How do Trotskyists propose to stop workers' state degeneration? [Archive]

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blackwave

13th July 2010, 19:22

The question is in the title: What measures do Trotskyists propose to stop the degeneration of the workers state which they so avidly criticise? :thumbup1:

Muzk

13th July 2010, 19:37

S.Artesian

13th July 2010, 23:35

Trotsky? Marx did that already. Neccessary measures to be taken by a worker's government.

Bureaocrats to be paid according to a maximum wage (usually the wage the worker's they represent get)

Must always be able to be recalled by their council

and rotate, to counter conservative bureaocraticism.

to abolish place-hunting all the different hierarchical positions get the same wage too.

Anyways, have you heard about the theory of permanent revolution? It only applied to backwards countries still living in feudalism, though. So, for Russia back then to avoid degeneration there had to be numerous revolutions across Europe. Sadly, they didn't happen, partly due to the failure of the Comintern.

Your last paragraph-- that's the key. How to oppose degeneration of the revolution? International expansion of the revolution, so that the means of production can be utilized for the production of use values to satisfy needs and abolish scarcity globally.

As for recall and equality of payments-- yes, but I think Paul Cockshott [with whom I disagree about many things] is absolutely spot on when he advocates the filling of positions of "leadership" by lot, by random drawings. That would be the only way, IMO, to guarantee equality.

14th July 2010, 08:38

Muzk

14th July 2010, 12:38

14th July 2010, 13:08

Hmm, so it's a good thing I left Trotskyism :p

15th July 2010, 06:54

"Organised bottom to top" and "centralised' is pretty much a contradiction. Unless you stand for the contradiction that is representative "democracy".

Adil3tr

15th July 2010, 08:20

Hmm, so it's a good thing I left Trotskyism :p

listen to a real marxist, the workers can run society themselves. ISO!

Adil3tr

15th July 2010, 08:23

also, as a member of the iso, the soviet union was a nation thrown into state capitalism by a conservative douche who could only real fuck up the ussr when lenin was dead and the bolsheviks murdered

Lyev

16th July 2010, 01:01

"Organised bottom to top" and "centralised' is pretty much a contradiction. Unless you stand for the contradiction that is representative "democracy".No. There needs to made a clear distinction between a "command economy", as seen in the Soviet, Chinese model etc., and a "planned economy". The command economy was a bureaucratic experiment in trying to give socialism down to the working class. It was administrated and organised by a select few only, top-down. Here's Marx's take on the subject, although he left the idea of a "planned economy" quite open. Yet the possibilities of direct worker's control, bottom-upwards, becomes very tangible when the proletariat seize power, at the head of a political (followed by a social) revolution:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; ... When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation ...And furthermore this too:
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.Now in this context, when Marx uses the term "state", we don't mean it in the traditional sense, in that it's an instrument of class rule, because when the proletariat organise as a class and abolish the rule of the bourgeoisie, "class distinctions" will as a result be dissolved and production "concentrated in the hands of the vast association of the whole nation". Yes, Karl can rhyme when he wants. Here's how Trotsky speculated over the issue in The Transitional Program:
The working out of even the most elementary economic plan-from the point of view of the exploited, not the exploiters-is impossible without workers’ control, that is, without the penetration of the workers’ eye into all open and concealed springs of capitalist economy. Committees representing individual business enterprises should meet at conference to choose corresponding committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions and finally, of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers’ control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalised industry when the hour for that eventuality strikes.To be sure, this is definitely a difficult task, but no different qualitatively to organising a strike or demonstration or starting up a trade-union. At any rate, socialism is not some vague dogma that is instituted by a bureaucracy, acting as a ruling class, that can be handed down to the working masses. There's also these three aspects of planning that Trotsky argues for, which I think have were at least alluded to by Muzk:
(1) special state departments, that is, the hierarchical system of plan administration, in the centre and locally; (2) trade, as a system of market regulation; (3) Soviet democracy, as a system for the living regulation by the masses of the structure of the economy.Planning an economy is not simply equal to out-and-out bureaucratism, in the Stalinist sense. No one can rule on behalf of the proletariat. It's the extension of proletarian-based, particpatory democracy to all aspects of our daily lives. And just as the bourgeoisie ruled with capital, and on their right-hand side "bodies of armed men", and just as in a feudal system nobility ruled with "divine rights" etc. and the mystification of the church, the proletariat will rule with this proletarian democracy. This is a dynamic, moving process, as democratic rights and decision-making are gradually extended and furthered into society's every little nook-and-cranny. Luxemburg talked of the subject of self-rule of the proletariat, and abolition of class-rule in it's hitherto-known sense, as a precursor to a fully-fledged communist society. Notice her emphasis on an opposition to Blanquism, i.e., or a small minority ruling on behalf of the proletariat - socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, severed from "direct participation of the masses" will degenerate into what we have seen in some of the failed movements of the past 20th century. Anyway, here's the quote:
Socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class -- that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.

Jimmie Higgins

16th July 2010, 01:27

So Muzk, for all Trotsky's anti-bureaucratism, you still propose bureaucrats? Call me crazy, but I don't think society needs another inefficient and time/resource-wasting bureaucracy. Where's the workers' control of the entire economy in this grand scheme?

Call them what you will, but "bureaucrats" as described by Marx and in "State and Revolution" by Lenin are to be the opposite of bureaucrats as we know them in capitalism.

The point of bureaucracy in capitalism IS to keep a buffer between the people and governance and this is the ultimate source of the corruption and unresponsiveness (when it comes to popular demands) of governmnet in capitalist countries. So while keeping the illusion of a representative government, the real governing is done behind the scenes with lobbyists and the heads of business and so on... the Parliament is just a stage where people play their roles and make speeches and then let it come to nothing in endless procedural bullshit that has little to do with the actual running of the country.

Since workers are a majority class, they would need a much more responsive and accountable way of making collective decisions. With the power rooted in workplace and community councils, any representatives would probably need to be basically messengers empowered only to carry out the will of the workers or other people they represent. So like Muzk said, things like "working man's wages", instant recall, rotating offices, and so on could be used to ensure that "bureaucrats" are basically just there to fulfill concrete tasks needed by workers.

I am not opposed to more de-centralized forms, if that's what workers decide. I think the form is secondary as long as power is rooted in the workers. I prefer a system that was both bottom up and centralized though because I think it would be more efficient and accountable to everyone than a de-centralized system.

16th July 2010, 07:47

Oh shit that's a big block of text. I'm just going to say you won. And besides, I did make the effort to mention that when many Marxists say they want a state, they don't mean that they want a kind of state that we see today (a clear show of one class' supremacy over another). Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

No. There needs to made a clear distinction between a "command economy", as seen in the Soviet, Chinese model etc., and a "planned economy". The command economy was a bureaucratic experiment in trying to give socialism down to the working class. It was administrated and organised by a select few only, top-down.
I was actually being semantic in this case (which I shouldn't have been) due to the lack of a clear definition of what was meant by "organised bottom to top". Did this mean that there would be elected bureaucrats (as some kind of pathetic attempt at workers' democracy) or simply that there would be special purely democratic institutions which the workers used to manage and plan economies on a regional basis? I didn't know, so I acted as if it were the worst case scenario.

16th July 2010, 08:01

The point of bureaucracy in capitalism IS to keep a buffer between the people and governance and this is the ultimate source of the corruption and unresponsiveness (when it comes to popular demands) of governmnet in capitalist countries. So while keeping the illusion of a representative government, the real governing is done behind the scenes with lobbyists and the heads of business and so on... the Parliament is just a stage where people play their roles and make speeches and then let it come to nothing in endless procedural bullshit that has little to do with the actual running of the country.
No argument there.

Since workers are a majority class, they would need a much more responsive and accountable way of making collective decisions. With the power rooted in workplace and community councils, any representatives would probably need to be basically messengers empowered only to carry out the will of the workers or other people they represent.
It seems that you support delegates and not the traditional "representatives" that we find in representative "democracy". I agree with you fully.

So like Muzk said, things like "working man's wages", instant recall, rotating offices, and so on could be used to ensure that "bureaucrats" are basically just there to fulfill concrete tasks needed by workers.
The situation now gets a bit tricky as I have realised you are far from supporting the Stalinist-Capitalist type of bureaucrats which I was arguing against. I am against that type of bureaucracy. What you support is workers' democracy but in a confusingly worded kind of way. You seem to support some sort of system utilising some sort of "economic delegates" rather than a bureaucracy. Well, they would be "delegates" if they existed merely to manage wider regional economies on the democratically-issued commands of workers - which is something I might need you to clarify/confirm.

Jimmie Higgins

16th July 2010, 17:44

The situation now gets a bit tricky as I have realised you are far from supporting the Stalinist-Capitalist type of bureaucrats which I was arguing against. I am against that type of bureaucracy. What you support is workers' democracy but in a confusingly worded kind of way. You seem to support some sort of system utilising some sort of "economic delegates" rather than a bureaucracy. Well, they would be "delegates" if they existed merely to manage wider regional economies on the democratically-issued commands of workers - which is something I might need you to clarify/confirm.

Yeah "delegates" work. It's hard to say what specific things workers will decide so most of what I favor is just based on what Marx describes in the Paris Commune, what Lenin talks about in "state and rev" and of course the fact that councils have been formed from below in many social upheavals from the 1905 Russian Revolution to the community councils after the Argentina uphevals at the beginning of the 00s.

PolishTrotsky

2nd December 2010, 01:37

By a Political Revoltion in drastic means, or attempting to stop degeneratory elements, such as people getting paid more than others, or a Literal Dictatorship of the proletariat. A political Revolution is almost like a Social Revolution, just instead of a Communist Uprising against the Burgoisie, It is an uprising against a Degenerated Worker's State. Also, By the Permenant Revolution theory. However, I don't think a Permenant Revolution is nescessary, and Socialism in one country can work, as Proven by Lenin and Stalin(:()

Struggle

2nd December 2010, 01:45

Trotsky? Marx did that already. Neccessary measures to be taken by a worker's government.

Bureaocrats to be paid according to a maximum wage (usually the wage the worker's they represent get)

Must always be able to be recalled by their council

and rotate, to counter conservative bureaocraticism.

to abolish place-hunting all the different hierarchical positions get the same wage too.

Anyways, have you heard about the theory of permanent revolution? It only applied to backwards countries still living in feudalism, though. So, for Russia back then to avoid degeneration there had to be numerous revolutions across Europe. Sadly, they didn't happen, partly due to the failure of the Comintern.

Marx did not 'do it'. He put forward his belief on how to prevent bureaucracy. However, that does not necessarily mean he was correct, simply because he put forward his views.
A primary idea of having a vanguard is to have debate and discuss without being dogmatic or subjectively aligning yourself to a particular persons opinions.
Perhaps Marx was correct, but do not assume he was correct simply because he had an opinion.

el_chavista

3rd December 2010, 22:39

The question is in the title: What measures do Trotskyists propose to stop the degeneration of the workers state which they so avidly criticise? :thumbup1:
As early as in 1918, neither Lenin nor Trotksy had an idea of the bureaucratic monster they had just powered (Lenin bitterly complained: "It is the same tsarist bureaucracy daubbed in red").

You need to analyze the situation from a 21st-century perspective to realize why direct democracy was dismissed since the 1903 RSDP programme.

A-must-read panflet about the Bolsheviks becoming a "revolutionary aristocracy" is Cockshott's "Concepts of Leadership and Democracy" (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/leadershipconcepts.pdf) ,
from which is this quotation about the "3 anti-bureaucratic Marxist principles":

Principle of recall. This principle, derived from the Commune, was incorporated in the constitution of the USSR ( see further discussion later ), and in the constitution of Arizona. In neither case was it heavily used. If one has a popular assembly that meets regularly and questions its representatives to some higher body, and changes them if their answers are unsatisfactory, then it has some utility, but when we are talking of a person who may represent some 10,000 or 100,000 constituents, then it is less practical. It is then a mechanism with a great deal of inertia since it requires a significant fraction of the constituents to sign a demand for recall, and then requires a ballot.
Getting the signatures will be difficult unless malpractice is very evident. It acts as a safeguard against a representative who grossly abuses their position but no more than that.

Principle of average wage. The aim of this provision is both to economise on taxes, and to ensure that the representatives have a standard of living close to that of the mass of the population. The thought being, that if their own standard of living diverges too much, they will get out of touch with those they are supposed to represent. It is undoubtedly a correct idea, provided that representatives have their travel costs met out of the public purse, and provided that some accomodation is provided for them when attending multi-day meetings. But these necessary expenses can turn out to be the cover for all sorts of undercover luxuries. The expenses charged by members of parliaments in capitalist nations and federations are notorious for this. The problem is that elected representatives usually vote their own collective level of expenses, and these have a tendency to creep up. Because of these loopholes, it is not very effective as a means of ensuring that representatives are in touch with their constituents.

Principle of soviet representation. How did Soviet representation differ from parliamentary representation? It did so in several ways. Probably the most important of which was that instead of being based on a universal franchise. The Soviets were, at least initially, spontaneously formed councils of people whose members share a common social position: workers in a factory, sailors on a ship, soldiers in a regiment.
As base bodies they were overwhelmingly drawn from the lower social classes, either industrial workers, or peasant conscripts. Although the Soviets of soldiers were mainly made up of men who had been farmers, they were now organised in their wartime role as soldiers. As such, they had concerns beyond those of a farmer, and, more importantly, they had the guns with which to enforce their concerns.
They were also bodies with mass participation, so that a significant part of the population was actively involved in debate, discussion and decision making. This gave them a character similar to the mass town assemblies of primitive democracy.
As we said, councils have been thrown up in many social crises. But not all such crises led to revolutions, and of those that did occur, none were as long lived as the Russian one. There were unusually favourable conditions in Russia in 1917 as compared to Italy in 1919.
Without an armed population or mutinous army, radical change, is unlikely to occur. The Communards had the National Guard, formed to defend Paris during the siege. The Russians had units of the army and fleet in muntiny7.
But councils of soldiers and sailors may form without the issue being a successful challenge to the existing state. Whether they do challenge the state depends on whether there is within them an organised and persuasive faction which sees the seizure of power as a principle objective.

redz

4th December 2010, 03:13

...have you heard about the theory of permanent revolution? It only applied to backwards countries still living in feudalism, though. So, for Russia back then to avoid degeneration there had to be numerous revolutions across Europe. Sadly, they didn't happen, partly due to the failure of the Comintern.

Permanent Revolution doesn't just apply to countries under feudalism (darn few of those these days), but basically to any under-developed, colonial, semi-colonial, or neo-colonial country with at least a minimal industrial base. The idea of Perm-Rev is that these countries do not need to "wait" for some kind of bourgeois-revolution phase, and development under capitalism, but rather are immediate candidates for workingclass revolution and basic socialization of the economic system.

The remainder of the statement, regarding the failure of revolutions across Europe (particularly in the advanced capitalist countries such as Germany) is essentially correct.

Redz

RedTrackWorker

4th December 2010, 11:04

Permanent Revolution doesn't just apply to countries under feudalism (darn few of those these days), but basically to any under-developed, colonial, semi-colonial, or neo-colonial country with at least a minimal industrial base. The idea of Perm-Rev is that these countries do not need to "wait" for some kind of bourgeois-revolution phase, and development under capitalism, but rather are immediate candidates for workingclass revolution and basic socialization of the economic system.

The remainder of the statement, regarding the failure of revolutions across Europe (particularly in the advanced capitalist countries such as Germany) is essentially correct.

Redz

I would say that the theory of Permanent Revolution, as later extended by Trotsky but partly inferring things he may not have explicitly stated, harkening back to Marx's original formulation, applies in various ways everywhere, in the sense that it means the working class taking up the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and championing the cause of liberation for all the oppressed. So in the U.S. for instance that means championing Black liberation through socialist revolution.

redz

4th December 2010, 11:41

The question is in the title: What measures do Trotskyists propose to stop the degeneration of the workers state which they so avidly criticise? :thumbup1:

To address briefly the basic question ... There's no silver bullet here, no magic formula, no guarantees. The degeneration of the original Soviet workers state (1917-1923) involved a complexity of factors - serious under-development, very reactionary political-cultural base, isolation, war and the devastation of civil war, invasion by several major imperialist countries, etc., etc. - and it was the first time ever that a combat party of the working class had come to power, so there was no precedent, no experience. That has changed, and perhaps a Bolshevist party achieving power in, say, South Africa or Nigeria or Chile or Mexico or Guatemala or Kazakhstan or Thailand or wherever would have a somewhat better playing field.

Certainly, the Soviet experience is now part of the knowledge base in the repository of the revolutionary Marxist movement. Mistakes are always possible, degeneration is always possible, but at least communists today know to be vigilant against this possibility.

I will also point out that the now-defunct USSR was the one state where the working class actually achieved political power through a workingclass revolution, and the one state where it DEGENERATED. The other workingclass states - China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam - became such by a combination of guerilla war, "accident", response to imperialist aggression, etc. and they had the model and "counterbalance" of the (degenerated) USSR - but they were bureaucratically DEFORMED from the outset.

Redz

RedTrackWorker

5th December 2010, 02:14

To address briefly the basic question ... There's no silver bullet here, no magic formula, no guarantees. The degeneration of the original Soviet workers state (1917-1923) involved a complexity of factors - serious under-development, very reactionary political-cultural base, isolation, war and the devastation of civil war, invasion by several major imperialist countries, etc., etc. - and it was the first time ever that a combat party of the working class had come to power, so there was no precedent, no experience.

Another key factor is that there was no revolutionary international when the Russian workers came to power and the construction of the international was hampered by the degeneration of the Russian revolution. There is no revolutionary international now either, but the difference is that the "vanguard of the vanguard" is aware that there should be and is trying to build one, whereas before August 1914, the best of the Second International was not even trying to build a revolutionary international (or even faction in the second), and after August, only a small number was. Even in 1919 after the Russian revolution, the German Communists were not convinced of the need for a third international at that time, and the delegate only voted for it because the German revolution broke out-- showing the great political unevenness even among the best revolutionaries of that time who were grounded in the workers' movements and organizations.
So not only do we have the experience of the Russian revolution, which despite its degeneration and overthrow has permanently contributed to the workers' struggle, we have the experience of that revolution trying to extend itself internationally through the Comintern.