Constant Reader Two of a Kind

‘IT is possible to look forward to a peaceful revolution in Britain . . . because . . . socialist forms, however imperfect, have grown up ‘‘within” capitalism.’

E. P. Thompson in New Left Review, May-June, 1960.

‘America’s abhorrence of the very word “socialism” still prevents a general recognition that substantially there is in America more socially-organized production _and distribution (which means more socialism, if we ise above formal definitions) than in the rest of the world combined. America hides her elements of socialism under the formal facade of capitalism. .. .’

Earl Browder in Review of International Affairs (Belgrade), June 1, 1959.

A Great Social Scientist Deutscher has brought out strongly in his book ‘The Prophet “Unarmed’ the importance of Preobrazhensky, who became ‘the principal economist of Trotsky’s Left Opposition. Recently I came across a pamphlet of Preobrazhensky’s written in 1921, before the open clash with the bureaucracy had begun, which reveals his foresight and at the same time shows how false is the idea that the men who developed into the Left Opposi«tion were irresponsible and unrealistic people who knew no‘thing and cared less about the practical problems of the ‘Soviet. economy.

‘Anarchism and Communism’ was published at a time when -anarcho-syndicalist moods were spreading among sections of the Russian working class, tired and hungry after years of civil war, and finding political expression through the so-called Workers’ Opposition. Preobrazhensky patiently explains in this pamphlet how socialism reqpires centralized planning, whereas the anarchists want each factory to become in effect the property of the workers who work in it; and how it necessitates an increase in the productivity of labour beyond capitalist levels, which only the strictest co-ordination and discipline can achieve. In particuiar, the peasants can be persuaded into going over to fully socialist forms of production only on the basis of a plentiful supply of cheap manufactured goods, which will not drop from heaven.

In the transitional phase, a certain variation in wages between industry and industry and between trade and trade is essential. Otherwise the necessary distribution of forces will not be ensured and the necessary production will not take place. In a typical paradox, Preobrazhensky remarks: “We are too’ poor to afford the luxury of equality.’

Noting that a factor in fostering anerchist moods is the existence of bureaucratic tendencies in the state machine, and that the latter absorbs a tremendous amount of resources, Preobrazhensky discusses how to reduce the swollen staffs and change their style of work. In building a new state machine, the Soviet leadership had had inevitably to draw upon the personnel, ‘the human material’, of the old one, in the first instance. Unfortunately, these pecple were sometimes functioning now ‘not just as the bricks but as the bricklayers, too’, so that the new Soviet state structure too often resembled the old one! A course had to be set in the opposite direction— but how long it would take to accomplish this job of de‘bureaucratizing would depend first and foremost on the successes of the workers’ revolutionary movement in the West.

How to Expose Stalinism Readers of this column in The Newsletter of April 30 may have noticed something odd in the way one paragraph tailed off rather pointlessly. (But then again, they may not.) It was a reference to the Communist Party in this country having a record of ‘conflict ‘and the conclusion got cut for reasons of space.

The point I intended to make was this. Some people have criticized our ‘Aldermaston special’ for being an unduly sharp attack on Stalinism. But we regard it as our duty to the working-class movement, and not least to those misguided militants who follow the Communist Party’s banner, to expose relentlessly, in a serious, political way, the menace which Stalinism is. We don’t accuse Stalinists of being stooges of the British capitalists, which would be a foolish slander; we know, and explain, thatthe source of their opportunism ‘is that they mistakenly identify the interests of the working class (including those of the Russian workers) with the policies and methods of the Soviet bureaucracy.

The ruling class of this country never lets up on harrying the Communists, and they in turn are always in opposition to some section of the ruling class. If the history of the Communist Party had not been a history of conflict, based on the irreconcilability of the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy (standing as it does at the head of a workers’ state, however degenerated this may be) with those of the British capitalists, the Communist Party would not have kept so long the loyal allegiance of many of its members. Our criticism of the Stalinists relates to the way their false premises lead them to conduct the conflict im which they are engaged so as to bring disaster upon the working class—including the workers of the Soviet Union, as some of the latter have apparently been showing Co-existence Khrushchev that they are beginning to realize. — It seems to me that'a reasoned political critique such as we offered in our ‘Aldermaston special’ is on the right lines; whereas a crack such as Alasdair MacIntyre made, in his broadcast last January, about ‘ritualized pseudo-conflicts’, merely gives offence without, helping Communist Party members to re-think their position. It may be that, for instance, Sam Russell, of the Daily Worker (whom I recruited to the Communist Party a quarter of a century ago), is past the possibility of re-thinking. But a man like that, who gave up his university scholarship to fight in the Spanish civil war, and was wounded in action there, will certainly not be induced to consider our arguments if they are accompanied by talk of ‘ritualized pseudo- conflicts’ which he knows to be false.

The temptation to substitute wisecracks and abuse for politics is often intense when one is dealing with the Stalinists, whose methods towards our movement are so unscrupulous. But it won't do; and in this respect, as in so many others, Trotsky himself ‘seta clear example. During the terror of 1937:in Russia somebody wrote in an American paper that Stalin had been a Tsarist police spy in the Bolshevik Party. Trotsky at once came out with a repudiation of this foolish lie. Stalin, he declared, was an old revolutionary; and what had happened to him ‘had te be seen as the degeneration of such a person in certain. definite circumstances, otherwise its entire tragic meaning and lesson would be lost.

A New Pamphlet on Clause Four From MacDonald to Gaitskell Price 3d. from 186 Clapham High Street, London, S.WA a: el