Author: Michel Pablo (Raptis) Issuing body: International Secretariat of the Fourth International — discussion document circulated preparatory to the IIIrd World Congress; first published in Bulletin intérieur du SI, no. 1, January 1951
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The IXth Plenum of the IEC declared the discussion preparatory to the IIIrd World Congress of our International open, and fixed the Congress for 1951.
Two documents approved by the IXth Plenum, presented by the International Secretariat, will serve as the basis for opening this discussion: the "Theses on International Perspectives and the Orientation of the Movement of the Fourth International," and "The Yugoslav Revolution and the Fourth International."
The first document is general in character and does not remove the need to present, before the World Congress, a "Political Resolution" dealing more specifically with the concrete analysis of the international situation and our political tasks for the immediate future.
But it appeared necessary to open the discussion within the International, first of all, on the basis of a text which would trace the broad lines of the perspectives for the evolution of the international situation in the years ahead, and which would reaffirm and make more precise a series of fundamental notions that determine the thinking and action of our movement.
For we have grasped, with greater clarity than at any time since the IInd World Congress, and especially in recent times, two observations to which we attach fundamental importance:
a) We have entered, since the end of the last war, a period essentially different from everything we have known in the past, and the pace of this period is constantly accelerating.
b) Faced with this new, rapidly and abruptly evolving period, it is vital, it is imperative, for a genuine revolutionary Marxist movement such as ours, to close the inevitable gap between its way of thinking — between theory — and the new developments of objective reality, through a constant effort at dialectical transcendence of every outmoded notion, of all schematism, of all dogmatism, of every mode of thought incapable of embracing, analysing and understanding the infinitely rich content of a new reality in full bloom.
Some comrades have written that on the eve of the last war our theory — that is, the way in which our collective thinking (the thinking of our movement) had appropriated the reality of its time — seemed solid, without cracks. Now, these comrades say, everything seems to be coming apart.
Reality, naturally, is far from being what these comrades imagine, as they weep bitter tears (and we are willing to believe in the sincerity of these tears) over the supposedly shattered harmony of our theory.
As for us, who have never conceded the primacy of theory (of any theory whatsoever) over life — such an affirmation runs essentially counter to a true, non-mystical, non-schematic, non-dogmatic understanding of what Marxism is — we give this phenomenon quite a different explanation.
It is true that on the eve of the last war our theory appeared more global, more uniform, more harmonious, because it embraced a content infinitely less complicated and less dynamic than it does today. On the eve of the last war the world appeared to be in relative equilibrium and repose, both as regards the capitalist regime and Stalinism. Can the same be said, even remotely, of the present period?
The problem, for the genuine revolutionary Marxist movement, is not to try to force the new reality, whatever the cost, into yesterday's patterns of thought, but to broaden and reshape those patterns so as to bring them into harmony with the new objective developments — which naturally have to be properly understood and properly theorized, following a principled line and not an empirical or opportunist one.
That is what we have accomplished in part (to the extent of our collective capacities), especially since the IInd World Congress. For it is indeed chiefly since that date that the line of the International became more precise and developed on a series of fundamental questions bearing on a better understanding of the nature of the period in which we live and of its perspectives.
The transformations undergone by the capitalist regime during and after the last war, its perspectives, as well as the transformations undergone by Stalinism, its role, its perspectives, have been the object of a better understanding on the part of our movement — an understanding that was not achieved all at once but progressively, with events helping, with inevitable gaps and delays.
In the text "Theses on International Perspectives...," we attempted to reaffirm this achievement of our movement and to make more precise the points that seemed to us essential for our orientation in the years to come. These ideas, set out in the above-mentioned document in condensed and rather axiomatic form, naturally need to be developed at greater length. That is what we shall try to do in the present article.
Objective social reality, for our movement, is essentially composed of the capitalist regime and the Stalinist world. Indeed, whether we like it or not, these two elements constitute objective social reality tout court, for the overwhelming majority of the forces opposed to capitalism are even now directed or influenced by the Soviet bureaucracy.
To know objective social reality, in order to be able to act effectively upon it, therefore comes down, for us, to knowing the present becoming of the capitalist regime (its static and dynamic state), and the becoming of Stalinism.
THE BECOMING OF CAPITALISM
What is the fundamental difference between the present state of capitalism and its pre-war state?
This difference expresses itself above all in the manifold rupture of the equilibrium of the capitalist regime, and in the fact that this rupture is steadily worsening.
Capitalism as a regime was characterized, as Trotsky said, by an equilibrium at once "complex" (economic, social, international) and "dynamic" — that is, in perpetual evolution towards a rupture followed by a re-establishment. Capitalist equilibrium resulted from a certain relationship between its economic functioning, the class relations within each country, and international relations. Since none of these principal factors remains static but is in constant evolution, there occurs a corresponding movement of the equilibrium towards rupture — under the influence, for example, of an economic crisis, a revolution, a war — followed then by a new re-establishment.
Until the eve of the last war, capitalism evolved according to this general pattern; the objective bases for a new equilibrium still proved to be fairly substantial. This is no longer the case today. The disequilibrium of the capitalist system provoked during and after the last war proves to be fundamental, chronic, and steadily worsening. This is for the following essential reasons, which we now grasp ever more clearly and in their full capital importance: the dislocation of imperialism's colonial domain following the colonial revolution in Asia, and more particularly the Chinese revolution; the rupture of the economic unity of capitalist Europe following the formation of the Soviet "buffer zone"; the plethoric development of American capitalism in the midst of a shrunken and impoverished capitalist market, and the disruptive economic and political role that American imperialism is obliged to assume in this world; the economic and political power that the USSR represents in its own right.
All these new factors together operate in the direction of maintaining and worsening the rupture of the capitalist equilibrium on every plane: economic relations, class relations, international relations.
I do not think it necessary, for the purpose of this article (and I lack the appropriate statistical documentation), to dwell in detail on what the loss — from the economic point of view (investment of capital and goods, sources of raw materials, balance of trade) — of territories such as China, Vietnam, Korea, Indochina, Malaya, Burma represents exactly for certain capitalist countries and for the regime as a whole. Some of these territories are not yet actually lost to imperialism, but they are in the process of being lost, which already determines certain reactions and preparations on the part of imperialism. The loss of Malaya, for example, would plunge British imperialism into a grave financial crisis, depriving it of the substantial resources it currently draws from the exploitation of that country.
It is necessary, moreover, to reckon not only with what these losses represent in relation to capitalism's former state, but also in relation to its future possibilities, its perspectives. From this point of view, for example, the loss of the Chinese market is a historic defeat for Yankee imperialism as regards its possibilities for expansion. The same considerations apply to the economic significance for capitalist Europe, in particular, of the loss of the countries that now make up the Soviet "buffer zone."
All these structural changes (to which must be added the new relations between capitalist powers following the crushing preponderance acquired by Yankee imperialism over all the other capitalist countries) mean that the capitalist regime, having lost its equilibrium, now has no chance of recovering it without the reconstitution of a world market embracing the lost territories, and without a more balanced redistribution of forces within the imperialist camp.
Such a perspective is not theoretically excluded in the case of a war victoriously waged by imperialism, one that would also involve a notable weakening of American imperialism while sparing other powers such as Britain, France, Germany, Japan to an equal degree. Practically speaking, however, we are very far from such a perspective. The fact remains that capitalism, having noted the failure of all its attempts to restore a certain equilibrium, and the fact that, on the contrary, it is constantly losing ground, is now throwing itself into more precise military, economic and political preparation for a new war. Here is a first important point of reference and a first essential perspective on the evolution of the international situation.
To understand that capitalism is now evolving rapidly towards war, because it has no other outlet, immediate or distant, and that this process cannot be halted without the prior destruction of the regime, is already to fix upon a fundamental line for the evolution of the international situation.
Neither the defeatist and "neutralist" tendencies gaining ground in certain circles of the European bourgeoisie, nor the "isolationist" tendencies of certain circles of the American bourgeoisie, will be able in the long run to determine the fundamental line of the essential nucleus of the international monopoly bourgeoisie, and of the American monopoly bourgeoisie in particular. Even alone, the latter, if it manages to maintain its control over the American masses, will risk war rather than surrender without a fight to the revolution. The discussion among revolutionary Marxists cannot therefore turn on the inevitability or otherwise of war, so long as the capitalist regime remains standing, but is confined to the question of timing, of the conditions for the outbreak of war, and of the nature and consequences of such a war.
On all these questions, the documents of the International have provided important clarifications. Against those who have for some years already maintained the view of an "immediate" third world war, the leadership of the International set its own argument, largely borne out by events, demonstrating imperialism's lack of preparedness for general war, and, on the other hand, the fear on the part of the Soviet bureaucracy of embarking on a general war that would endanger its own equilibrium. It is true, however, that within this generally correct perspective of the international leadership, as more concretely defined at the VIIIth Plenum of the IEC, there were two weak points which have clearly emerged as such in the light of the Korean War and its international consequences. The first point, implicit in this perspective, was the overestimation of the effective forces of imperialism, and the corresponding underestimation of the opposing forces. It was during the Korean War that our movement grasped for the first time this important fact: that the relation of forces on the international chessboard is now evolving to the disadvantage of imperialism; that the internal dislocation and disequilibrium of the capitalist regime are greater than we had supposed, and greater than the Soviet bureaucracy and the Stalinist leaderships themselves had supposed; that the weight of the colonial revolution in Asia bears more heavily than we had realized on the destinies of capitalism; that the true relation of forces between imperialism and the forces opposed to it is not measured simply on the plane of respective material and technical resources, but also on the plane of social relations, of class relations, and that these relations are evolving internationally to the disadvantage of imperialism; that the revolutionary élan of the masses risen against imperialism is added as a further force to the material and technical forces that combat it.
The second weak point of our perspective (which, moreover, followed from this mistaken assessment of the true tendency of the evolution of the international relation of forces) was to have placed the possibility of imperialism unleashing a general war only after "long years" (political report of the VIIIth Plenum of the IEC). This time-lag followed from the assessment that there existed a "reciprocal neutralization" between the imperialist bloc and the bloc led by the USSR, and that this neutralization would continue for "long years," ruling out war as "impossible" in the meantime. In reality, the Korean War demonstrated that the international relation of forces (to put it schematically, the relation of forces between the two blocs) was not tending towards a prolonged equilibrium, but was evolving to the growing disadvantage of imperialism. It follows from this more precise understanding, moreover, that it would be wrong to make it a necessary condition for imperialism's launching of general war that its preparation be complete, so that it could also wage and win (or be considered to have considerable chances of winning) the war it unleashed. It may be that, failing to stabilize its present positions and finding itself obliged, on the other hand, to retreat from certain positions it considers essential, imperialism will throw itself into war despite all the risks, despite its diminished rather than increased chances of success. This reasoning applies above all to American imperialism, which constitutes the essential nucleus of the capitalist forces of today. It may be that American capitalism, if it maintains its control over the American masses and if it feels relatively strong through the progress of its intensive rearmament within, say, two or three years, will prefer struggle with all its risks to a further Korea-style retreat. This possibility, which follows precisely from the scale that imperialism's retreat is now taking throughout the world, and hence from its crisis (even if this does not manifest itself immediately in its full acuteness), can no longer be excluded, particularly for American imperialism.
It is the advance of the forces opposed to imperialism that brings closer the possibility of a final, desperate war reaction on the part of imperialism — unless one supposes the disappearance without a fight of the whole capitalist regime, including its still extremely powerful citadel that is Yankee imperialism. For this reason, in the "Theses on International Perspectives and the Orientation of the Movement of the Fourth International," while insisting on the reasons that make imperialism hesitate to unleash war and push back its timetable still further, we do not exclude the possibility of a general war even during the period when the relation of forces remains, as at present, essentially unfavourable to imperialism.
The next question that arises is: what could be the nature of a war unleashed under such conditions? Such a war would take on, from the outset, the character of an international civil war, particularly in Europe and Asia, which would rapidly pass under the control of the Soviet bureaucracy, of Communist parties, or of revolutionary masses. War, under such conditions, given a relation of forces such as that which now exists internationally, would essentially be revolution. The advance of the anti-capitalist revolution in the world pushes back but at the same time sharpens the danger of general war. War, in turn, would this time be revolution. The two notions of revolution and war, far from opposing or distinguishing themselves as two considerably different stages of development, draw close together and interweave to the point of merging in places and at moments. In their stead there emerges the notion of revolution-war, of war-revolution, on which the perspectives and orientation of the revolutionary Marxists of our epoch must be founded. Such language may perhaps shock the devotees of "pacifist" dreams and rodomontade, or those who are already lamenting the apocalyptic fate they foresee for the world as a result of an atomic war or a worldwide expansion of Stalinism. But such tender hearts should find no place among the militants, and above all among the cadres, of the revolutionary Marxists of this epoch — the most terrible epoch, in which the acuteness of the class struggle is carried to its paroxysm. It is objective reality itself that thrusts to the fore this dialectical complex of revolution-war, which implacably destroys "pacifist" dreams and allows no respite to the simultaneous, gigantic deployment, and mortal conflict, of the forces of revolution and of war.
The task of revolutionaries who are conscious of this period and its possibilities consists above all in relying firmly on the growing objective chances of revolution, and bringing them adequately (through the most appropriate means of propaganda) before the whole of the labouring masses who have a stake in the revolution. But let us examine more precisely the character of the latter.
THE BECOMING OF STALINISM
Up to now, the crisis of the capitalist regime seems to be benefiting Stalinism directly, and this is the chief reason for the lack of understanding that prevails, even within our own ranks, regarding the profoundly revolutionary character of the upheavals to which we are witness.
For revolutionary Marxists, who do not wish to sink into confusion or into petty-bourgeois reactions (which are in part a consequence of that confusion), it is nonetheless absolutely necessary to return to the fundamental criteria, to the fundamental bases of theory, in order to be able to grasp the meaning of the evolution to which we are witness and to define our conduct, apart from all empiricism, all impressionism, all narrowness, all conjunctural, passing, secondary aspects of the situation.
The most profound, the most revolutionary, the most decisive upheavals, Marxist-Leninist theory of capitalism and its imperialist phase teaches us, are produced, despite and against all subjective obstacles, despite and against the treacherous line of the traditional Social-Democratic and Stalinist leaderships of the masses, by the contradictions inherent in the present social regime, by the inevitable exacerbation of these contradictions as it evolves. This is now the case. The capitalist regime, having reached its ultimate phase, is disintegrating, decomposing, and thereby allowing the appearance of a series of phenomena which all belong within the general framework of an epoch of transition between capitalism and socialism. This epoch of transition disorients the scholastics of Marxism, the partisans of "pure" forms, of norms, because it follows a course far more complicated, more tortuous, more prolonged than that which the classics of Marxism had sketched out prior to the experience of the Russian Revolution.
But, on further reflection concerning reality as well as the spirit of the theory (and not essentially the letter of certain writings), one perceives that this epoch of transition has its own profound reasons for being. Even leaving aside the role played in the present historical process by the profound bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR and by the Stalinist leaderships, one must distinguish an objective cause exerting its influence on the epoch of transition: the gradual, partial development of the revolution, isolating it for a certain period and localizing it in countries which, moreover, are not among the most economically and culturally developed. This pattern of development of the revolution, which is the real pattern and which has its reasons for being, implies a more complicated, more tortuous, more prolonged passage from capitalism to socialism, one that makes use of transitional forms of proletarian society and power. The writings and the policy of Lenin after the revolution, and particularly between 1921 and 1923, are significant of the flexibility of his thought as imposed by reality and by concrete problems. We are already far removed from the schema of the revolution as prefigured before its triumph and its precise experience. To this essential objective cause has been added the influence exercised, up to the present, on the historical course by the Soviet bureaucracy and the Stalinist leaderships.
The fundamental difference between us and certain neo-apologists of Stalinism, of the Gilles Martinet type in France, does not lie in the fact that there really are objective causes imposing transitional forms considerably removed from the "norms" sketched out by the classics of Marxism before the Russian Revolution, of the society and the power that succeed capitalism. It lies in the fact that these neo-Stalinists present the policy of Stalinism as the expression of a consistent, realistic Marxism which, consciously and with full knowledge of the facts, pursues a course of advance towards socialism while taking account of the realistic demands of the situation. And the only reproach they have to make of it is that it conceals these realities from the masses and that it strives, for example, to embellish the situation in the USSR by declaring that the latter is already preparing to pass "from socialism to communism."¹
These souls, who like to think themselves guileless, pretend to forget that, if things stand thus, it is because Stalinism is nothing but the expression of the policy — not of a "realistic" proletarian leadership, but of the Soviet bureaucracy, that is, of a vast privileged social stratum in the USSR which has usurped the political power of the proletariat and which has theorized, as "socialism on the eve of passing over into communism," its position of exorbitant privileges, fiercely guarded by a monstrous apparatus for the oppression of the Soviet masses. This stratum can have neither a "socialist" consciousness nor a "socialist" policy; on the contrary, it sees in the world revolution and in genuine proletarian power its mortal enemy.
Because of the role played by the Soviet bureaucracy in the present historical process, and on the international labour movement in particular, the liquidation of the capitalist system in part of Europe and of imperialism in Asia (a liquidation that was facilitated and made possible above all by the internal dislocation of the regime and by the revolutionary upsurge of the masses, on the occasion of a favourable conjuncture: the recent war) has taken on transitional forms even more distorted than was objectively necessary. On the other hand, the role played by the Stalinist leadership blocks, as in the USSR, the free socialist development of these forms and places all the gains achieved in constant danger. It is nonetheless necessary, for a correct orientation of revolutionary Marxists, to remember not only that the objective process is in the last analysis the sole determinant, overriding all obstacles of a subjective order, but also that Stalinism is, on the one hand, itself a phenomenon of contradictions, and, on the other, a contradictory phenomenon.
Only Trotskyist analysis, such as was given fundamentally by L. Trotsky himself, allows us to understand the concrete dialectic of Stalinism, its contradictory character and the contradictions inherent in its nature. This is not a matter of abusing the term "dialectic" in order to impress, or to obscure still further an incomplete understanding, or again to carve out a false way through a difficult domain. The understanding of Stalinism is impossible for vulgar, mechanical, or merely Cartesian thought. We constantly see the failure of such thinking in the analyses, the conclusions, the perspectives of all those who, in the capitalist camp or in the labour movement, strive to explain and to define Stalinism. The repercussions of such ineffectual thinking make themselves felt even within our own ranks. Faced with phenomena such as the formation and evolution of the Soviet "buffer zone" in Europe, the Yugoslav affair, the present colonial revolutions, the Mao Tse-tung regime, confusion and embarrassment have spread even within our own movement.
Are we going to witness a worldwide expansion and domination by Stalinism? Can the latter really overturn the capitalist regime in various places? Can Communist parties lead and bring a revolution to victory? Some comrades ask these questions and wonder, with a certain anxiety, about the future and about the soundness of our analysis of Stalinism. These comrades, however, would be far less anxious and far less embarrassed if they had assimilated — really, and not merely mechanically — the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, and if they set out to understand present-day phenomena from the following principle and consideration: to answer all questions correctly, as Marxists, it is necessary to grasp, as with any other important social and political phenomenon, its overall dialectical process, to grasp its contradictions as they necessarily develop under the new objective conditions. The obsession with a "worldwide domination of Stalinism" is peculiar to people who are incapable of perceiving — for lack of a correct theoretical understanding of Stalinism — that the contradictions inherent in its nature, far from being calmed and eliminated as it expands, are in reality reproduced on an ever greater scale and will provoke its bursting apart. And this in two ways: through the repercussions, within the USSR itself, of anti-capitalist victories in the world, stimulating the resistance of the masses to the bureaucracy; and through the elimination, in the long run, of the objective reasons for bureaucracy — for any bureaucracy — as the capitalist regime retreats and an ever greater, economically ever more important, portion of the world escapes it and organizes itself along the lines of a state-owned, planned economy favouring the growth of the productive forces.
In the prodigious rise of American imperialism that followed the First World War, most people saw only one aspect of the process: the expansion and the tendency towards world domination of Wall Street. The other aspect, to which we are precisely now witness, consisting in the fact that this expansion at the same time builds into the foundations of American imperialism "the explosive charges of the whole world," provoking "the greatest military, economic and revolutionary convulsions, which will leave far behind all those of the past" — it was Leon Trotsky who grasped this in time and clearly (The Third International after Lenin, the chapter on "The United States of America and Europe"). This is an example of dialectical understanding of a phenomenon which, despite its apparent power, its historically ephemeral successes, rests fundamentally on irreconcilable contradictions. Stalinism is such a phenomenon.
Since the IInd World Congress, our movement has succeeded in seeing better, in grasping better and in understanding better the contradictory process of Stalinist expansion, in one precise domain: that of the relations between the Communist parties where they have come to power and the Soviet bureaucracy. Fundamental notions (several of which, moreover, are to be found at least implicitly in our pre-war theoretical arsenal) have been reaffirmed, clarified, developed in the documents of the International and in the writings of leading comrades, concerning the Soviet "buffer zone," the Yugoslav affair, the Chinese revolution, the crisis of Stalinism. We have insisted, and rightly, on the concrete dialectic of the relations that exist between the Soviet bureaucracy, the Communist parties and the mass movement, underlining the following principal ideas: both the Yugoslav affair and the course and victory of the Chinese revolution, as well as the other colonial revolutions now in progress (Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Malaya, the Philippines), have demonstrated that Communist parties retain, under certain circumstances, the possibility of sketching out a revolutionary orientation, that is, of finding themselves obliged to undertake a struggle for power. These circumstances proved to be, during and after the Second World War, the extreme dislocation of the regime of the possessing classes and of imperialism, and the revolutionary upsurge of the masses. Under these exceptional conditions, the mass movement, finding on the spot only the Communist parties through which to channel itself, forced these parties to go further than their leadership, and above all further than the Kremlin, would have wished, and literally pushed them into power.²
Because of the weak resistance, and sometimes the practically non-existent resistance, of the enemy (demoralized and internally dislocated), the Communist parties were able to win despite their opportunism (Yugoslavia, China). In other cases power was handed to them by the entry of the Red Army (the European "buffer zone"), but it was only monopolized and consolidated after the break between the Soviet bureaucracy and imperialism, and the beginning of the Cold War. Thus the rise of the Communist parties to power is not the consequence of any capacity of Stalinism to fight for revolution, does not alter Stalinism's internationally counter-revolutionary role, but is the result of an exceptional conjuncture which imposed the taking of power either on the Soviet bureaucracy (the case of the European "buffer zone") or on certain Communist parties (Yugoslavia, China). In the case of the European Soviet "buffer zone," the overthrow of the economic and political power of capitalism and the installation of Communist parties in government were above all the result of the military-bureaucratic action of the Soviet bureaucracy, the mass movement having played a secondary role (Czechoslovakia) or almost none at all. In the case of Yugoslavia and China, the taking of power was occasioned by the internal dislocation of the enemy and the exceptional upsurge of the revolutionary mass movement.
I have already dealt to a certain extent with the problems concerning the significance, the causes and the tendency of the transformations that have taken place in the "buffer zone" in my two articles on the discussion we had within the International on the Yugoslav affair ("On the Class Nature of Yugoslavia," Internal Bulletin, October 1949; "Yugoslavia and the Rest of the 'Buffer Zone,'" Internal Bulletin, February 1950). I shall return shortly, in a special article, to these same questions. The problems relating to the significance, the causes and the consequences of the taking of power in Yugoslavia and China we have already dealt with in a series of documents of the International and in articles by comrades of the international leadership and of our sections, bringing out certain important aspects: the influence of the mass movement on the Communist parties that lead it (for want of any other organization), drawing them away from strict discipline to the Soviet bureaucracy's game; the possibility, and even, in the long run, the inevitability, of opposition to the latter, insofar as these Communist parties possess a mass base of their own that has enabled them to conquer power essentially by their own means.
Not to confuse every victory over capitalism and imperialism won by the revolutionary mass movement, even though it be led by Communist parties, with a pure and simple victory of the Soviet bureaucracy — such is the most important lesson we have drawn from the Yugoslav affair, from Mao Tse-tung's new China, and from other Asian revolutions now under way. Looking only at the case of China, one is now forced to admit, after the Korean experience, what I had already partly advanced in my articles on the crisis of Stalinism³ and on the Korean War⁴ — namely, that China will not be able to play the role of a mere satellite of the Kremlin, but rather that of a partner which henceforth imposes on the Soviet bureaucracy the co-direction of the international Stalinist movement; that this co-direction is nonetheless a disintegrating element of a Stalinism based on the strict application of the policy (corresponding to its interests) of the Soviet bureaucracy; that China's role in the outbreak of the Korean War and its conduct (which some have wished to attribute exclusively to the Kremlin) have proved much more important and more decisive than had been thought; that China is establishing itself as a first-rank international power, having infinitely more possibilities than, say, Yugoslavia, of playing an independent role between Moscow and Washington; that China's evolution may consequently prove to be different from that of the Soviet bureaucracy, and may introduce powerful elements of differentiation into the Stalinist camp. It is in the light of all this experience and of all these considerations that we must situate the possible perspective of a war breaking out before imperialism can essentially alter the present relation of forces, which is unfavourable to it. Such a war, unleashed under such conditions, would quickly assume, as we have already noted, the character of an international civil war, at least in Europe and Asia.
To the attempts of the bourgeoisie and imperialism to mobilize the masses for their war against the USSR, the "people's democracies," China and the other Asian revolutions now under way, and to crush the Communist parties and the revolutionary movement in their respective countries, broad strata would respond with revolt, open struggle, armed struggle, a new Resistance — but one that would this time have an infinitely clearer class character. It is possible that, favoured by these mass reactions and by the chaos and exasperation that such a war would rapidly create, various Communist parties would find themselves obliged to undertake a struggle, pushed forward by the masses, pushed forward by their own base, which would go beyond the Soviet bureaucracy's own objectives. Such a war, far from halting the struggle now going on to the disadvantage of imperialism, would intensify it and carry it to its paroxysm. It would break every equilibrium, drawing all forces into the struggle, accelerating the already-begun process of the convulsive transformation of our society, which will only be stilled with the triumph of socialism internationally. The fate of Stalinism would be settled precisely in this period of gigantic upheavals.
People who despair of the fate of humanity because Stalinism still endures and even wins victories are reducing history to their own measure. They would have liked the whole process of the transformation of capitalist society into socialism to be accomplished within the span of their own short lives, so that they might be rewarded for their efforts on behalf of the revolution. As for us, we reaffirm what we wrote in the first article we devoted to the Yugoslav affair: this transformation will probably occupy an entire historical period of several centuries, one that will meanwhile be filled with forms and regimes transitional between capitalism and socialism, necessarily far removed from "pure" forms and norms. We know that this affirmation has shocked certain comrades and has served others as a springboard from which to attack our "revisionism." But we are not laying down our arms. More than a century has already passed since the Communist Manifesto, and more than half a century since imperialism was described as the "highest stage of capitalism." The course of history has proved more complicated, more tortuous, more prolonged than the forecasts of men with the legitimate tendency to shorten the time separating them from their ideals. The best Marxists have not avoided being mistaken — not about the general line of development, but about the timing and the concrete forms. What is possible today, in any country, as the strategic goal, is revolution, is the taking of power, is the overthrow of capitalism. But the taking of power in one country does not settle the whole question. The conditions for a free development towards socialism are still more complicated and still more difficult. The example of the USSR, of the "people's democracies," of Yugoslavia, of China, proves this. It would nonetheless be equally wrong to minimize the historical importance of the progress made along the road of the overthrow of capitalism and the victory of the revolution in the world.
Those who believe they are answering the anxiety and embarrassment of certain people faced with what are called the victories of Stalinism, by minimizing the objectively revolutionary significance of these facts, are obliged to fall back on an anti-Stalinist sectarianism at any price, which, beneath its aggressive appearance, scarcely conceals its lack of confidence in the fundamental revolutionary process of our epoch — which is the surest guarantee of the eventual, inevitable downfall of Stalinism, and which will be achieved all the more rapidly the more the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism progresses and gains an ever more important part of the world.
THE ORIENTATION AND BECOMING OF OUR MOVEMENT
Our present fundamental orientation flows essentially from the analysis of the period in which we are fighting, from the fundamental revolutionary character of this period. We do not attach ourselves exclusively to any episode of this period, however important it may be; we do not say: now or never; we do not regard any defeat as a defeat that closes off revolutionary perspectives. A revolutionary movement leaves lamentations to the spectators of the struggle, not to those engaged in it. It relies firmly on the revolutionary perspectives, which are objective and real, and tries to reinforce them as best it can through its own subjective weight.
Certainly, the objective revolutionary process is not automatic, and one cannot, even now, when the relation of forces is evolving to the disadvantage of imperialism, categorically affirm that the game is definitively won. Certainly, there is a danger that a general war might provoke widespread destruction, making the socialist reconstruction of humanity still more difficult, more complicated and more protracted. Under certain conditions, the theoretical possibility of a fall into barbarism is not excluded. Certainly, the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy places all the gains achieved so far in constant danger and may favour a fresh shift in the relation of forces in favour of capitalism. But what distinguishes a genuine revolutionary movement from a tendency that is, in the last analysis, petty-bourgeois, is that the former bases its fundamental orientation on the terms of revolution and socialism, on the practical, real — and not merely theoretical — revolutionary possibilities of the period; it brings out these possibilities, envisages the revolutionary process in its overall ascending, objective movement, and does not lose itself in this or that secondary episode of that process.
Some have been astonished, even indignant, at our abrupt change of position as soon as the course of Yugoslav foreign policy began to slide into the orbit of the "democratic forces" of imperialism. In reality our change came with a certain delay following the sudden change in Yugoslav policy itself, under the international pressure unleashed by the Korean War. The change was first of all objective, in the situation, outside of us. It signified a defeat — hopefully a temporary one — of the Yugoslav revolution. From that moment, from that observation, it was no longer for us a question of weeping or of temporizing and remaining undecided. In the revolutionary period in which we are fighting, there will be a great many ups and downs, victories and defeats, and we base our fundamental orientation only on the essential course of this period, characterized by the growing objective perspectives of the revolution developing amid the ruins and the crisis of capitalism and imperialism.
The policy of the Yugoslav leaders isolated and continues to isolate the Yugoslav revolution from the support of the proletarian and colonial masses, entrusting its defence instead to the "democratic" imperialism now being discovered with such casualness by Milovan Djilas. Between this policy and unconditional support for the proletarian and colonial mass struggles, we quite naturally chose the second term of the alternative, which coincides with the general struggle for the world revolution of which the Yugoslav revolution is only a subordinate episode. This conception of our orientation, of our conduct, acquires exceptional importance precisely at the present stage, characterized by the greatest tension ever known in the international class struggle and the greatest pressure exerted on movements and individuals. This pressure is unquestionably infinitely greater now than on the eve of, or during, the Second World War, and will go on increasing.
Without a principled and clear line, without a firm and revolutionary orientation, we risk sinking into confusion and into petty-bourgeois deviations of every sort, which have also marked our movement in the past. The leading elements of our movement must be aware of this danger — I would say, of the inevitability, to a certain degree, of this danger. It is for this reason that we insist so strongly, in the "Theses on International Perspectives and the Orientation of the Movement of the Fourth International," on the necessity of reaffirming and making more precise our programmatic position on the USSR, the Soviet bureaucracy, the Communist parties and the colonial revolutions now under way. The experience of what is happening around us with the various anti-Stalinist tendencies of the labour movement, as well as the still more important experience of the course taken by the Yugoslav CP, clearly demonstrate that, without a Marxist orientation on these questions, one slides imperceptibly — in the present period of extreme polarization of the class forces — objectively into the enemy camp.
Our movement is not naturally "neutral" between what are called the two blocs, that of imperialism and that led by the USSR. In the first place because neutralism is always objectively favourable to one of the antagonistic forces; there is no such thing as pure "neutralism." Next, because in the relations, and above all in the conflicts, of the "bloc" led by the USSR with imperialism, we give critical support to the former while we fight the latter without reservation. Our support for the colonial revolutions now under way, despite their Stalinist or Stalinizing leaderships, in their struggle against imperialism, is indeed unconditional. Our movement is independent of the policy of Moscow, of the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy, in the sense that it is not bound by that policy, does not identify it with the policy of the international proletariat and the colonial masses, but, on the contrary, fights that policy in all its aspects harmful and hostile to the world revolution.
Without having rethought all these questions, without having clarified them in our minds and made them more precise, it will be impossible for us in the immediate future to link up with the revolutionary mass movement, and with the proletarian vanguard, which in Asia and in Europe follow the Stalinist or Stalinizing leaderships; it will otherwise be impossible for us, in countries that do not experience this strong influence of these leaderships over the masses, but where a powerful reactionary pressure of the bourgeoisie and its reformist agents is instead exerted, as in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, etc., to resist that pressure and not to depart from a clear and firm class line; above all, without this, it will be impossible for us, in the event of a general war, to orient ourselves correctly and effectively so as to ensure the triumph of the revolutionary forces over capitalism, and, in the course of the struggle, over the Soviet bureaucracy itself as well.
In every case where sectarian and mechanical anti-Stalinism — which has confused the leadership with the mass movement, or has failed to grasp the contradictory character of Stalinism, including the action of the Soviet bureaucracy — has gained the upper hand in our organizations, this has led our movement to practical disaster and to complete political and theoretical disorientation. Such was the case with some of our movements during the war and at the time of its liquidation in Europe. Such was above all the case with certain tendencies of our movement in China and, in part, in Indochina.
Can we afford to repeat such mistakes? Can we live side by side with a revolution that is developing and that, arms in hand, is fighting imperialism while at the same time dealing sensitive, sometimes mortal, blows to the indigenous possessing classes (as is the case with the Asian revolutions now under way), and content ourselves with our old attitude towards the Communist parties leading these revolutions, when these parties, in strictly applying Kremlin policy, were collaborating with imperialism and the class enemy? Can we contemplate the preparation and the possibility of a general war and neglect to draw closer, from now on, to the base of the Communist parties which still, in several important countries of Europe and Asia, polarize the proletarian and colonial masses best fitted for the struggle against the imperialists' war, best suited to the struggle for revolution? How else shall we be capable of waging our struggle against imperialism's war preparations, which means the struggle to disarm and defeat the bourgeoisie through the revolutionary masses? How can we hope to bring about our junction with the revolutionary forces that will spring from this struggle and inevitably launch themselves against capitalism and imperialism, and to turn them, in the course of the struggle itself, against the Soviet bureaucracy as well?
However unexpected this may seem at first sight, the new conditions in which the Communist parties in the Asian countries now undergoing a revolution find themselves dictate to us, as a general attitude towards them, roughly that of a Left Opposition granting them critical support. This means, for example, that on the morrow of Mao Tse-tung's victory, our movement in China, instead of ignoring or minimizing this victory and continuing to attack the Chinese CP on the — perfectly correct — basis of that party's treacherous policy at the time when it submitted to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie and collaborated with Chiang Kai-shek, ought, in my view, to have addressed the Chinese masses in the following terms: the Chinese Communist Party, pushed forward and borne along by the revolutionary mass movement, benefiting from the advanced internal dislocation of the indigenous possessing classes and from the weakness of imperialism, and having been obliged, in the course of events and under the pressure of the masses, to change in part its line, which had subordinated it to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie in the accomplishment of the revolution in China, has come to power. This constitutes an important victory and opens up the possibility of a forward march of the revolution and its final triumph through the establishment of a genuine democratic power of the Chinese workers and poor peasants. For the proletarian character of the power that must be secured remains the key problem of the revolution. We, Trotskyists, who have always upheld the theory that the Chinese revolution can only triumph under the political leadership of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard, will defend the gains achieved, as well as every step taken in the direction of the establishment of a democratic power of the Chinese workers and poor peasants. We give critical support to the Chinese CP and to Mao Tse-tung's government, and we claim our legal existence as a Communist tendency of the labour movement. Such a declaration and such an attitude would, broadly speaking, have had some chance of being understood by a certain number of sensible elements of the revolutionary vanguard in China, by every class-conscious proletarian, and would have placed the leadership of the Chinese CP before the dilemma: either accept our legal existence, or impose illegality on us, which would demonstrate its bureaucratic and Stalinist character.
In Europe, where the Communist parties manoeuvre the proletarian masses to secure the success of the foreign policy of the Soviet bureaucracy and its special aims in each country, and do not in any way fight for revolution and the taking of power, such a policy towards these parties is naturally excluded. On the other hand, drawing closer to their base, linking up with it in every possible united-front action against the imperialists' war preparations, and underlining for it the revolutionary possibilities of the period that the Stalinist leaderships consciously conceal, is an essential duty of all our organizations operating in countries where the majority of the working class follows the Communist parties. Closer to the base of these parties — such is our watchword in all these countries, one that follows from the analysis of the situation and its perspectives.
In countries where Stalinism is practically non-existent, or exerts only a weak influence over the masses, our organizations will strive, in the years ahead, to become the principal leadership of the proletariat: in the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, throughout Latin America, in Australia, in Indonesia, perhaps in India. It is there, far more than in the countries where Stalinist influence still prevails, that the essential, immediate future of our movement lies. Some of these countries play a key role in the international situation and remain, by the conditions of their economic development, prime territory for the building of socialism: the United States, Britain, Germany. The future of Stalinism is barred in these countries. The development of our movement in the United States in particular would influence the whole course of the international labour movement, would accelerate the crisis and decomposition of Stalinism.
Other variants are naturally possible, such as the one that appeared at a certain moment with the progressive course of the Yugoslav revolution, before the latest turn taken by its leaders. It is difficult to foresee the precise forms through which the strengthening of the conscious revolutionary current will pass, and the forms that the inevitable decomposition and elimination of Stalinism will assume. It is also difficult to describe all the tactical shifts to which our movement will have recourse in order the better to link up with the masses and to make progress. Since the liquidation of the war, and particularly since the IInd World Congress of our International, the advances of our movement have been undeniable. They find expression in the decisive break made by most of our organizations with an illusory revolutionary activity carried on outside the real movement of the masses and its particular features in each country; in the real, conscious search, felt by cadres and militants alike, for a way of access wherever, in each country, the movement of the masses, or its essential currents, may run; in the patient, methodical, long-term work undertaken within these currents in order to bring about a revolutionary differentiation within their ranks, according to the possibilities matured by their own experience and by objective conditions; in the advanced proletarianization of our organizations and their leaderships, which is the surest guarantee of the application and pursuit of such a policy towards the class, with the class. These advances have been made possible thanks to the solidity of our theoretical orientation, to the indestructible solidity of Trotskyism, and thanks to the revolutionary character of the period. It is the strengthening of the latter in the years to come, it is the growing revolutionary perspectives increasingly dominating the historical scene, that nourish our revolutionary optimism and our absolute confidence in the destinies of Trotskyism, the conscious expression of the Communist current of our epoch.
Internal Bulletin of the IS, No. 1, January 1951.
NOTES
1. See, among others, the writings of G. Martinet, "Sur l'État socialiste" ["On the Socialist State"], in the Revue internationale, October-December 1950.
2. Our Transitional Programme foresaw this possible case. It states: "It is [...] impossible categorically to deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the exceptional combination of circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, revolutionary offensive of the masses), the petty-bourgeois parties, including the Stalinists, may go further than they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie."
3. Quatrième Internationale, March-April 1950.
4. Quatrième Internationale, August-October 1950.