Ernst Mandel

[subcp]

I'm a bit underread on the differences between Trotskyist tendencies, and Mandel's is one that I know nothing about honestly.

Are any groups of the 'Mandelite' Fourth International still around? What distinguishes Mandelites from other branches of Trotskyism (Cliff, Grant, etc.)?

[The Idler]

Mandel was Orthodox Trotskyism which involves Soviet defencism. Cliff was unorthodox Trotskyism which doesn't necessarily involve Soviet defencism. Grant, I can't remember.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I pretty sure this is the remaining "mandelist" fourth international:
http://internationalviewpoint.org/
someone more knowlegdeable please correct me if wrong.

From what I´ve heard they no longer adhere to a demoratic- centralist vanguard party, have a tendency to dissolve themselves into broader openly reformist formations and are often criticised by other trots for opportunism.
The Revolutionary Communist league in France was their biggest section before the dissolved themselves to form the Anti- Capitalist party.

[subcp]

Oh wow I didn't realize the LCR was Mandelite.

Some of his economic theory is interesting in that it is close to certain varieties of communist theories about changes inthe state and global economy after WWII and again after 1968-1975, just confused and using made-up terminology (like using the term 'neo-capitalism' to designate completely separate phenomenon- like the penetration of the commodity form into everyday life to a larger degree, as well as greater state intervention in NATO bloc countries, etc.). Some early situationist texts use Mandel's terminology, which was quite odd (though probably not surprising given his prestige as a Trotskyist leader and theorist in the 60's in France).



Mandel was Orthodox Trotskyism which involves Soviet defencism. Cliff was unorthodox Trotskyism which doesn't necessarily involve Soviet defencism. Grant, I can't remember.

Grant was for "deep entrism", Cliff for his incredibly weak version of state capitalism theory, so that means when people talk about 'Mandelites' its basically orthodox Trotskyism of the post-1940 variety? Maybe I'm confusing Mandel with Pablo (who I also know nothing about other than the factionalism in the Fourth International).

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

Oh wow I didn't realize the LCR was Mandelite.

Some of his economic theory is interesting in that it is close to certain varieties of communist theories about changes inthe state and global economy after WWII and again after 1968-1975, just confused and using made-up terminology (like using the term 'neo-capitalism' to designate completely separate phenomenon- like the penetration of the commodity form into everyday life to a larger degree, as well as greater state intervention in NATO bloc countries, etc.). Some early situationist texts use Mandel's terminology, which was quite odd (though probably not surprising given his prestige as a Trotskyist leader and theorist in the 60's in France).
Yeah, as a marxist economist he is probably most famous for his work on "late- capitalism". I´m vaguely familiar with what he meant but I haven´t read his works on it so I can´t really comment.




Grant was for "deep entrism", Cliff for his incredibly weak version of state capitalism theory, so that means when people talk about 'Mandelites' its basically orthodox Trotskyism of the post-1940 variety? Maybe I'm confusing Mandel with Pablo (who I also know nothing about other than the factionalism in the Fourth International).
I´m not sure trots would agree with Mandel being labelled an orthodox one. From what I´ve gather his politics were kind of a luxemburgian- trotskyist hybrid. But then again, what is orthodox trotskyism?
The post- war boom in western europe and the establishment of the "peoples democracies" in eastern europe created a lot of theoretical confusion and disagreements among trots after the second world war and I think there lies the genesis of it´s fragmentation into different trends and tendencies.

[Ostrinski]

He was very soft on Stalinism, as was most of the post-war Fourth International if not all. He was a "Pabloite" in that he bought into the deformed workers' state business, called for Soviet defencism in times of war, and referenced the Soviet Union as a transitional society between capitalism and socialism.

I still like some of his writings, though, I'll have to admit. Many of his little pamphlets and such are good introductory texts to Marxism, such as Introduction to Marxist Economics and The Place of Marxism In History. He wrote a lot, actually, and I don't think he's entirely worthless. All in all I think he was a decent Marxist with horrible politics.

[sixdollarchampagne]

Years ago, I read that the USec "Fourth International" in which Ernest Mandel was a leading comrade (there are other "FI"s, for sure), sought to found an "International" in which anarchists also participated. Maybe that was a polemical excess or an outright mistake by a critic of Mandel.

What distinguished Grant from Trotskyism was Grant's unshakeable love for the pro-war, imperialist British Labour Party. Grant insisted that it was a "law" of history that the masses *always* move left through their "traditional" organizations, which is simply not true; to take a random example, some years ago, seven million German voters cast ballots for a relatively new formation, the "Linke," rather than voting for the "traditional" SPD.

In contrast to Grant, Mandel and his international built (small) new organizations in Britain and elsewhere.

Mandel and the USec were deeply involved in the 1968 Mai-Juin upsurge of the French working class. When I was an undergraduate, we were privileged to host Mandel's comrade, Gisela, who gave a speech about the prolonged mass strike of the French workers. If memory serves, the meeting for comrade Gisela was the one of the biggest things the left at my alma mater did, while I was at college. Another biggie was the (spontaneous) national student strike, that we also participated in, in the wake of the shootings of students in Ohio and Mississippi (at Kent State and Jackson State), in 1970.

[subcp]

So that means that Pablo was an earlier 'leader' of the FI (or, one of them)? Is that where the Def.WS theory came from?

I'm not sure how Mandel could be characterized as a Luxemburgist- haven't noticed any traces in the economic articles I've read so far.

[sixdollarchampagne]

So that means that Pablo was an earlier 'leader' of the FI (or, one of them)? Is that where the Def.WS theory came from?

I'm not sure how Mandel could be characterized as a Luxemburgist- haven't noticed any traces in the economic articles I've read so far.

Pablo was a post-World War 2 leader of official Trotskyism, who believed in entrism and is considered by some Trotskyists to be responsible for the disappearance of several sections of the Fourth International during the period after the war. If memory serves, Cannon, of the (US) SWP, organized against Pablo's leadership of the International, precisely because Pablo's leadership was so disastrous for the movement.

To be honest, I don't know where the theory of deformed workers' states comes from, though now that I think about it, that theory probably has its roots in Trotsky's excellent study of the USSR, The Revolution Betrayed. The Sparts, in a publication of theirs on Cuba, did a very good job describing a deformed workers' state, IMHO. The Spart document, "Genesis of Pabloism," gives an account of post-war Trotskyism; it is well worth reading.

[blake 3:17]

I'm probably the only "Mandelite" on the board active on the board at present.

To be fair to Pablo, and to all of Trotskyist leaders, they thought the Second War was going to lead very quickly to lead to world revolution with a Trotskyist leadership. In retrospect that seems totally absurd and a fundamentalist reading of the Transitional Programme.

The immediate post-war period was a revolutionary period -- the Yugoslavian and Chinese revolutions, the anti-colonial movements, strike waves across Europe and the US. Most Trotskyists had completely overestimated their own abilities and underestimated the strength and legitimacy of social democratic, Stalinist and other reformist and centrist currents.

When I joined the USFI I was recruited to the majority current which stood for pluralism, regroupment, and trying to break with the sect model, which is easier said than done. In some countries there are two USFI groups, one majority, one minority. The majority tends to be less organized but better liked.

There's a good documentary on Mandel. You can find it in parts on YouTube. It starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QoBfIYWdo8

The biography of him published by Verso a couple of years ago is excellent. It reads like a thriller! For a workaholic economist he had a pretty exciting life. And the bio makes a lot of very good criticisms. I think the one that many of us would make was that he was often naively optimistic.

[diagrammatic]

Glad you'd brought up Mandel; I knew next to nothing of his politics, so this thread is a big help.

He wrote a lengthy preface to one of the English translations of Capital, which I found comprehensive and remarkably cogent. I spotted his name on the spine of a bulky used paperback just last week, and picked it up. The book's titled simply: Marxist Economic Theory. Anyone familiar with it? It runs a little over 800 pages (!!), which strikes me as intriguing but a little prohibitive. I'd love to know a little in advance (if it's a dud, or dated, or just plain wrong), though I think I'll read the book, regardless.

[subcp]

I've read that Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism are his two best known works. Some of the articles on the MIA (about 'neo-capitalism') hint at what his books would be like. Like you I'm interested in learning more; but I've got plenty of criticism so far for his concepts. Some of his conclusions and analysis seem superficial, and I'm starting to think the one big accomplishment credited to him (predicting the end of the post-war boom accurately) was based on a pretty general and unsubstantiated guess in a short article, rather than a more worked-out methodology and principled prediction.

[sixdollarchampagne]

I worked my way through part of Mandel's Marxist Economic Theory. The thing I remember is that the author took pains to situate his examples in a Third-World setting. My impression is that was a conscious decision on his part; it probably makes his volumes on economic theory unique.

As I remember, his essay at the beginning of the first volume of Capital was extremely well-written. I thought that was a very readable translation, though I only got about half-way through the volume.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I'm not sure how Mandel could be characterized as a Luxemburgist- haven't noticed any traces in the economic articles I've read so far.
not his economics but his views on organisation are characterised as semi- luxembourgist by some.

[The Idler]

I think its already been alluded to but correct me if I'm wrong;
Mandel's departure from Trotsky was on the conception of the Soviet Union.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

So that means that Pablo was an earlier 'leader' of the FI (or, one of them)? Is that where the Def.WS theory came from?

I'm not sure how Mandel could be characterized as a Luxemburgist- haven't noticed any traces in the economic articles I've read so far.
Pablo was one of the leaders that remained after the carnage of WWII. He not only defended the USSR (as any orthodox Trotskyist should), he called for deep entry into Stalinist parties in Eastern Europe. His idea "centuries of deformed (i.e. Stalinist) workers states" basically was a liquidation of Trotskyism. If you are really interested, the Spartacists published an article around 1972 called The Genesis of Pabloism that is quite good. It really explains the origins. It is available on the International Bolshevik Tendency's web site (Marxist Archive/Spartacist Issue 21). I'm not a big fan of this now moribund split from the Sparts, but they have a lot of excellent documents on line, and their formal political program is peachy. Pablo wound up serving in the government of Ben Bella in Algeria -- an ignominious but fitting end for someone that helped destroy the Fourth International.

Mandel was at times an "orthodox" cover for Pabloism. He was erudite, could write pretty well and was an okay speaker. Pretty weak of political will, theoretically going wherever the popular winds blew. The US SWP split with Mandel and Pablo's group as did a number of other FI sections and formed the International Committee, I think in 1954. The SWP drifted righward for the next decade. When they decided that Castro was the second coming of Trotsky and Lenin, they split with the IC, and joined with Mandel's USEC.

The LCR was a pretty large "far left" group in France when I was becoming active in the late 70s. But they tailed whatever was in vogue -- Third World Guerilla movements, Student Vanguard, and after 68 for a while they discovered workers again.

I reject the idea that Cliff was any kind of Trotskyist. His characterization of the USSR and failure to defend it are simply not Trotskyist. Mandel was a centrist that, along with Pablo, led the FI to its political destruction. So while some of his writings are okay, his history is one of political cowardice and betrayal.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I've read that Marxist Economic Theory and Late Capitalism are his two best known works. Some of the articles on the MIA (about 'neo-capitalism') hint at what his books would be like. Like you I'm interested in learning more; but I've got plenty of criticism so far for his concepts. Some of his conclusions and analysis seem superficial, and I'm starting to think the one big accomplishment credited to him (predicting the end of the post-war boom accurately) was based on a pretty general and unsubstantiated guess in a short article, rather than a more worked-out methodology and principled prediction.
Comrade, Mandel was superficial -- you are quite correct -- if you were to read his writing from different periods they would reflect what was hot in rad/lib circles, they would not be good sources of Marxist analyses. I heard him speak once. He was bragging about how the USEC had deputies in the Brazilian Parliament (because they had entered Lula's Workers Party). It sounded impressive, until I realized that these "deputies" were loyal to Lula and not the USEC. He said nothing about actually fighting for socialism in Brazil. And nothing about raising any opposition to the WPs anti-working class policies. This was typical for his him.

[Art Vandelay]

Trotsky was close to abandoning the theory of DWS by the end of his life, to claim that simply because one doesn't uphold the theory makes them incapable of being a Trotskyist seems absurd and dogmatic to me.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Trotsky was close to abandoning the theory of DWS by the end of his life, to claim that simply because one doesn't uphold the theory makes them incapable of being a Trotskyist seems absurd and dogmatic to me.
What makes you say that Trotsky was close to abandoning Soviet Defensism? One of his last big political fights was in close collaboration with Cannon against Burnham, Abern and Shachtman -- because they were abandoning defense of the USSR. The volume of Trotsky's letters and documents regarding this fight are compiled in the book, In Defense of Marxism. Hard to see that he was just about to change that. Are there some important writings about which I am unaware?

[Art Vandelay]

I'm referring to 'The USSR in War,' which comes from In Defense of Marxism.

[Sentinel]

Mandel and the USec were deeply involved in the 1968 Mai-Juin upsurge of the French working class.


I've no doubt he was quite involved and committed (I generally have a lot of respect for him for various reasons), but I've also heard that Mandel royally failed to anticipate the protests. What I heard was that he just months prior to the events argued, that it would take at least 20 years before a revolutionary mass movement would emerge in the west.

And also, that Mandel's parked car was incidentally burned during the first protests, almost as some kind of 'poetic justice' for having been theoretically wrong. Being a much younger man myself, I really can't know for sure how this actually went down (even though I heard it from what I consider a reliable source) - so please don't flame me for bringing it up, and please correct it by all means if you have different information.

But it's certainly an entertaining story. :lol:

[sixdollarchampagne]

I've no doubt he was quite involved and committed (I generally have a lot of respect for him for various reasons), but I've also heard that Mandel royally failed to anticipate the protests. What I heard was that he just months prior to the events argued, that it would take at least 20 years before a revolutionary mass movement would emerge in the west.

And also, that Mandel's parked car was incidentally burned during the first protests, almost as some kind of 'poetic justice' for having been theoretically wrong....

But it's certainly an entertaining story. :lol:

¡Hola, estimado comandante!

It has been some 45 years since I heard Gisela, Ernest Mandel's conrade, speak about Mai-Juin, the prolonged mass strike in France, but I have the most distinct memory, from 1968, that Mandel himself gave a speech to a group of students, just before the French mass strike erupted in '68, and from that, I remember thinking when I was an undergraduate, that Mandel himself had played something of a role in igniting Mai-Juin in France. So it was very interesting to read your post, honorado comandante.

I have never been able to find a copy of Ernest Mandel's biography, having looked for it in bookstores and libraries in several states, over the years. That is one book I would love to read, and it might shed light on Mandel and Mai-Juin. The USec was the international tendency that the YSA was affiliated with, when I was young, and I look back on those days with fondness. I can still remember where I was, walking across Key Bridge, over the Potomac, in 1968, when a friend informed me of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Moscow's belated response to the Prague Spring and the call for "socialism with a human face."

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I'm referring to 'The USSR in War,' which comes from In Defense of Marxism.
Well, I'll have another look at it and get back to you.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Trotsky was close to abandoning the theory of DWS by the end of his life, to claim that simply because one doesn't uphold the theory makes them incapable of being a Trotskyist seems absurd and dogmatic to me.
Okay - I reread some of it. Trotsky is arguing FOR Soviet Defensism and FOR the idea that the USSR is a workers' state, albeit with severe bureaucratic deformations. And the entire book, most of which was written after "The USSR in War" is all about a faction fight where Trotsky unambiguously opposed a recharacterization of the the Soviet Bureaucracy as a new class. He argued strenuously against abandoning Soviet Defensism.

One can argue that Trotsky might have abandoned these positions over time, but forgive me if I can't see any evidence that he was preparing to do so any time soon.

[blake 3:17]

On the question of Mandel being a Luxemburgist -- He was absolutely insistent on of democracy as being necessary for socialism. The main reason I'd still call myself a Mandelite is this document from the USFI's 1985 World Congress: http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article921



And also, that Mandel's parked car was incidentally burned during the first protests, almost as some kind of 'poetic justice' for having been theoretically wrong. Being a much younger man myself, I really can't know for sure how this actually went down (even though I heard it from what I consider a reliable source) - so please don't flame me for bringing it up, and please correct it by all means if you have different information.


I believe his car was destroyed in a melee, but by happenstance. There have been reports that he cheered when it happened and other Left leaders made fun of him of him for that.

This is a man who WANTED to be sent to Auschwitz for political reasons and cheated death twice by appealing to the soldiers class consciousness.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I don't know -- Mandel was certainly brave in his youth -- but a political chameleon later on.

As for the document you referenced - a lot of it is good, orthodox Trotskyist program. But the USEC betrays its real program with the sections on Solidarity in Poland. Their idea of defense of the bureaucratized workers states was to support Solidarnosc which absolutely did not have a program of political revolution to create socialist democracy. Their program was counterrevolution to restore capitalism. At first it was not clear what Solidarity was, but by 1985 this was unmistakably clear. Only a tad better than supporting the Mullahs in Afghanistan.

[blake 3:17]

Thanks for pointing out the sections on Poland. I'd forgotten they were there.

Mandel was terribly naive about Eastern Europe. In all honesty, I don't think he was capable of seeing what horrors could be unleashed with the collapse of Stalinism. He thought that workers democracy was immediately on the table.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Thanks for pointing out the sections on Poland. I'd forgotten they were there.

Mandel was terribly naive about Eastern Europe. In all honesty, I don't think he was capable of seeing what horrors could be unleashed with the collapse of Stalinism. He thought that workers democracy was immediately on the table.
Well, he was always amenable to elevating non-revolutionary forces to being potentially revolutionary. And this kind of naivete from a veteran leader of a fairly large ostensibly Trotskyist tendency is a bit of a problem, no? Other tendencies were able to see that Solidarnosc's program owed more to the Catholic Church than to Marx. And they were able to predict the catastrophe that counterrevolution in the USSR and Eastern Europe would be.

[Lucretia]

Okay - I reread some of it. Trotsky is arguing FOR Soviet Defensism and FOR the idea that the USSR is a workers' state, albeit with severe bureaucratic deformations. And the entire book, most of which was written after "The USSR in War" is all about a faction fight where Trotsky unambiguously opposed a recharacterization of the the Soviet Bureaucracy as a new class. He argued strenuously against abandoning Soviet Defensism.

One can argue that Trotsky might have abandoned these positions over time, but forgive me if I can't see any evidence that he was preparing to do so any time soon.

You and 9mm are both correct, I think. You are right that, prior to his death, Trotsky unambiguously supported the political line of military defense of the Soviet Union. But I think what 9mm is onto is a growing hint not only that Trotsky was perfectly willing to abandon his position, but that he believed that the outcome of WWII was the test case for determining its accuracy.

Which is why in "The USSR at War," you see all sorts of revisions to his own theory and understanding that Trotsky is willing to entertain on the basis of different potential outcomes to the war -- one of them being that the Stalinist bureaucracy might represent a class society (though, in the case he mentions, a bureaucratic-collectivist class). These are not the musings of somebody who is absolutely certain that his theory is right, and wants to embalm it for all time and set it on the shelf next to "deformed workers' states." It's the writing of somebody who believes, given the facts he currently has on hand and the method he has for analyzing those facts, that he has made the best effort he can to understand the current conjunction, but who knows that such an effort might not be good enough.

The reason that Trotsky was so open-ended in his assessment, so adamant about testing out the theory, was that knew the situation in the Soviet Union was unlike any that the world had ever seen. As he says in The Revolution Betrayed (p. 248-249):

"Another difference is no less important. The Soviet bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order by methods of its own to defend the social conquests. But the very fact of its appropriation of political power in a country where the principal means of production are in the hands of the state creates a new and hitherto unknown relation between the bureaucracy and the riches of the nation. The means of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, ‘belongs’ to the bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and be legalized, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian revolution."

This fascinating quote points to something that many ortho-Trots usually overlook: that Trotsky opened the door to the possibility that nationalized property forms might not necessarily represent a "dictatorship of the proletariat." The bureacracy's ownership only need be "legalized" -- something that can happen through either privatization of state property, which is obviously what Trotsky had in mind, but also through the establishment and enforcement of independent juridical relations among separate industries and factories, thereby rendering them commodity producers.

You can also see these doubts clearly in other of his writings. For instance, in his essay "The Workers' State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism," Trotsky writes:

"At the same time, ... despite monstrous bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet state still remains the historical instrument of the working class insofar as it assures the development of economy and culture on the basis of nationalized means of production, and, by virtue of this, prepares the conditions for a genuine emancipation of the toilers through the liquidation of the bureaucracy and of social inequality."

What makes the Soviet state a workers' state? Not just nationalized property forms, but the fact that nationalized property forms are militating in the direction of the weakening of the bureaucracy and the advance to socialism. Or as Trotsky relates in one of his later essays, collected in In Defense of Marxism (p. 19):

"The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or another area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in the consciousness and organization of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this one, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to world revolution."

Trotsky repeatedly emphasizes that his stress on nationalized property forms/relations is the result of the idea that they carry with them a logic of their own, incompatible with capitalist relations of production, that necessarily eats away at bureaucratic power and drives in the direction of socialism. Trotsky's speculation about the outcome of WWII, as well as the proliferation of so-called workers' states founded solely by property nationalization, with no mass workers' uprisings, seems to be suggest very strongly that Trotsky would not be an "orthodox" Trotskyist if he had lived another five or six years.

[Art Vandelay]

I just re-read "The USSR in War" and these are the types of comments that I was referring to; I think it is quite clear that Trotsky's conviction in the theory of the Degenerated Worker's State, was much less stable and solidified as many make out. There is no question he was still a firm believer in the theory, given the material conditions in which he wrote this piece; however I think it is obvious that his continued support for the theory hinged on the outcome of WWII.


Scientifically and politically – and not purely terminologically – the question poses itself as follows: does the bureaucracy represent a temporary growth on a social organism or has this growth already become transformed into an historically indispensable organ? Social excrescences can be the product of an “accidental” (i.e. temporary and extraordinary) enmeshing of historical circumstances. A social organ (and such is every class, including an exploiting class) can take shape only as a result of the deeply rooted inner needs of production itself. If we do not answer this question, then the entire controversy will degenerate into sterile toying with words.


If this war provokes, as we firmly believe, a proletarian revolution, it must inevitably lead to the overthrow of the bureaucracy in the USSR and regeneration of Soviet democracy on a far higher economic and cultural basis than in 1918. In that case the question as to whether the Stalinist bureaucracy was a “class” or a growth on the workers’ state will be automatically solved. To every single person it will become clear that in the process of the development of the world revolution the Soviet bureaucracy was only an episodic relapse.

If, however, it is conceded that the present war will provoke not revolution but a decline of the proletariat, then there remains another alternative: the further decay of monopoly capitalism, its further fusion with the state and the replacement of democracy wherever it still remained by a totalitarian regime. The inability of the proletariat to take into its hands the leadership of society could actually lead under these conditions to the growth of a new exploiting class from the Bonapartist fascist bureaucracy.


War accelerates the various political processes. It may accelerate the process of the revolutionary regeneration of the USSR. But it may also accelerate the process of its final degeneration. For this reason it is indispensable that follow painstakingly and without prejudice these modifications which war introduces into the internal life of the USSR so that we may give ourselves a timely accounting of them.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I think comrades, that the ultimate outcome for the USSR actually does verify the DWS view. The Bureaucracy was a growth on the USSR, not a new organ. They were not a class. They had no historical task to fulfill. They began as a drag and a drain on society and were never anything else. And due to their "leadership" the USSR suffered a return of capitalism. I think the current situation in China will also resolve in the not-too-distant future.


A social organ (and such is every class, including an exploiting class) can take shape only as a result of the deeply rooted inner needs of production itself.

This, I think is the key quote. The Stalinist bureaucracies have never met this criterion. Yes, Trotsky was overly optimistic about revolution after WWII -- I don't think that would have changed his view of the USSR.

[Lucretia]

I think comrades, that the ultimate outcome for the USSR actually does verify the DWS view. The Bureaucracy was a growth on the USSR, not a new organ. They were not a class. They had no historical task to fulfill. They began as a drag and a drain on society and were never anything else. And due to their "leadership" the USSR suffered a return of capitalism. I think the current situation in China will also resolve in the not-too-distant future.

I don't think spheres balance on the points of pyramids for over half a century. Nor do I think bureaucrats create workers' states, deformed or otherwise. But that's neither here nor there. This thread isn't about debating the deformed workers' state theory (theories). It seemed that a side discussion began on the topic of whether Trotsky seem to be increasingly open to considering alternative positions on the class nature of the Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet society, especially if his predictions about WWII did not pan out. I think he was, and I provided some quotes that I think demonstrate he was.

The question of whether post-war history corroborated his predictions in a way that would have led him to double down on his earlier analyses will always be a matter of speculation. I happen to think it led to outcomes -- namely nationalizations without mass workers' uprisings needing to be crushed by bureaucrats -- that would have compelled him to reject his earlier empiricist conflation of the nationalized property form with a proletarian logic of state power. Otherwise, he would have had to abandon his earlier formulation about the bedrock principles of his analysis: that property nationalization was a secondary criterion behind workers' revolutionary agency in determining the class nature of a state or other social entity. I know which outcome seems more likely to me -- the alteration of the concrete analysis rather than the abandonment of the first principles. You may disagree.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I don't think spheres balance on the points of pyramids for over half a century. Nor do I think bureaucrats create workers' states, deformed or otherwise. But that's neither here nor there. This thread isn't about debating the deformed workers' state theory (theories). It seemed that a side discussion began on the topic of whether Trotsky seem to be increasingly open to considering alternative positions on the class nature of the Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet society, especially if his predictions about WWII did not pan out. I think he was, and I provided some quotes that I think demonstrate he was.

The question of whether post-war history corroborated his predictions in a way that would have led him to double down on his earlier analyses will always be a matter of speculation. I happen to think it led to outcomes -- namely nationalizations without mass workers' uprisings needing to be crushed by bureaucrats -- that would have compelled him to reject his earlier empiricist conflation of the nationalized property form with a proletarian logic of state power. Otherwise, he would have had to abandon his earlier formulation about the bedrock principles of his analysis: that property nationalization was a secondary criterion behind workers' revolutionary agency in determining the class nature of a state or other social entity. I know which outcome seems more likely to me -- the alteration of the concrete analysis rather than the abandonment of the first principles. You may disagree.
I think we get caught on different facets of Trotsky's analysis. I see what you are saying -- and it is not certain that Trotsky would have called the Eastern European countries workers states. And certainly there was a lot of confusion in the Trotskyist movement at the time. But it is crystal clear to me that Trotsky's analysis of the class nature of bureaucracy was correct and borne out by subsequent events. No way do they qualify as a class. I have a very hard time seeing past that.

Since the impetus for the Soviet State was a proletarian revolution, I think there was plenty of room for Trotsky to defend it after WWII, without falling into Cliffism or some other variant -- all of which tended to line up with cold war "democracies" against the USSR. In terms of history, the Soviet Bureaucracy was short-lived and unnecessary. Why elevate them to a class? Wasn't this mostly for the purpose of giving up a rather unpopular defense of a state that was frequently rather awkward to defend?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

In my, possibly insufficiently informed, estimate Mandel remains an important theoretician due to (1) his detailed economic work, and (2) his defense of the standard Trotskyist account of the centrist regime against the revisionist efforts of Shachtman etc. I was not aware that he was so closely associated with Pablo, though; I thought Mandel, of all people, would not be taken in by the lunacy of "centuries of deformed workers' states". And that quote about Solidarity seems to indicate that he lost the thread a bit towards the end of his life; if that is the case, it's a pity.


I don't think spheres balance on the points of pyramids for over half a century.

They might, in proper contexts; and the context of the Cold War etc. etc. seems to have granted the centrist bureaucracy an extraordinarily long life. But then again, much the same holds for, for example, the Argentinean military regime, and note that the military chiefs in Argentina (and in Chile etc.) were also a stratum, not a class.


Nor do I think bureaucrats create workers' states, deformed or otherwise.

I am not so sure; the bureaucratic deformation in the Soviet state predates the centrist regime, it seems to me, but the construction of the workers' state did not halt in that period. And even the centrist bureaucracy seems to have accomplished the proletarianisation of the peasantry. Of course, this is not exactly ideal, but that seems to be what the material reality demanded.

Not to mention that the bureaucrats did not act alone; the voting record alone demonstrates that centrist parties had significant popular support in Eastern Europe.

[Lucretia]

Trotsky's attributing to the Soviet bureaucracy a petty bourgeois character as historical actors was the result of him seeing the location in property relations they occupied as resulting from being sandwiched between workers and their state on the one hand, and capitalist counter-revolutionary forces both inside and outside of Russia on the other. In this sense, and this sense alone, the bureaucracy was "centrist." It was NOT to suggest that the bureaucrats did not have "interests," or that those interests did not push the bureaucrats in the direction of capitalist restoration and opposition to socialism.

Trotsky, especially in the late 1930s, argued that the bureaucracy's interests, its lust for privilege sated to ever-greater degrees through its power over the state-owned means of production, made it counter-revolutionary and opposed to socialism, not "neutral"or indifferent about whether to move back toward capitalism or forward to socialism. It was precisely their interests in self-aggrandizement that, he believed, compelled them to want to transform themselves into a class by "seek supports for itself in property relations" ([I]Revolution Betrayed). In other words, the bureaucrats did have an interest in ensuring its own (and its descendants') reproduction by overhauling the proletarian logic of the state, which Trotsky believed contradicted the existence of bureaucratism and was an instrument pushing toward socialist equality by virtue of its proletarian logic. What prevented the bureaucrats from pursuing this route, he believed, was supposedly the bureaucrats' fear of retribution from the workers. Thus the bureaucrats were of a petty bourgeois character not by virtue of lacking interests or fighting for them in opposition to socialism, but by virtue of their relationship to the state. According to Trotsky, they controlled it, but because of the relatively even balance of forces in the class struggle for socialism, they were not able to impose their logic of interests into the structure of the state -- through its property relations, I'm sure Trotsky would say.

Thus, while in his earlier analyses (in the late 1920s and early 1930s, before he even realized that a political counter-revolution was necessary) Trotsky certainly believed that the bureaucracy was "not an independent historical factor, but an instrument, an executive organ of the classes," his later analyses show him moving decidedly away from the idea of the bureaucracy as an indecisive mass floating without concern or interest in a sea of class struggle. He recognized that they were historical actors with a definite set of interests that contradicted the interests of the workers.

As in the case of the class nature of the Soviet state, it is important to understand that Trotsky's thinking evolved historically, and that he was open to the possibility of additional evolution and revision in his analyses.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Trotsky's attributing to the Soviet bureaucracy a petty bourgeois character as historical actors was the result of him seeing the location in property relations they occupied as resulting from being sandwiched between workers and their state on the one hand, and capitalist counter-revolutionary forces both inside and outside of Russia on the other. In this sense, and this sense alone, the bureaucracy was "centrist." It was NOT to suggest that the bureaucrats did not have "interests," or that those interests did not push the bureaucrats in the direction of capitalist restoration and opposition to socialism.

Trotsky, especially in the late 1930s, argued that the bureaucracy's interests, its lust for privilege sated to ever-greater degrees through its power over the state-owned means of production, made it counter-revolutionary and opposed to socialism, not "neutral"or indifferent about whether to move back toward capitalism or forward to socialism. It was precisely their interests in self-aggrandizement that, he believed, compelled them to want to transform themselves into a class by "seek supports for itself in property relations" ([I]Revolution Betrayed). In other words, the bureaucrats did have an interest in ensuring its own (and its descendants') reproduction by overhauling the proletarian logic of the state, which Trotsky believed contradicted the existence of bureaucratism and was an instrument pushing toward socialist equality by virtue of its proletarian logic. What prevented the bureaucrats from pursuing this route, he believed, was supposedly the bureaucrats' fear of retribution from the workers. Thus the bureaucrats were of a petty bourgeois character not by virtue of lacking interests or fighting for them in opposition to socialism, but by virtue of their relationship to the state. According to Trotsky, they controlled it, but because of the relatively even balance of forces in the class struggle for socialism, they were not able to impose their logic of interests into the structure of the state -- through its property relations, I'm sure Trotsky would say.

Thus, while in his earlier analyses (in the late 1920s and early 1930s, before he even realized that a political counter-revolution was necessary) Trotsky certainly believed that the bureaucracy was "not an independent historical factor, but an instrument, an executive organ of the classes," his later analyses show him moving decidedly away from the idea of the bureaucracy as an indecisive mass floating without concern or interest in a sea of class struggle. He recognized that they were historical actors with a definite set of interests that contradicted the interests of the workers.

As in the case of the class nature of the Soviet state, it is important to understand that Trotsky's thinking evolved historically, and that he was open to the possibility of additional evolution and revision in his analyses.
I believe he called for a a political revolution rather than a political "counter-revolution." In any case, comrade, I agree with most of your post. But Trotsky stressed that the bureaucracy was not homogeneous -- that it contained every shade of political leaning from revolutionary to fascist. In my mind, history confirmed that the soviet bureaucracy was no more than a cancer on the Soviet workers state. Check out the political trajectory of the tendencies that abandoned defense of the USSR. It is not pretty.

[Lucretia]

I believe he called for a a political revolution rather than a political "counter-revolution." In any case, comrade, I agree with most of your post. But Trotsky stressed that the bureaucracy was not homogeneous -- that it contained every shade of political leaning from revolutionary to fascist. In my mind, history confirmed that the soviet bureaucracy was no more than a cancer on the Soviet workers state. Check out the political trajectory of the tendencies that abandoned defense of the USSR. It is not pretty.

It is correct to stress that the bureaucracy includes a range of people with different economic and political positions, and that even for somebody like me who believes that the bureaucracy became a ruling class, not every last employee of the Soviet state was a part of this class. Some, for example, continued to be petty bourgeois in the sense that Trotsky described -- sandwiched between forces of capital and the working class. It was those at the top whose sole function was the reproduction of political relations of domination and surplus extraction -- who, in other words, were the pure embodiment of capital even without being property "owners" ala the bourgeoisie -- who were the ruling class.

I know your views on state capitalism derive from what you see as undesirable programmatic consequences, even in areas not directly related to the issue of defensism, of the groups that refused to uphold the idea of the Soviet Union as a DWS. I disagree with your views for reasons I have stated in other threads, and I think it would be best to leave it at that before we sidetrack the thread anymore.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

In my, possibly insufficiently informed, estimate Mandel remains an important theoretician due to (1) his detailed economic work, and (2) his defense of the standard Trotskyist account of the centrist regime against the revisionist efforts of Shachtman etc. I was not aware that he was so closely associated with Pablo, though; I thought Mandel, of all people, would not be taken in by the lunacy of "centuries of deformed workers' states". And that quote about Solidarity seems to indicate that he lost the thread a bit towards the end of his life; if that is the case, it's a pity.



They might, in proper contexts; and the context of the Cold War etc. etc. seems to have granted the centrist bureaucracy an extraordinarily long life. But then again, much the same holds for, for example, the Argentinean military regime, and note that the military chiefs in Argentina (and in Chile etc.) were also a stratum, not a class.



I am not so sure; the bureaucratic deformation in the Soviet state predates the centrist regime, it seems to me, but the construction of the workers' state did not halt in that period. And even the centrist bureaucracy seems to have accomplished the proletarianisation of the peasantry. Of course, this is not exactly ideal, but that seems to be what the material reality demanded.

Not to mention that the bureaucrats did not act alone; the voting record alone demonstrates that centrist parties had significant popular support in Eastern Europe.

Mandel was closely associated with Pablo, and never came out, as far as I know, against the centuries of deformed workers states line. Really, this guy blew with the wind almost his entire political career. So some of his writing is worthwhile, he was not a good political leader. Look what happened to the strongest USEC section in France, the LCR -- it dissolved into an amorphous grouping that could not be considered Trotskyist.

Comrades might not be aware of the fight of the Internationalist Tendency in the US SWP in the early seventies -- these were essentially supporters of Mandel and his centrist tendency vs. the reformist leadership of the SWP. The IT had over 100 supporters in the SWP. Mandel did not lift a finger to fight for them and let them be purged. He also did not publicly object to the names of the folks in this faction being given to the US federal government by the SWP -- the SWP purged this faction while they were mounting a law suit against the US government. The government had justified their spying and interference with the SWP stating the SWP was connected to "terrorist" organizations. Well, the Mandelites were heavily into cheerleading guerilla movements at that time(any way the wind blows. . . ). At some time during arguments the judge made it explicit that since the SWP had gotten rid of the nasty IT charges that they were connected to terrorism were incorrect.