengthen the economy. Even the most desperate situations can be overcome if only the active intervention of the workers as a class for themselves, with a party and leadership with a perspective of overthrowing capitalism, is not pre- pared in time. The continued existence of capitalism is not a reflection of its inherent strength or a justification for it; it is primarily a consequence of a series of defeats for the working class, the historical responsibility for which rests upon the shoulders of international Stalinism and Social Democracy. a For Trotsky’s contribution to the leadership of the early Third International, read his speeches and reports in The First Five Years of the Communist International esice: 126 New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High St London, S.W.4_ Telephone: MAC 7029

[p009] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 87 If The Crisis of Leadership 1. The only future for mankind is the victory of the working class in the socialist revolution. A proletarian leadership must be built which can bring to the working class of the world a consciousness of its great historical role. Such a consciousness cannot arise spontaneously; it comes in the course of struggles in which the leadership is theoretically formed as it emerges, is tested and establishes its authority. The survival of capitalism into its present overripe stage is essentially a consequence of the crisis in leadership which besets_ the working-class movement. The betrayals of the traditional leaderships have prepared the necessary groundwork for the bourgeoisie to achieve periods of temporary stability and relative expansion. The resolution of the crisis of leadership is the first responsibility of Marxists. 2. Political leaders of the traditional Social Demo- cratic and Stalinist schools continue to dominate the working-class movement. They have built up powerful bureaucratic apparatuses to discipline and control the class. They have turned socialist phrases and the language of Marxism into a protective covering of deception, in order to conceal their renunciation of the goal of working-class power. They stand as the principal barriers on the road to working-class political independence, without which the bourgeoisie cannot be defeated. In order to build the revolutionary parties to achieve the proletarian dictatorship, Marxists must make a continuous and decisive attack on every opportunist trend, particularly on Social Democracy and Stalinism. 3. Social Democracy acts on the assumption that capitalism is being transformed into a more humane system, concerned with welfare as much as with profit. The actions of the Social Democrats are strictly contained by loyalty to the bourgeois state and institutions, within which they accept office, even accepting governmental responsibility for long periods, particularly during crises and wars. They are hostile to any movement whose aim is the overthrow of the bourgeois state. The social basis of Social Democracy is the privileged minority of the working class in the advanced countries. With this base, and infiltrated by elements from the petty bourgeoisie, the Social Democratic leaderships have demonstrated. more clearly since 1945 than ever before in history, their role as capitalist agents in the Labour movement. In Western Europe they salvaged capitalism in the immediate post-war years. They have subsequently campaigned for the removal of all specific socialist demands from the party programme. In Germany the Social Democracy has come forward openly as a pro-capitalist party of a radical reform type. Domestic policy has been a complement to the acceptance by Social Democracy of full support for the world strategy of American imperialism including military alliances and the H-bomb. 4. The material basis for the hold of Social Democracy in the advanced countries (it has never assumed much importance in the less developed countries) has been steadily undermined by the world developments of recent years. Social Demo- cracy’s capitulation before fascism and open commit- ment to the imperialist front against the Soviet Union and its allies have helped to discredit it in the working class. But more fundamental has been the inevitable weakening of the older imperialist powers in relation to the world market. The older methods of exploitation of colonial empires, of dependence on these as markets as well as for expanded investment, have given rise to greater and greater contradictions. While still retaining in certain countries the allegiance of the majority of the working class, especially in Britain and Germany, the Social Democratic parties have increasingly tended to be bureaucratic shells, with Right-wing leaderships challenged by centrist and Left trends and torn by inner crisis. In France the exponents of ‘classic’ Social. Democracy have mostly left the Socialist Party. In Italy the centrists, under Nenni,

[p010] 38 have the mass following. In Britain, the growth of the Left-wing Labour youth movement, and the beginning of big economic struggles, are making more and more difficult the domination of the opportunists. 5. The role of Stalinism in the post-war years has been similar in its effects to that of Social Demo- cracy. In a number of countries the Communist Party had become, by the 30s or "40s, the mass party of the working class, and had attracted militants moving away from Social Democracy in other countries like Britain and Holland. The Stalinist conception, that the power of the Soviet bureaucracy could best be preserved by a deal with its wartime capitalist allies, shaped the policies of these parties after the war, despite some spasmodic leaps into reckless ultra-Leftism. From 1944 onwards in a number of countries, but especially in France and Italy, the Communist leadership was entirely engaged in preventing the working class from taking advantage of the weakness of the bourgeoisie and the virtual collapse of its state power. The upsurge of working-class confidence, backed by the existence of armed partisan forma- tions, broke against the formal opposition of the Communist Party leadership to any action against ‘the bourgeois state or capitalist institutions. The disarming of the partisans, the entrance of the Communist Parties into bourgeois coalitions, and the call for maximum effort for production, took the edge off the class attack and prepared the way for a long series of betrayals whose fruits were to be seen in spreading cynicism and a weakening of the Communist Parties themselves. 6. In China and Yugoslavia the bulwarks erected against the spread of revolution by international Stalinism were broken down by the elemental force of the popular revolutionary movement, the absence of any viable bourgeois alternative and the corrup- tion and breakdown of the old regimes. Here, then, a real break in the international front of imperialism took place. In Eastern Europe generally the Soviet bureaucracy showed itself ready to collaborate with the old ruling classes and parties in 1944-45, even with elements heavily compromised with the Nazi occupiers. But these were too discredited, too obviously tools of Western imperialism, for such an alliance to endure. As a result, capitalist property relations were more or less quickly abolished by bureaucratic methods as part of the process of building a defensive front against imperialism, whose anti-Soviet aims became clearer in the course of 1946-47. Certain political trends, in particular the revisionist Pabloite group, implicitly or explicitly argue that these events contradict Trotsky’s definition of the LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 nature and role of world Stalinism. They further infer that the task of building an independent Marxist leadership in the advanced countries must be postponed indefinitely until the epicentre of the revolution has moved into the advanced countries. The experiences of China, Indo-China and Yugo- slavia do not conflict with Trotsky’s analysis of world Stalinism as the ideology and programme of the Soviet bureaucracy. Because of their comparative freedom from strict organizational control of the Communist International, particularly during the second world war, the Communist Parties of these countries were able to pursue a relatively indepen- dent policy which combined the national-liberation struggle with the social revolution. At every stage in the struggle for state power, however, these leaderships have come into conflict with the Soviet bureaucracy who wish, in the interests of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with world capitalism, to restrain and suppress these movements, or subordinate them to the bureaucracy’s own ends. The Peking and Belgrade bureaucracies on the other hand, because of their empirical outlook, Stalinist training and reformist-utopian ideas about building ‘socialism in a single country’, are com- pletely incapable of elaborating a programme or organization for assisting the European workers in their struggle for state power. They remain centrist currents guided by their own immediate national interests and unable to comprehend the scope and direction of world events. The recent Belgrade conference is an eloquent demonstration of the bankruptcy of these leaders. The industrialization of these countries and the collectivization of agriculture cannot be carried through successfully without the assistance of the West European or American working class. Hence the conquest of power in the West remains an indispensable precondition for the rational and harmonious integration and advancement of these economies. 7. The death of Stalin in 1953, the reforms in the USSR, and the aftermath of the 1956 20th Congress, have not altered the attitude of the Soviet bureau- cracy to the world revolution. In fact there is an essential thread of continuity between the policy of Yalta-Potsdam* and that of Khrushchev’s ‘peaceful co-existence’. The aim is still to contain and channel every upsurge of the masses to enable a deal to be made with the imperialists. Where revolts are ‘supported’ it is only in order to obtain a bargaining advantage in negotiations. In the earlier period the policy of arrangement * Wartime agreements between the USSR and the Western Powers concerning the post-1945 settlements in Europe, and involving abandonment of revolutionary struggle in Western Europe.

[p011] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 89 with capitalism arose out of the internal weaknesses of the USSR and the need to buy time. Today it is the very strength of the mighty power which they control which frightens the bureaucracy. The potentiality of Russia’s nationalized and planned economy is a standing challenge to world capitalism and thus impels it to an attitude of suspicion and opposition backed by military alliances and the H-bomb. In both cases what is sought is a quiet life—a stabilization of the internal position by getting a guarantee that there will be no disturbance of world equilibrium which could open up a gulf under their own feet; hence no extension of the revolution can be contemplated. 8. Ideological justification of this position has to be offered both for internal consumption and to stem criticism in the world Communist Parties. Its latest form is the attack on ‘dogmatism’; this campaign is essentially a revision of the Leninist view of imperialism as an epoch of wars and revolutions which can only be ended by the decisive intervention of the proletariat organized in revolutionary parties for the capture of state power and the building of socialism on a world scale. In place of this per- spective is held out the idea that this is a period of the ‘consolidation’ of socialism in the USSR in which the superiority of planned economy will prove itself and a peaceful transition to socialism will occur as this becomes apparent. In the meantime, indepen- dent working-class action is rejected or subordinated to the task of building a broad alliance, including ‘peace-loving’ capitalists, not to build socialism, but to restore, in the capitalist countries, a peaceful variety of capitalism of a pre-imperialist variety! The real aim, therefore, is a series of new coalition governments in the style of 1944-1947, based on several classes, able to negotiate effective peace and disarmament measures with the USSR. Where necessary everything is geared to such aims. Strike movements are held in check, independent move- ments against imperialist military alliances, such as that in Japan, are condemned as adventurist, the struggle against colonialism is pushed aside and old chauvinistic slogans are pushed to the forefront. All this marks a sharp reversal of everything which the Communist Parties were established to fight for. No wonder that the early history and declarations of the Communist International are clothed in secrecy and effectively concealed from the member- ship. 9. Social Democracy and Stalinism at the same time batten on each other. Much continued working-class support for Social Democracy stems from the ability to play the anti-communist line, for which the record of Stalinism offers the necessary confirmation. On the other hand, the Communist Parties not only gain from the attractive power of the October Revolution, they also profit from the obvious corruption of the Social Democratic leadership. The problem is not, of course, as some simple souls believe, that the working-class movement is divided and that everything can be put right by a ‘ Popular Front’, to be effected by some kind of reconciliation of the leaderships and the clearing up of misunder- standings. Both have to be swept away and replaced. But both are equally adamant in their resistance to any movement which threatens to be an alternative pole of attraction; they are even capable, in such situations, of forming an unholy alliance. 10. In recent years dissatisfaction with both the Social Democratic and the Stalinist leaderships has been growing. This manifests itself in negative ways, such as cynicism, apathy and desertion from their organizations. In all countries, in the struggle against imperialist war and against the employers on the economic front, the working class and the youth have continuously found ‘unofficial’ ways of fighting and organizing which have shown time and again the objective basis for a new and revolutionary leadership. This must be forged in the experience of these struggles and in determined conflict with the traditional leaderships. 11. The need to build independent Marxist parties in order to provide alternative leadership is the most urgent task of today. The reorganization of the Fourth International which will reunify all those Marxist groups and parties adhering to basic principles of orthodox Trotskyist must be undertaken immediately. In this reorganization it will be necessary to struggle against all revisions of Marxism, particularly those in the direction of ‘objectivism’, which lay an undue stress on the objective inevitability of socialism which detracts from the decisive importance of conscious creation of a revolutionary leadership. A brilliant survey of British politics just before the General Strike of 1926 Where is Britain Going? Price: 7/6 from New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone: MAC 7029

[p012] 90 LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 III Imperialism and World Revolution — the Present Stage i) Introduction 1. The false leaders of the working class have a role and an ideology which corresponds to the objective needs of imperialism in its present stage of development. The opportunists of all varieties now rest not only upon the labour aristocracy of a few advanced countries but upon new layers of the world’s population under modern state monopoly capitalism with its particular relation to the non- capitalist world. The advanced countries have gone through a gigantic concentration of industrial and finance capital, militarization and bureaucratization of the economy and of the state, growing reliance on State intervention in the economy, and the con- sequent creation of a new middle caste of executives, administrators and bureaucrats of the big banks and monopolies, the state, the military and security apparatus, ‘social services’ and the means of manipulation of ‘public opinion’. The international needs of capital are faithfully administered by this middle caste. In the backward countries they find their counterpart in the nationalist petty-bourgeois governing classes to which imperialism has handed over government office. The United Nations and its agencies have the function of providing an overall check on the political and economic security of this system. 2. It is on these middle groupings in the advanced countries, the backward countries, and the United Nations Organization, that the modern opportunists in the Labour movement depend. The role of the Soviet bureaucracy is objectively to assist in the temporary stabilization of imperialism which these new middle classes and their political representatives effect. The steady economic growth of the Soviet Union is a direct threat to imperialism, but the Stalinist bureaucracy tries to regulate the relation of the October Revolution and its conquests to the imperialist enemy by means of state, bureaucratic manipulations. For this reason, the economic effect of Soviet economic growth, as controlled and directed by the bureaucracy, is expressed in collabo- ration with the new middle caste in the colonies, just as the political effect of the crisis inspired by Soviet industrial development will be subordination of the working class to the needs of the ruling bureaucracy in its state relations with the imperialist powers. Yet it is precisely upon these imperialist states that the traditional opportunists of Social Democracy depend. 3. There are thus objective class reasons for the persistence of opportunism in the present critical Stage of imperialism’s development. The struggle against opportunism is not just an ideological one between tendencies in the same movement. In the present situation, revolutionary consciousness is the essential element for change. Dependence upon the ‘objective inevitability’ of socialism, which somehow is thought to force the opportunists and the class forces behind them to play a ‘progressive role’, is dangerous and misleading. Only those who lead the working class to a conscious understanding of its own road to power are in fact progressive. Without a decisive struggle against all opportunism this leadership cannot be given. 4. The Fourth International approaches the problems of the movement in particular countries always from the point of view of the distinguishing features of our imperialist epoch. The overall needs of imperialism and of the proletariat determine the roles of the various social groups and political ten- dencies. The world market developed by capitalism and the domination of international finance-capital make it ever more necessary to look at all develop- ments, in advanced or in backward countries, from this internationalist standpoint. In this total picture, only the working class can transform the situation, and so we consider every problem from the stand- point of the international working class. The

[p013] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 91 peculiarities of the movement and developments in particular countries are to be understood not as varieties of a common type but as partial phenomena whose true significance is determined only on the world arena of struggle between imperialism and the world proletariat. 5. The situation in the advanced countries, despite the betrayals of Social Democracy and Stalinism, shows a marked difference from the years after 1918. In no country has the working class been incapaci- tated for struggle by massive economic or political defeats. Despite some superficial appearances and the congenital pessimism of faint-hearts and defeatists, the working class in the advanced countries has never been in a better position to fight, unencumbered by bitter memories of defeat or the demoralization of mass unemployment. Moreover such a period has been an unfavourable one for Social Democracy and Stalinism in important respects. Social Democracy flowered in a period of growth and victory for imperialism. Stalinism battened on the defeats of the inter-war years. Neither has gained in the last period because of the change in objective conditions. Nevertheless, the fighting capacity of the working class, which is real and manifests itself at times with great vigour, has to be evoked, mobilized and organized. 6. The basic contradictions of capitalist economy, manifested in each advanced country according to its particular place in imperialist development, are leading to a revival of the class struggle and great opportunities for the Marxists. In the older capitalist countries, the exigencies of competition in the world market impose the need for adjustments which are incompatible with the old methods of exploitation, and place a great strain upon the traditional industrial and political structure. In Belgium, France and Great Britain, such economic and political crisis is already manifest in one degree or another: in Belgium, a great general strike, in France, Bonapartist rule, in Britain a crisis of Social Democracy as the capitalist class prepares a necessary attack upon trade union organization. With varying degrees of success, the bourgeoisie has sought to solve its more pressing problems by making inroads into the gains made by the working class since 1945. It is in Europe, the USA and Japan that the next qualitative leap in the world revolution will be made. Without this there can be no rupture of the present domination and containment of the power of the masses by the Stalinists and the petty- bourgeois nationalists. Only a breakthrough in the advanced countries will provide the political and economic conditions for the workers in the backward countries to retain proletarian power and advance to socialism, once they have overthrown the imperialists and their agents. Similarly, only the revolutionary revival of the working-class movement in the West will give the necessary support for the Soviet working class to fight a revolutionary battle against the bureaucracy. ii) The Struggle for Security and Stability in European Capitalism 1. Until the first world war, the great states of Western Europe dominated the capitalist world market, each of their economic structures being shaped by the particular historical conditions under which they had assumed their place in it. Britain was the old, overripe imperialism with a world empire knit together by golden threads radiating from the City of London, but with an industrial structure already showing signs of age and inflexi- bility. The most dynamic element was the new Germany which had taken political form with the defeat of France in 1870-71 and whose economy was geared to the needs of the magnates of coal and steel, the real power behind the state. The weakest, economically and militarily, was France, mature like Britain, but much less intensively industrialized; in the grip of demographic stagnation and with an economy which could properly be called rentier in character, the French bourgeoisie sought security in alliance with Tsarist Russia and the erstwhile rival, Britain. Britain, France and Russia lined up on the basis of common interest against the expansion of Imperial Germany and her Central European ally and satellite, Austria-Hungary. 2. After the powers had been locked together for four years in bloody conflict, the shape of Europe changed, and so did its place in the world. Three empires disintegrated. The Bolsheviks triumphed in 1917 and led the workers and peasants of Russia out of the orbit of world capitalism with the defeat of the armies of intervention. In Germany great opportunities were presented for working-class revolution; they were lost through the treachery of Social Democracy and the failure of revolutionary leadership. Capitalism was restored to Germany,

[p014] 92 but on weakened foundations; the bourgeoisie, which acquired full power for the first time, faced a combative working class. France suffered devasta- tion and a loss of manpower which she of all countries could least afford; her ruling class suffered from a protracted crisis of confidence which issued into the capitulation of 1940. Of all the European countries Britain was in many ways the only gainer from the 1914-18 war; her imperialist possessions and position had been safeguarded from the pre- dations of Germany and she had added substantially to her empire. But the triumph was costly; it was paid for in a sharp deterioration of her world position signalized by the industrial stagnation of the inter-war years and the constant struggle of sterling to look the dollar in the face. 3. Europe as a whole had declined both absolutely and in relation to the concurrent rise of the United States to a dominant position in the capitalist world. The emergence of Japan as the first Asiatic contender for great power status and a serious economic competitor underlined the fact that Europe was no longer the centre of the globe. The growth of the Soviet Union demonstrated, despite all the distortions of Stalinism, that capitalism was not the only con- ceivable world system, and gave notice that it would have to fight for its existence. 4. The fear of Bolshevism mingled with inter- national rivalries in Europe and the ambivalent relationships maintained with the United States to produce the complex pattern of inter-war diplomatic history. When capitalism’s acute crisis in Germany led to the ruling class’s resort to fascism, their counterparts in France and Britain were presented with a dilemma: whether to regard resurgent German imperialism as the main danger, or to ally with it in the face of the threat of revolution. Out of this dilemma came Munich and Vichy but also September 3, 1939 and a renewed war of unparalleled dimensions. 5. The immediate result of the war of 1939-45 was that capitalism was brought to its knees throughout Western Europe, as well as in the less developed East. The prolonged economic depression of the °30s, revealing the weaknesses of capitalism and thus undermining confidence in the system, led, in a number of countries, to a resort to fascism. In turn fascism intensified rivalries between the capitalist states and made war inevitable. The association was widely made between capitalism and war, the responsibility for which was seen to devolve upon the bourgeoisie and its system. The widely practised collaboration economically between large sections of the ruling class and the Nazis’ in the occupied countries discredited them still further. LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 The collapse of the collaborationist regimes, con- fronted not only with the Anglo-American military machine, but also with the people in arms in the resistance movements, produced a situation in which the state power temporarily fell from the grasp of the bourgeoisie altogether and reverted to its most basic form as ‘bodies of armed men’. Owing to the deliberate choice of the Communist Parties, and their allies, however, under the cry of ‘one police, one army, one state’,* it was conveyed, through the Anglo-American military governments and puppet governments, to the bourgeoisie by means of the politicians brought in their train or collected from the social ruins. The restoration of West European capitalism was thus a consequence of the counter-revolutionary policy of the Soviet bureau- cracy. 6. Despite its crisis of confidence, its cowardice and incompetence, the old ruling class was thus able to- retain or recover its power; never has a ruling class had such historical good fortune. It is true that the ruling classes took over countries which had been devastated by war, whose links with the world market had been ruptured for years and which were in a state of economic penury. The decline of Europe seemed even more irrevocable than after the first world war. Yet within a comparatively short period economic life was restored to its pre-war level and began to outstrip it, testifying to the recuperative power of modern industrial technology, not to any inherent vigour of capitalist relations. Indeed capitalism was on crutches everywhere. It had to be supported by state measures and by the tacit agreement of the Labour movement to assist in restoring the profit- ability of those sectors which it was not absolutely indispensable that the state should take over outright. 7. This task could not have been accomplished without the massive inflow of American assistance, first as loans and then in the form of aid under the Marshall Plan. American capitalism, raised to the level of a world power with the help of two wars in which its productive capacity had increased by mighty leaps, was strong enough to bear a large part of the capitalist world on its shoulders. And it needed to do so for a number of reasons. While it was true that the European capitalist countries were its rivals on the world market, US capitalism could not afford to see them knocked out of the capitalist world economy by social revolution or by absorption into the USSR. Not only would that * Phrase used by Thorez, French Communist leader, in 1945 imposing dissolution on the partisan militias. Togliatti in Italy and the other Communist Party leaders used similar arguments.

[p015] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM threaten the US world position, it would mean the end of Western Europe as investment fields and markets—a situation which grimly but reluctantly had been accepted in hard bargaining with the USSR as far as Eastern Europe was concerned (a bargain in which Stalin ‘gave away’ the West, including Greece and a 50 per cent share of Yugoslavia). So Western Europe became necessary to capitalist America both as a military pivot point and as an economic ally. Moreover, the aid which was siphoned into war- disrupted European economies was no strain on American capacity; indeed it helped to avert the post-war slump which was generally expected to appear sooner or later. The menace of the USSR meant that America could not afford to see West European capitalism weakened and that it was important to succour it at any cost, even if that meant running certain economic and political risks. 8. Consequently American policy was directed to the economic recovery of Europe. Inter-state co- operation was encouraged and assisted. As the Cold War worsened, so the occupation zones in Germany were merged into a new Federal State which provided the political context for the specta- cular revival of German economy which was to take place in the ’50s. Everything was done, too, to restore Europe’s links with the world market, since this was necessary if new life was to be breathed into capitalism’s ravaged body. While some American policy-makers tried to impose policies on the European governments which they would not have chosen for themselves, once the latter got on their feet they had sufficient bargaining counters to be able to assume a certain autonomy. At the same time, the European bourgeoisie was clearly bound to the American ruling class by a myriad ties. As the Cold War proceeded, through the Berlin airlift and the Korean war, so dependence on American military aid and the need for a common strategy brought into being a number of. European supra- national organizations. The key role was played by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: a new Holy Alliance designed to deal with ‘communist aggres- sion’ and ‘internal subversion’, but, unlike its 19th century predecessor, having at its disposal a con- siderable military striking force, and with a political and economic base stretched across Europe to the borders of the Soviet bloc. NATO was progres- sively adapted to the needs of nuclear warfare and provided a stronghold for the military caste which, in all capitalist countries, had emerged considerably ' strengthened by a decade or so of war and war preparations. NATO represented the determination . to buttress Western capitalism with the cement of armed power, in which the contributions of the separate states were inextricably related in common strategic plans. 93 9. Side by side with the military strengthening of Europe went a renewed economic upsurge. The stimulation given to the economy by the needs of post-war reconstruction, the drive to rebuild foreign trade links, the release of new techniques and the influx of dollars, was carried forward by unprece- dented peacetime arms expenditure. From _ this point, in the 50s a genuine capitalist boom, centred on civilian investment and a great extension of the market for consumer goods, carried production and trade forward to new heights. This new upsurge of capitalism was accompanied by, and in part depen- dent upon, a more intimate relationship between the state and the economy than before the war. While the essential social relations of capitalism remained, the state, as the organ of the dominant class, dis- charged some of the functions which had formerly been within the province of individual enterprises or had been left to the hazards of the market. The nationalization of certain key industries, especially those which were technically deficient and unprofit- able, and the state direction of part of new invest- ment were the most notable of the constituents of the new policy (not, of course, a wholly new one but now indispensable for capitalism’s survival). They were accompanied by social measures, representing in part the pressure of the masses, but now become likewise a necessity if capitalism were to survive. This ‘ensemble’ led to much talk about capitalism having changed or disappeared, and thus provided the breeding ground for new revisionist currents which assumed, on the basis of a few years’ experience, that the contradictions of capitalism had disappeared. New ‘theories’ were built to justify and explain policies which were already in existence, policies which in fact had themselves contributed markedly to the continued existence of capitalism in Europe at all, let alone under conditions of prosperity. 10. Nor was there any doubt about the reality of the prosperity. European capitalism had once again become able to extract and realise surplus value on an expanding scale from the numerous and highly skilled proletariat which it had at its disposal. There was really no miracle about it, even in Germany. Nor did it signify at all that capitalism was inherently more secure, or more stable. In fact at the heart of the new-found prosperity was a series of contradic- tions. 11. In the first place, the whole series of policy measures which had served to bring it into’ being were conditioned by the fact that on a world scale capitalism faced a life-and-death challenge which belied the essential conditions for security. The willingness of the American ruling class to pump aid into Europe, both civilian and military, and to maintain. an army on the continent, was a direct

[p016] 94 result of the Soviet threat. The military spending, which had played a crucial role early in the expansion, and still has a sustaining effect on European economies, arose from the same source. The willingness of the French and British govern- ments to accept the rehabilitation of Germany—their major economic competitor on the continent—first economically, and then as a political and military equal, arose from the same fears. The establishment of a series of supra-national institutions, though accompanied by a great outpouring of verbal and printed expositions of a supposedly ‘European’ ideology, was an unpleasant necessity. Somewhere in Strasbourg existed and still exists a Council of Europe where members of European Parliaments convene to weave idealistic verbal patterns which are quickly lost to view behind smoking factory chimneys . . . and rocket sites. Probably few people are aware even of its existence. 12. Lip-service to the notion of United Europe has become a political necessity for European govern- ments, bound together in history’s most formidable military alliance ever seen in peacetime and blessed by the Vatican itself. This necessity arises not from the strength, but from the weakness of capitalism’s foundations. Ten years of artificial co-operation has not stamped out three centuries of European history. The age-old process of jockeying for positions of political and economic advantage has simply taken on new forms. Whenever the economic situation reveals the possibility that the market may cease to expand or start to contract capitalist interests push for national advantages in the struggle. Méilitary men, and those who pay them, quite ready to see their own position and interests safeguarded by arms and soldiers of other countries, are hesitant to let their own forces pass under the control of others. Only the temporary coincidence of aims provided by the supposed Soviet invasion threat has brought about military co-operation. 13. Each of the big three European states conserves its own national designs and pushes them on every convenient occasion, sometimes brashly, as in the case of de Gaulle, sometimes discreetly, as with Adenauer and Macmillan. 14. FRANCE. The case of France is especially instructive. The colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria, which have fed back a festering stream into the murky waters of French social relations, have made the country the ‘sick man of Europe’ of the mid-20th century. It is true that there has been rapid economic development, a big increase in production, and extension of modern industrial methods, and, since de Gaulle took over, a strengthening of the balance of payments position. This progress, however LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 impressive on the surface, has only contributed further social strains which threaten to rip apart the whole fabric and prepare the conditions, once more, for the intervention of the working class on the scene as a revolutionary force. The divisions within the ruling class, and the fury of the pefty- bourgeoisie at the adjustments which modernization of the state and economy was thrusting upon them, prepared the way for de Gaulle. The insoluble problem raised for French imperialism by the challenge of the Algerian social revolution brought the whole state machine to the point of breakdown in May 1958, and thus prepared the way for the entrance of de Gaulle. 15. The Fifth Republic is a regime of crisis. The President, playing the bonapartist role to which he is adapted by his personality, and which the state of French society offers him, has been able to bring no fundamental solution to the problems of French capitalism. The economic successes—rising pro-. duction, a balance of payments surplus, higher profits—have been attained by holding back or forcing down the living standards of the working class. This involved: first, devaluation; second, the imposition of a police-type regime the bases for which had already, in some measure, been established by the Fourth Republic. The strengthening of the state apparatus and the assumption by the President of a role which makes it necessary to balance between discordant social forces and even, at times, to oppose some sections of the bourgeoisie, could only have been carried through with the acquiescence of the working class. The ‘achievements’ of bona- partism have therefore been the product of a lengthy process going back to 1945. It was, in fact, prepared by the betrayals of the Socialist and Communist leaderships over a period of years in which the. working class demonstrated time and time again a great capacity and will to struggle. The failure of spontaneous action to create a new leadership and the failure of the Marxist current to provide in time an alternative led on, therefore, to the defeat of May 1958 and the subsequent listlessness of the working class. Still held in the grip of the old-line organizations, where it has not, for the moment, lapsed into apathy, the French working class has been unable to undertake a real struggle against the regime. On the other hand, it has not been won over to its support; confused and bewildered, it remains a latent force which the regime fears. For the present, the holding in check of the workers is something which the General is pleased to allow the old-line leaders to do for him. He does not seek to smash the trade unions or political parties of the working class because under their present leaders they are less dangerous as they are and because, at times, he can, to a certain extent, lean on the workers

[p017] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 95 against the other forces which threaten his regime. It was characteristic both in February 1960 and in April 1961 that the threat to the regime from the Algerian ultras and the rebel generals saw the working-class leaders rallying to support of the regime under the cry of defence of the republic, just as they had done in May 1958, for its predecessor. 16. That de Gaulle steers a dangerous course in manipulating the working class in this way is clear. He recognizes its strength by not smashing its organizations, but he seeks to gear it into his system more effectively in order to get some kind of guarantee about its future good behaviour. So far this has not gone very far. The alternative is to play the present game of manoeuvre, which requires a tactical skill and a willingness to take a calculated risk which his successors will be unlikely to possess. But to raise the question of the succession is to realise that no legitimate successor with half de Gaulle’s capacity for holding together irreconcilable social forces is in sight. Every threat to the regime, or to de Gaulle personally, reveals the unfathomable abyss which stands before it. The stability achieved by bonapartism is purely temporary, nor can it be more: and the price at which it is achieved involves a more open and violent clash of forces on the morrow. That is realised by every acute observer; it is the all-pervading fear which lurks behind a facade of normalcy and produces gnawing doubts _and anxieties at every level of society. 17. The seven-year long Algerian struggle continues amid ever-growing apathy, cynicism and sporadic opposition. The complexities of the Algerian question, and especially the irrepressible, elemental struggle of the masses for land, bread and the right to manage their own country, make it difficult for French imperialism to find a compromise solution or for the nationalist leaders to accept it. The presence of the settlers, as a privileged and racialist group, and the mood of ‘the officer corps—ready, as events in April 1961 showed, to make a bid for power— diminishes the field for negotiation. But French capitalism needs to end the war while preserving its essential stake in North Africa and the continent generally. Its clear-sighted representatives, including de Gaulle, know that some formal concessions have to be made to the nationalist leaders if the field for imperialist exploitation is to be kept open. That means that some inroads will have to be made into the privileges of the European population, handing over to an Algerian government which will have political independence. At the same time, such a concession cannot be made without guarantees from the nationalists regarding European landed estates, investment capital, the Sahara oilfields and military bases. The exact content to be given to ‘independ- ence’ and to these guarantees is a matter for hard bargaining, rather than of inflexible principles. But neither side is free to determine the limits of its concessions. De Gaulle has to contend with the ‘ultras’ and the army; the nationalist leaders with the fighters in the fields and the revolutionary potential of the peasants and workers of Algeria. Both sides want a compromise; neither can have it on terms which they would be willing to accept because of pressures from their own side. 18. On the French side the cleavages are open and dangerous. The ‘strong state’ of the bonapartist regime consists of elements which are not even unequivocal in their support for the ruler. As the April 1961 events showed, high-placed functionaries and army leaders, in time of crisis, want to know who is going to win before they commit themselves. Everybody knows that conspiracy and plotting are rampant in the state machine and the army. For a long period the fascist terrorist groups were able to organize with impunity and obtain the explosives which they needed for their outrages on a scale which could only be explained by the complicity of army and police officers. Meanwhile large-scale agitation among the peasantry, the section of the petty bourgeoisie most hit by the growing concentra- tion in the economy, adds to the social crisis. 19. The prospect of a smooth development of the regime can therefore be excluded. Further profound shocks are in prospect; the problem of the succession remains an open and insoluble one. The return to a parliamentary system is now discounted even by writers who pass for liberals. The build-up of police power and the arrogance of the military caste offer the bourgeoisie the possibility of rule through some form of fascism as a last resort. Such a solution, of course, passes through a road which involves the domestication or complete breaking of the workers’ organizations. Sharp clashes, a re- awakening of working-class resistance — certainly opportunities for a new, militant leadership if it can be built in time—seem to be inherent in the French situation. That does not imply a facile optimism. The disproportion between the size of the vanguard and the immensity of its historic tasks has seldom been greater. If there is a basis for optimism it is in the combativity and capacity for sacrifice of the French working class, embodiment of so many revolutionary traditions, despite its having been worn down by a series of defeats, betrayed and confused by its misleaders. 20. While, despite appearances, the French regime hangs by a thread, poignancy is added to the situation by the intransigeance of de Gaulle with regard to NATO. While needing the support of the Americans ©

[p018] 96 as much as anyone else, the present French government jealously seeks to preserve its indepen- dence. Behind this lies the fact, firstly, that France has half a million men tied down in the Algerian war, and the government fears that the weight of France in Europe will suffer thereby. Secondly, the Algerian ulcer, which French capitalism itself dare not cut out, invites attention from outside, i.e., from America or the United Nations, to ensure that Algeria does not fall under Soviet influence or go the way of Cuba; this has to be countered at all costs. It is not, therefore, simply that de Gaulle is proud and nationalist. But it is true that the possible consequences of such an independent course, if pursued to its logical conclusion, have caused night- mares to some French capitalists and their political representatives. Hence a new source of division in the ranks of the French ruling class, summed up as in Britain, between having one’s own nuclear striking force or sheltering (if that is the right word) behind the Americans’. 21. The capitalist system in Western Europe can be no stronger than its main constituent parts. The French link is, to say the least, doubtful. Knowing this, French diplomacy aims to balance between the British and the Germans, and sell its acquiescence to American plans as dearly as possible. In recent years, and especially since de Gaulle took over, relations with Germany have improved, while those with Britain have deteriorated. Britain, by virtue of her closer position to America politically—deriving from greater material strength—has sought to use this to prevent the European states from pursuing policies which threatened to harm her interests. British policy thus seeks to prevent any power or group of powers from gaining ascendancy in the continent in a way which could harm her trade and political influence, or weaken relations with the Commonwealth and the Sterling Area. The attempt of the European governments, with American backing, to bring about closer economic relations through a customs union brought resistance from Britain, despite its obviously attractive features. Even the French, or at least sections of the French capitalist class, were hostile for some time, since it seemed that the major benefits would accrue. to Germany. This reluctance was eventually broken down and, as the European Common Market seem- ingly showed that important economic advantages could be obtained by French industry, the French goverment became a stalwart of the new organiza- tion. It did so, however, for national ends, just as the British had stood aside, and then formed the Free Trade Area of states peripheral to the Six of the Common Market, for national economic reasons. 22. WESTERN GERMANY, But economic LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 interests need the backing of state power. A complex series of diplomatic moves has been going on in Europe precisely with this intention. The main lines of force can be said to run from London and Paris to Bonn, a testimony to the great specific weight of Federal Germany in post-war Europe. The British government sees West Germany both as a rival and as a counter-weight to French hegemony in Europe which, given de Gaulle’s position on the nuclear striking force and NATO, is regarded as undesirable. In any case, though de Gaulle may have delusions of grandeur, the very upsurge of Germany, and the great astuteness of Adenauer and his colleagues, makes anything like French hegemony out of the question. 23. The re-arming of West Germany under its reactionary government, with many ex-Nazis in key positions both civil and military, constitutes a special threat to the Soviet Union and to the other countries of Eastern Europe. The staggering possibilities of the remilitarization of the strongest . industrial capitalist state in Europe are not correctly assessed by the Communist Parties, and are glossed over by West European capitalists for whom Germany is an ally against the Soviet Union. The Communist Parties’ campaign against West German militarism has been calculated to evoke a purely nationalist response from the audience to which it is addressed, in direct contradiction to the principles of working-class internationalism. Such propaganda, while formally absolving ‘the German people’ from blame, makes no analysis of the reasons why the working class has not prevented remilitarization. The present weakness of the German working-class movement must be seen against a background of tragic historical experience resulting from the betrayals of Social Democracy and Stalinism, which opened the way for Nazism. The destruction of the working-class movement from 1933, the military successes of Nazism in the early years of the war, and the plundering of Europe under Hitler’s ‘ New Order’, all contributed to the difficulty of overcoming the ideology of racism and nationalism after 1944. 24. The small Communist vote in post-war elections shrank progressively, until, without any mass feeling being aroused, the Communist Party—which had once had strongholds in West Germany—was driven underground. The strong anti-war movement which developed in the ’50s lost momentum, and the emergence of the Bundeswhr seems to be accepted, if not approved, by the masses. What has gone wrong? In both cases Soviet policy has a good deal of responsibility. Communist support never regained its pre-war level partly because of the lessons of Stalinism; the behaviour of the Russian occupying forces, the expulsion of Germans from

[p019] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 97 the Sudetenland and the East, the nature of the regime in East Germany, the continuous flow of refugees—these spoke louder than Stalin’s words and cancelled out the memories of decades of working- class struggle more thoroughly than the propaganda of the Nazis had done. Then, in 1956, the Hungarian uprising, coming only a few years after the similar movement in Berlin, helped to convince many reluctant Germans that their rulers were right when they spoke of the menace from the East and the need to rearm. The fruits of Stalinism are bitter indeed. 25. However, the German situation is by no means hopeless despite the fruits of Stalinism and the record of betrayal by the Social Democracy, finally sealed by the adoption of a new programme from which all traces of socialism and class struggle are expunged. There were many reasons why, in the post-war years many Germans should turn away from politics and seek to rebuild their shattered existence. In doing so they unwittingly contributed to the restoration of German capitalism. But this system can do no more than win the temporary allegiance of the mighty German working class. The class struggle reasserts itself every day in factory, mine, building site and office. The German working class will rediscover its strength and throw off the leaderships which have betrayed it. But the task will be difficult and it seems unlikely that the first steps in the struggle against European capitalism as a whole will come from Germany. That is why the working-class movements of France and Britain have a particular responsibility, firstly not to be diverted by anti-German feeling in response to the _ propaganda of the Kremlin or of their own ruling class, and above all to give aid and encouragement to German workers in struggle wherever they can. For example, though blame has been attached to the Soviet Union for the dampening down of anti-war feeling in West Germany in the *50s, this great movement was also partly dissipated as a result of the lack of support which it received in Britain and France. A Labour movement which German rearmament or NATO or the H-bomb can teach the German people nothing. 26. It cannot be assumed that German capitalism has somehow discovered the secret of eternal boom. It is true that the impact of the 1957 recession was very slight. But the very fact that German pros- perity has been bound up with a great expansion of investment and exports means that it could be extremely vulnerable to slump. The failure of markets at home and abroad to expand—and the home market does not grow as rapidly as industrial production, hence the importance of exports—could give the signal for a check to investment and to supports. prosperity. Even without deep depression, a period of insecurity, of sudden shifts and changes, would, under the specific conditions prevailing in Germany, contribute to the militancy of the Labour movement and aid the emergence of a new leadership. 27. It would, however, despite this long-term pros- pect, be unrealistic not to measure at its full weight now, and in the near future, the economic might of West Germany and to pay detailed attention to the aims and policies of its ruling class. While in the economy the great trusts have reassumed their old position, their political agents, learning from the turbulent history of recent decades, have set out to provide new means for the under-pinning of capitalism. The combination of ‘orthodox’ economic policy with a monopoly capitalist base and a calculated social policy of concessions to the working -class, or its privileged sections, and the buying off of the bulk of the trade union and Social-Democratic leadership, while not new, has been carried through very determinedly by Erhardt and Adenauer. The domestication of the unions—by providing them with the illusion of partnership—and the disciplining of the members by the union bosses are models of their kind. The acceptance by the Social Democratic Party of open collaboration in making capitalism work provides an apparent solidarity in society which must be realistically assessed as a force, making a break-through by a new leadership extremely difficult as long as the economic expansion, upon which it is based, itself endures. 28. Accompanying the upsurge of the economy, directed by the great magnates and by their politicians who are among the most ruthless in modern Europe, are obvious dangers. It is widely recognized today in West Germany that without a- continued growth of markets— outlets for the realization of surplus value, in reality—the profit rate will decline and the whole prosperity era may be put in jeopardy. The old premises of capitalist expansion, analysed by Marxists in the theory of imperialism, thus reassert themselves. A drive for external outlets has been going ahead in recent years, both in the Common Market and farther afield. West Germany is a creditor country on current account, the mark is a strong currency. At the same time the potential outlets are narrowed both by the the competition or policies of the other capitalist states and by the ‘iron curtain’. It is true that West Germany trades with Eastern Europe and the USSR, but this is not enough. West German capitalists feel the need, for economic and not sentimental, patriotic reasons, to recover their mainly agrarian hinterland in the German Democratic Republic and in Eastern Europe generally. . The very development now going on in. this area means

[p020] 98 outlets for the kind of equipment and heavy machinery which the West German trusts turn out in swelling volume as well as for consumer goods. The pent-up pressure for a drive to the East is reflected in foreign and military policy. Thus the nationalistic and bellicose gesturing of the West German politicos are not mere theatricals or a sop to public opinion; though the latter is sedulously cultivated by the interests which control the venal press and propaganda machine, backed by American would-be liberators who finance and organize the various broadcasting stations and organizations which spearhead the attack at this stage. 29. These tendencies meet with no great organized resistance in Germany today. The Social Demo- cratic Party vies with the Christian Democrats to promote such policies. The new Wehrmacht creates new interests as well as instruments for an activist policy. The Berlin situation provides the focal point for the German internal drive for expansion. It offers means of enlisting support from the NATO powers, for stirring up hatred of the Russians and for creating the necessary atmosphere for new expansionism. The revulsion against war among the masses visible after 1945 is subjected to a con- tinuous propaganda assault in order to synchronize them into the aggressive machine of imperialism as they were pre-1914 and pre-1939. 30. No doubt the Berlin crisis has been used, played up, exaggerated for pre-election purposes, to prepare the soil in Germany, and to show the allies that West German policy is the only one which they can pursue in dealings with the USSR. Neither side has been averse to staging such a crisis, with cynical disregard for the masses whom they manipulate, not to speak of the danger of initiating a chain reaction carrying mankind into nuclear destruction. The crisis atmosphere has been particularly welcome to Strauss and Adenauer for the very good reason that it weakens resistance to the policies which, as -agents of German big capital, they wish to pursue and gain support for from the Western governments. 31. The relationship of Britain to continental Europe has, since the war, obviously become much more intimate. For the British ruling class a closer union with their counterparts may be necessary in the face of common danger, but they do not cease to regard each other as rivals. Diplomatic hand- shakes, hypocritical smiles and carefully worded speeches should deceive no one about the real relations between the European great powers. Relations between the workers of these countries should be quite different. They should not allow their rulers to play them off against each other in wage bargaining or in the course of political LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 manoeuvring. Indeed they have a true common interest in destroying capitalism in the region which was its birthplace and in creating a unified economy on a socialist basis which really will permit a full development of the productive forces and bring the advantages of a large single market to which so much lip-service is nowadays paid. The United Socialist States of Europe is the watchword which the working class of Britain and all Europe must inscribe on its banner. 32. BRITAIN. The situation in Britain, indeed, long the centre of the most conservative Social Democracy, offers immense opportunities. In a way not approached in France or Germany, the tradi- tional relationships in the Labour movement are being undermined and the old leaderships are being seriously challenged. Powerful tendencies have appeared which, with correct leadership, can break from class collaboration once and for all. The © gathering of mass forces behind the campaign for unilateral nuclear disarmament is of a different character to the centrist and Stalinist peace move- ments of the past. The struggle against the H-bomb and American bases means a break with bipartisan foreign policy and thus with class collaboration. It is highly significant that new forces have been entering into these struggles, free from the shackles of cynicism and routine or the goal of political career-making. The impetus which they helped to produce led to the Scarborough decision in 1960 and prepared a favourable situation for a fight to a finish against the Gaitskellite leadership in the Labour Party. Important sections of the rank-and- file, the bulk of the youth and even some trade union leaders swung behind policies involving a sharp break with the bourgeoisie and consequently with their agents in the Labour movement. Yet, after Scarborough, the momentum of the Leftward swing was steadily lost, while the Gaitskell clique, by superior manoeuvring, unscrupulous flouting of conference decisions, and control of the party machine, was able to re-establish firm control and prepare the way for a formal reversal of the decisions in 1961. 33. The reason for this reversal of fortunes is no mystery. It should not be sought exclusively in apathy, in the wiles of the Right wing or changes in the objective situation. The main and overriding factor was the bankruptcy of the alternative. to Gaitskell and Co. offered by the Labour Left. Unwilling to embark on a real struggle, putting parliamentary careers before principle, making a fetish of party unity (really an alibi)—they were clearly alarmed by the logic of the decisions and by the unremitting struggle, and the challenge, not merely to their Right-wing colleagues, but to the

[p021] WORLD PROSPECT FOR SOCIALISM 99 unstated fundamentals of British political life, which was ahead of them if they sought to translate their conference victory into action. Instead of leadership, then, the ‘Left’ Social Democrats, true to their nature, could offer nothing but pious hopes, sterile formulas, sham fights and ultimately the face- saving compromises which they could effect in accordance with all the time-honoured practices of their kind. Tamely accepting disciplinary action against themselves, never appealing to the rank-and- file for a vigorous fight, only too glad to find scape- goats on the Left, and seeking for issues around which party unity could be restored, it is no wonder that these sensitive souls are now resigned, with tranquil consciences, to being defeated by the Right. After all, they only want to be an opposition within the Opposition; to lead, to accept the consequences of their pronouncements, all that is very far from their minds. On the surface then, a return to order is inevitable. But if the Right has reassumed its position as policy-maker—it never lost control of - the expression of policy in Parliament—it does so on altered conditions. 1960 and 1961 have shown that it can be defeated. Increasingly its power depends on the carcass of a party, not on a living movement. The youth remains opposed to it in the main. Militant unionists likewise oppose it. Party membership declines steeply. The followers of the “Left? demoralized but not understanding the reason for the reversal, seek elsewhere for an escape from the dilemma. The Labour Party crisis is thus not at an end: only the prologue has been played and all the great chances for the new and developing Marxist leadership lie ahead. 34. The struggle in the British Labour Party has shown that a working-class defence policy is incom- patible with a situation in which the big monopolies control the arms industry. Even the House of Commons Committee on Public Accounts has had to admit that no real accounting principle is observed in the arms orders for new weapons. Massive, concealed profits are being made from missiles and their components. A programme of expropriation of the arms industry can have a decisive appeal. But such a takeover would cut deeply into the most ' profitable sections of British industry in engineering, electronics and chemicals, and thus leads on logically to an all-out onslaught on capitalism with revolu- tionary implications. 35. The bringing of large trade unions behind such demands means that there is now a movement afoot which is very different from the routine demands of the Left of the traditional type. Twenty years of full employment have built up working-class organization and self-confidence, which makes an employers’ offensive on wages and conditions more difficult than ever before. This built-in strength is of far more fundamental importance than the fact that in some sections there has been a complacent tendency to accept prosperity as permanent. 36. After the false optimism generated before and in the period immediately following the last election, the Tory government has been obliged to admit that a further relative deterioration in the underlying position of the British economy has taken place. _ These weaknesses, to which Marxists have long pointed, have not been resolved, despite a decade of unprecedented ‘prosperity’, as is now generally admitted. Lagging investment, and hence industrial production and productivity, means a continuous tendency to fall behind the more rapidly advancing capitalist countries and a diminishing share of world trade. The duality of British capitalism—it is both an advanced industrial country highly dependent on world markets and an international financier and major creditor—creates insoluble dilemmas for policy- makers. To safeguard the international financial position of sterling measures have periodically to be taken which slow down industrial investment and thus hold back competitive power. It is practically impossible to devise policies making possible steady and balanced industrial growth and at the same time maintain and strengthen the exchange reserves and the world position of sterling. The long-standing problems of the oldest capitalist country have not been overcome and the most favourable moment for the capitalist class seems to have passed. 37. Even without recession or depression the strains experienced by British capitalism are appreciable. Inevitably, to diminish their effect on business, the government and employers strike at the working class. The recent emergency measures, especially the demand for a wage freeze, demonstrate once again their desire to overcome their problem at the expense of the workers. So far only a foretaste has been offered. As the position worsens, and especially if it should be complicated by recession and a slowing down of the growth of international trade, stiffer measures will be imposed and a new wave of class battle will begin. 38. The trade union bureaucracy, like the Labour Party Parliamentary leaders, tries to confine struggles to the negotiating table, and openly collaborates with the employers against shop stewards and rank-and- file organizations. But the militants in mining, engineering, the ports and elsewhere will gain strength from the Left-wing trend in the field of foreign affairs and defence even if, at the beginning of the process, these two trends are separate and appear, superficially, to be opposed to each other. For example, the announcement that.Polaris bases

[p022] 100 were to be built on the Clyde must have appeared to workers in a high unemployment area as a new source of jobs and higher wages. But the existence of a growing movement against nuclear war prepara- tions had effects locally as well as nationally. It is likely that industrial action against this political- strategic move will mark a new stage in the struggle for jobs and wages as well as against the H-bomb. 39. The attempt of British manufacturers to escape from the confident and highly-organized workshops of the Midlands to areas where wages are lower and competition for jobs keener has also met with resistance. Such moves represent the search for means to keep down costs in view of the increasing difficulty of maintaining car exports; they therefore arise directly out of the deep-seated problems of British capitalism. 40. It is the task of revolutionary leadership in ‘Britain to link’ these issues and to bring the move- ments against the H-bomb, colonial atrocities, capitalist economic attacks and the decay of culture into relation with the general crisis of capitalism. By its active participation in rank-and-file movements of the workers and linking them up with the inter- national and colonial struggles it can build a mass revolutionary movement and Marxist party in iii) United States Capitalism 1. The performance of the American economy in the period since the last recession has been far from spectacular. In the course of 1960 it ran into a phase of stagnation, especially in the steel industry and the durable goods industries. Spreading unem- ployment has been a feature of the last quarter of the year until it reached a peak higher than at any time since the war. The failure of the US economy to grow at more than 3-4 per cent per. annum is felt all the more acutely in view of the rapid rates of growth achieved in the USSR. The apologists for American capitalism draw some consolation from the high wage level and generally higher standards of living, and claim that the growth rate’ is not so important. Nonetheless, without continued growth profitable investment opportunities decline, the system loses its mainspring and has to be sustained by continued injections of Federal help which largely takes the form of opening up a means for the realization of surplus value through the arms pro- gramme. Even normal replacement of plant increases productivity 2-3 per cent per annum in the US, and so reduces the demand for labour while the size of the labour force is growing. Any disturbance LABOUR REVIEW—Winter, 1961-62 Britain. The preparatory tasks undertaken especially by the Trotskyists in the Labour Party and through their theoretical and propaganda work are the basis of the construction of a revolutionary party. 41. Such a revolutionary party, having won the confidence of the mass movement, will assert the political independence of the working class. With th's perspective, it criticises the various petty- bourgeois and centrist trends which, from theoretical confusion, pessimism and lack of confidence in the class, seek another way. The British Socialist Labour League recognizes the prime importance of a struggle to defeat the class which treasures the H-bomb and the American alliance as the only protection of its social existence. That struggle leads up to the taking of state power. Charting such a course, the British working-class movement will call on the workers of Germany, France, the USA and Japan to fight a united campaign against war preparations. At the same time it will sever all ties of domination over colonial and dependent territories and lend active support to the defeat of the reactionary European . settlers. It will withdraw support from the national bourgeoisie and bonapartist leaders in the under- developed countries since they block the victory of the colonial revolution. of economic conditions therefore opens up serious prospects, and an unemployed army of 5-6 million is now accepted as inevitable even by bourgeois economists. 2. In the period since the war the involvement of the American economy with the world market has become more intimate than ever before. Europe had to be preserved for capitalism. American economic policy and strategic policy were geared closely together with the aim of providing the world conditions for the continued existence of American capitalism. Isolation was no longer practicable, nor was the involvement merely an economic question— it was backed by a closely co-ordinated network of American bases, by planes and missiles poised for instant action and fleets ploughing the oceans of the globe. This was to be the American century but only if the world revolution could be held in check and pushed back. 3. American alliance with the weakened ruling classes of Europe saved capitalism in its old home, but it was not without its problems. For one thing Continued on page 109

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