Communist Party Crisis (ii) Trotskyism v. Stalinism

THAT was the reason for the political degeneration of of Frank Haxell?

The Communist Party leaders refuse to answer this question because it is related to the political degeneration of their Party under Stalin's guidance.

The Soviet bureaucracy required a bureaucratic clique to rule the British Party and within that clique people like Haxell could thrive, since all that was necessary was for them to blindly support Stalin.

Those rank and filers who dared criticise the Haxells were brutally expelled. You could remain a member of the Communist Party only in so far as you blindly followed Stalin and his coterie of British leaders.

To examine, therefore, the political reasons for Frank Haxell's behaviour is to examine the Party's attitude towards the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. Generally speaking, over the past decade they have endeavoured to maintain a discreet silence about this struggle.

~ Now, however, because of the growing differences within their student and youth organisations they are being forced to open up some political discussion.

Mahon Falsifies History In their weekly publication 'Comment, Supplement No. 5, May 16, 1964, John Mahon, an old Stalinist leader in the Party, speaks about the expulsion of Trotsky from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1927.

In the next paragraph he talks about the violations of socialist legality which resulted from the cult of Stalin'. But these two developments are inseparable.

The consolidation of Stalin's bureaucratic power over the Soviet Communist Party reflected itself most sharply through the expulsion of Trotsky and the physical annihilation of the majority of the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party during the Moscow Trials.

The first to be destroyed was the group known as the Left Opposition which supported Trotsky in his fight against Stalin after Lenin's death.

Mahon tries to separate these two events because he is very conscious of the weakness of his case.

Khrushchev, likewise, speaks about Stalin's misdeeds but fails to explain what political reason drove him to these acts.

The phrase 'cult of the individual, which was first used by Khrushchev, is simply an admission of his inability to examine the political requirements served by Stalin's tyranny. Khrushchev cannot politically explain Stalin because to do so would be to condemn himself since he, like Mahon, loyally carried everything that Stalin demanded.

Likewise, the major question, before the leaders of the British Party, is also to explain what Stalin's 'cult of the individual' represented politically. What class forces did it represent? Only the Trotskyist movement has analysed the political reasons for Stalinism.

The 'cult of the individual' represented the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Communist Party under Stalin's leadership.

To maintain the bureaucracy in power, Stalin employed the use of unlimited terror.

Of course, neither Khrush chey nor Mahon are confused. They know full well that a pre-condition for The Platform of the Left Opposition This document is a landmark in the development of 20th century Marxism. It sums up the experience of an entire period of struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy. This Platform also represents the highest point in the fortunes of the Joint Opposition (Trotskyist-Zinovievite) to Stalin. It is the programme of the last of the Bolshevik-Leninists who insisted that they remained communists despite all the persecution, jailings, violence and slander inflicted on them. But this document also represents a watershed-the end of one phase and the beginning of another-in the evolution of Trotskyist politics. iew Park Publications Ltd., 186A Stalin becoming a dictator was the physical annihilation of the Trotskyists.

After the expulsion of the Trotskyists in 1927, says Mahon:

'... they formed their own organisation, which supported Trotsky's advocacy of the armed overthrow of the Soviet Government.' The military vehicle through which Stalin, Mahon, Khrushchev and company allege that Trotsky was going to overthrow Stalin was Tukhachevsky and the Generals who were shot with him (1937). In 'Soviet Policy and its Critics' (1939), J. R. Campbell writes:

'Sedov [Trotsky's son] spoke a lot about the necessity of the maximum, the closest possible connections with Tukhachevsky, inasmuch as, in Trotsky's opinion, Tukhachevsky and the military group were to be the decisive force of the counter-revolutionary action.' But Khrushchev has now habilitated Tukhachevsky who Tukhachevsky: shot in 1937 brutally murdered by Stali whole thing was a fram Mahon and Campbell are liars when they speak about Trotsky's plans for the military overthrow of Stalin's regime. All they know about Tukhachevsky is what they learned from Stalin.

Mahon and Factions John Mahon poses his denunciation of factions within the Communist Party on the grounds that Lenin banned factions at the 10th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1921:

"The Trotskyites,' he writes, 'do not scruple to distort and falsify Lenin, for example, on the question of factions within the Party. They take isolated quotations from the period of preparation for the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, when factions and opposition groupings were permitted. They completely suppress the fact that in his political report to the Tenth Congress Lenin uncompromisingly condemned factionalism and that the Congress adopted a resolution, drafted by Lenin, which in the strongest possible terms condemned factional groupings and ordered their dissolution on pain of expulsion from the Party?

The Tenth Congress was meeting under exceptionally difficult conditions for the young Soviet republic.

After the civil war and the wars of intervention its economic life was almost at a standstill. Under these circumstances the Soviet leadership had to retreat economically and this was done through the introduc112 pages, 5/St London, S.W tion of the New Economic Policy. This policy allowed the peasantry and the urban capitalists freedom for individual trading, in order to stimulate some economic activity.

The Bolsheviks were, however, in no doubt that later these elements would seek ways and means to politically influence reactionary sections of the party and opposition groups in the country.

The ban imposed by Lenin was made necessary by the extremely critical stage through which the movement was passing. It was in itself a purely temporary measure to prevent the Kulaks and Nepmen from taking advantage of the conditions in the Party.

Mahon fries to imply that oppositions and factional groupings only existed during the preparation of the 10th Congress but this is, of course, untrue. Such groupings were always a feature of the life of the Soviet Communist Party, as anyone who cares to study the history of the Party will be able to see.

Lenin forms

Faction By the time of the llth Congress of the Party, in March 1922, Lenin was preparing an all-out attack against Stalin's bureaucratic behaviour.

This came into the open when he wrote his Testament in two parts, the first on December 5, 1922, and the second on January 24, 1923 (see last week's Early in 1923 he proposed a bloc with Trotsky to fight Stalin, when it became clear that the latter was preparing to rig the 12th Congress of that year, by packing it with delegates who were completely loyal to him.

Lenin was so alarmed at Stalin's behaviour that he sumHE Latin American re- American re publics are in the grip of a continuous and mounting crisis accompanied by widespread political ferment. In many of them a pre-revolutionary situation exists, or is in the making.

The crisis in the ruling class finds expression in two main ways. The first is for the landed oligarchy and the big bourgeois, closely tied with American interests, to rule through a military dictatorship, backed by the Church and all the agencies of reaction.

Such a regime is corrupt from the start because the basis of its political existence lies in opening the national resources to be plundered by imperialism in return for a share in the loot.

Its inner decay grows from the time of its birth. In time it gives place either to a new group of politicians with the same social basis or it is replaced, or overthrown, by a new group of 'reformers' REGIMES The regimes which set out to carry through some kind of 'national' revolution are based on the younger army officers, the middle class and sections of the bourgeoisie which are anti-American and want to see a growth in the home market.

The record of these movements is one of false hopes and ultimate failure resulting either in a sell-out to the USA or to their overthrow by a military dictatorship which brings back the old oligarchs to full power.

The failure of national revolutionary and reformist attempts has been amply demonstrated in Argentina and Brazil.

The illusions which bring Trotsky: 'danger in splits' moned Trotsky to his room in the Kremlin where he spoke about 'the frightful growth of bureaucratism in our Soviet Party apparatus'.

He asked Trotsky to advocate that a special commission of the Central Committee be set up to fight the growth of bureaucracy. Lenin was, in fact, preparing to launch a faction, which included Trotsky, to fight Stalin.

In other words, the pressure of events had already shown that the decision of the 10th Congress to ban factions was extremely dangerous and would have to be removed.

Stalin in the main profited from that decision and had Lenin lived, there is little doubt that he would have continued to organise his faction to fight Stalin, just as the Left Opposition were forced to do after his death.

Mahon, naturally, calls upon the authority of the 10th Congress since he still maintains that Stalin, who took advantage of what was a temporary measure, was right.

The Kirov Affair By the time of the 6th Congress of the Communist Inter- Stalin: hypocriucally mournea national in 1927, Stalin had Kirov NO REFORMIST them into being are still far from dead and further efforts on the same lines are certain. Many 'lefts', including the Communist Party, are ready to back such reformist type movements.

The history of the Argentine is a case in point. For ten years from 1945 the country was ruled by dictator Peron, an army officer. His movement won control over the trade unions and built up mass support in the working class by various concessions in social legislation and wages.

Peron's regime was of a bonapartist type. It excluded the landed oligarchy from political power, without dispossessing it of its estates.

NATIONALIST

It alienated sections of the bourgeoisie but never pursued an anti-capitalist policy.

The regime was intensely nationalist but was unable to prevent the country becoming dependent on American imperialism after throwing off the leading strings which had hitherto kept the country as a preserve of the City of London.

Peron, in the end, was unable to fulfil the promises made to the workers and the economy slid down from bad to worse. After he had been forced to take the path of increased concessions to the American corporations he was overthrown by an army coup with the support of the middle class.

The new regime's only policy was a purge of the Peronista supporters. It was unable to resolve the growing economic crisis and, in 1958, gave way to Frondizi, a Radical President elected with Peronista support. driven all factions underground inside the Soviet Party.

The GPU (Soviet secret police) had, under Stalin's instruction, tried to infiltrate the Left Opposition with one of its ex-Wrangel-White-Guard agents, in order to create the impression that the opposition were collaborating with the White Guards.

In the winter of 1934, Kirov, a close supporter of Stalin and leader of the Party organisation in Leningrad was murdered.

This became the signal for a brutal onslaught against the remnants of the opposition groupings within the Soviet Party. It was the real start of the terror that led to the Moscow Trials, which Mahon tries to explain as the outcome of the 'cult of the individual'.

Khrushchev has now revealed that Stalin arranged the murder of Kirov in order to create a provocation, behind which he could give free rein to his brutal suppression of the Opposition. He has also said that one of the reasons why he (Khrushchev) did not oppose Stalin was because he was frightened and powerless to do So.

We will ask Mahon a simple question. How would it have been possible to overthrow Stalin without the formation of an illegal faction within the Soviet PATH Frondizi knew what the problems were all right. In December 1958, in a presidential address he laid them bare: a massive and growing foreign debt, virtual state bankruptcy, inflation and material and moral impoverishment at all levels.

Four years later he was thrown out by the army which feared the militancy of the working class which, in the absence of real revolutionary leadership, still placed its hopes on Peronism.

In fact neither Peron, nor Frondizi, nor his successors have come near to solving the problems of Argentine society.

In Brazil the story has been similar. The strong - man, nationalist dictatorship of Vargas who, like Peron, enjoyed wide popular support, came to a final end in 1954 when the oligarchy forced him into suicide.

PROJECTS

For the next decade, despite spectacular projects, like the new capital, Brasilia, the economy limped badly.

The cost of living went up and up as the government resorted to the printing press to meet its needs.

A first need for any advance in the country was an agrarian revolution. The masses live in hovels, soil erosion spreads every year and dependence on coffee ties the economy closely to the price changes on the world market. In the countryside discontent is rife, breaking out into sporadic revolt Communist Party time?

He will not answer this question because, for the same basic political reason, it is impossible to remove the present leadership of the British Communist Party without the formation of a faction.

Like Stalin before him, Mahon distorts Lenin's resolution on factions at the 10th Congress in order to justify the infallible rule of the present Stalinist King Street leadership.

It is a lie to suggest, as the Communist Panty leaders do, that Trotskyists are factionalists. If it has been necessary for our movement to form factions then these have always been organised on a principled political basis.

Inside the Communist Party, the leadership, under Stalin and since, are irremovable: They constitute a clique devoted not to principles but to maintaining K frightened of Stalin their control over the party all costs.

Under these conditions it impossible to make any change within the Communist Part without forming a faction.

This is a democratic rigl entirely in conformity with th principles of democratic centra ism which cannot be given u under any circumstances.

A familiar trick of Stalinis like Mahon is to accuse thos who want to change the polic and the leadership of the Parl of being splitters. This metho is borrowed • straight from tr Stalin school.

The Platform of the Le Opposition published in 192 resolutely opposed Stalin attempts to seize upon tr struggle of the Opposition i order to split the Party. Tr provocation for a split cam FOR LATIN AMERICANS against the landlords: 8 per cent of the population owns nearly three-quarters of the land.

In Brazil, as in Argentine, political leaders promising reforms can sweep to power on a popular vote.

Thus, in 1961 Janio Quadros was elected President on reform programme, clashed with the army and resigned after eight months. This opened the way for the vice-president Goulart who, despite the opposition of the reactionary forces, was endorsed as President.

LANDOWNERS

In the meantime the growing economic difficulties had brought into being a powerful coalition of the big landowners with a large section of the bourgeoisie, resigned to dependence on US imperialism.

The kind of reformism represented by Goulart could have no place in the situation:

which was leading to a direct confrontation between the workers and peasants and the ruling class. Accused of being pro-communist, in fact, Goulart's policy was characterised by extreme timidity.

As Andrew Gunder Frank wrote in the New York 'Nation': 'There was much talk about reforms, followed by consistent sell-outs to the domestic and foreign forces that oppose any change at all.' Nothing serious was done to resolve the land problem. Over the past three years Brazilian political life was one long crisis.

In this, Frank says: 'Goulart talked loud and on the quiet gave in to right-wing pressure.' Like his predecessor he was it does now Mahon.

'The most important, the most actual, question' says the Platform:

• and the one which troubles all the members of our Party, is the question of party unity. And in truth it Is upon this question that the further fate of the proletarian revolution depends. Innumerable class enemies of the proletariat are listening intently to our inner-party disputes and with unconcealed delight and impatience are awaiting a split in our ranks.

A split in our party, a formation of two parties would mean enormous danger to the revolution.

We, the opposition, unqualifiedly condemn every attempt whatsoever to create a second party. The slogan of two parties is the slogar of the Stalin group in its efforts to crowd out of the All-Union Communist Party the Leninist Opposition. Our task is not to create a new party, but to correct the course of the All-Union Communist Party. The proletarian revolution in the Soviet Union can win through to the end only with a united Bolshevik party.

'We are struggling within the Communist Party for our demn slogan, parties", as the slogan of adventurers. The slogan "Iwo parties" expresses on the one hand the desire of certain elements in the party apparatus for a split, and on the other, a mood of despair and a failure to comprehend that the task of Leninists is to win the victory of Lenin's ideas within the party, notwithstanding all difficulties.

Nobody who sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the idea of "two parties" or play with the suggestion of a split. Only those who desire to replace Lenin's course with some other can advocate a split or a movement along the two-party road.' This is the tradition of Trotakyism so far as factions are concerned. We always fight for unity on a principled Marxist basis. It is precisely hose who do not desire such unity but want to maintain their bureaucratic positions at all costs who are guilty of splitting the Communist Movement.

was unable to break the close relations between the army and the US, while dependence upon US financial aid grew.

The removal of Goulart was a mere episode. To quote Frank again: "The only new thing is the speed and out and out callousness of American official support for the military coup' The forces of reaction in Latin America know that much is at stake. They have lined up behind the screen of the 'Alliance For Progress' to maintain their privileges and wealth. Their only policy is to take American aid and make the best of things while they can.

As for the Americans, they must understand that Latin American conditions do not permit economic and political stabilisation under reformist leadership. At the present time such leaderships are likely to be the most unstable.

PROMISES

Elected by the workers and peasants they are not able to fulfil any of their promises. There is, therefore, a constant risk that they will be outflanked by the entry of the masses onto the scene in a revolutionary way.

Reactionary and repressive dictatorships continue to offer the best hope of safeguarding the interests of American capital.

But such regimes decay and fester, become torn by inner feuds and prepare the way for their own overturn. In the meantime the basic problems remain unsolved and bear down upon the masses with increasing force.

May 23, THE NEWSLETTE Three