LoL84
30th June 2005, 01:08
Here a text written by a comrade of my organization "Revolutionnary Communist League", French section of the fourth international one
Return on the Russian revolution and Stalinism, topicality of the Bolchevism and the anti-bureaucratic fight
With the end of the USSR, one period of the history of the labour movement was completed. A page was turned and a news starts to be written in a context deeply new, is it need to say it. We are thus at a time hinge. The militants are in front of an interrogation which does not have any done everything answer: how refonder a revolutionary program for today by integrating the militant experiment of the last period?
Which continuity is it essential for us to maintain with this period, through which ruptures?
The period which is completed knew its apogee with the Russian revolution and the irreplaceable experiment of the party Bolshevik which knew to be integrated consciously into a revolutionary crisis without the preceding one to allow the masses to seize the capacity.
But the capacity resulting from the Russian revolution degenerated, a caste bureaucratic usurped this capacity built by the masses from the ruins of tsarism. During more than 50 years, the counter-revolution, the Stalinist dictatorship imposed their mark on the whole of the labour movement, falsifying the history of the revolutionary movement, canting the communist Marxism and ideas, standardizing the recourse to physical violence with the centre even of the labour movement.
How to explain this imposture of the Stalinism which could justify its dictatorship against revolutionist all while asserting revolution, ideals of Communism?
How to adapt the experiment of the Bolchevism by releasing it from this contemptible caricature?
Our current, the trotskism was built through the antibureaucratic fight, the fight against Stalinism, its lies and its crimes, to maintain the flag revolutionary, to try to make live the democracy in the camp of exploited.
The Stalinism carried by the history, which lesson can we draw from this antibureaucratic fight? In what it was fertile at the point to make today our current one of the essential elements of a rebirth of the labour movement? How to give all its topicality today, to make live all the assets of the current trotskist at the time when, the broken Stalinist yoke, opens a new period of the labour movement?
A total solidarity with the Russian revolutionary vis-a-vis all the lies of propaganda anticommunist and Stalinism is the starting point of this return on the Bolchevism, the Russian revolution and the antibureaucratic fight. It is this revaluation of the experiment passed, from the point of view of our current tasks, which will enable us to be assimilated fully the political contents living of the Bolchevism by releasing us from the limits that the pressure of Stalinism imposed on its same adversaries, to our characteristic running.
The party Bolshevik, instrument of the emancipation of the workers by themselves
Propaganda anticommunist falsifies the history to maintain confusion by assimilating Stalinism and Bolchevism. Behind the idea that the Russian revolution carried in germ the dictatorship of Stalin, there is the prejudice that this revolution, like all the revolutions besides, would have been only the work of a minority of revolutionary seizing the capacity by handling the masses. It is a vision manipulator of the history close to the police vision of Stalin.
The history of the Russian revolution is the denial of this vision. The Russian Revolution is above all, to take again the expression of Trotski: "the violent irruption of the masses in the field where their clean destinies are regulated".
The Russian Revolution is the result of the development of the labour movement, through various periods marked by a series of stages.
The insurrection of June 1848 is the first. For the first time, the world of work became aware of him even, of its own interests and defended the weapons with the hand. About thirty years later, with the Commune of Paris of 1871, the Parisian workmen are assembled to "the attack the sky" by making for the first time the experiment the capacity. With the State-Commune, they knew to build the body of the capacity of the masses, the instrument of a direct democracy by breaking the bureaucratic apparatus of the State of the bourgeoisie.
In the decades which followed the labour movement became extensive without precedent, a character of mass. The working class was organized in trade unions, then in broad political parties: the socialist parties which gathered on the scale of the world in the second international one.
The First World War upset the situation causing a brutal evolution of the consciences. The war involved the collapse of the second international one, the immense majority of the leaders of the socialist parties betrayed the ideas internationalists while adopting the crowned Union. And then the war, itself, dissipated in the spirit of million workers all the illusions on the possibility of a progressive, peaceful transformation of capitalism towards socialism.
The war put the revolution on the agenda.
And thus in February 1917, 4 days of insurrection involved the collapse of the mode tsarist. The insurrection, in fact, summer prepared by the fights of the previous years but no party, no organization took the initiative of it. The insurrection was the work of tens of thousands of anonymities which decided to take their fate in hand to put a term at the war and the deprivations.
On the ruins of tsarism set up itself a provisional government composed of concerned politicians above all the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. Until there, it was the scenario of many revolutions of last which was repeated. The masses had been mobilized to reverse a decridibilized mode, but the new mode set up only sought to make them return in the row to maintain the order social.
But the difference this time, it is that the masses continued to remain mobilized. The workmen, the soldiers to be able to continue to impose their new democratic rights conquered in the fight, gave each other their own organizations, the working councils, Soviets in Russian. The existence even of these Soviets which constituted a second capacity beside the official government created a revolutionary situation. Even if, in these Soviets, had mainly been elected of the moderate Socialists who regarded the revolution as finished, which wanted to rely on the play from the parliamentary democracy very continuously the war.
In this situation which it was the policy of the Bolsheviks?
All the experience gained during the years of construction of the party Bolshevik under the dictatorship tsarist, during the revolution of 1905, as in the years of deep retreat which followed, enabled him to play a role determining in the Russian Revolution. The policy followed by the party Bolshevik for all this period remains an irreplaceable experiment for the labour movement.
The rising of February, like the organization in Soviet of the soldiers to the face, of the workmen in the factories were spontaneous with the direction where neither the party Bolshevik nor no other party impelled it. It is the product of thousand and one individual initiatives in the barracks, with the face, in the factories. The irruption of the masses on political scene A thus creates a dynamic social movement, largely exceeding the framework of the existing organized labour in Russia. A spontaneous movement thus unverifiable...
All the policy of Lénine and the party Bolshevik aimed at helping this spontaneous movement to become a conscious force. Stalinism, to justify its dictatorship on the masses, rewrote the history of the Russian revolution by creating the myth of the party leading Bolshevik of the masses which obey to him contrary to the democratic relationship that the Bolsheviks had known to weave with the masses. It is this democratic relationship which made it possible to the Bolsheviks to intervene in a revolutionary movement of masses while there being integrated consciously to enable him to go until the seizure of power.
It is through their militant action that Lénine and its comrades Bolsheviks brought a practical answer, concretes, with the question of the relationship between the masses in fight and the revolutionary party. The Bolchevism is the expression of all this single militant political experiment.
The Bolsheviks could make it because the party Bolshevik was a popular party deeply related to the masses, with many militants in the factories, the popular districts, with the face, which lived interior the evolutions of consciences in progress.
But especially the party Bolshevik could play his role because it dared to think his political intervention from the point of view of the prospect for the revolution. And it was only even if it were not the only party asserting revolution.
Moreover, in the direction even of the party Bolshevik, one period ago of hesitation. The shortly after the insurrection of February, Lénine was still in exile, Trotski was still in margin of the party Bolshevik, and the first attitude of the leaders Bolsheviks, whose Stalin, was to give all his support for the provisional government, causing besides the anger of many militants Bolsheviks. In a situation which was revolutionary because the masses occupied the front of the scene, the first reflex of the principal leaders of the party Bolshevik was to incline itself in front of the official authority in place. The dividing line was however there: either to incline itself in front of the provisional government, or to be based on the mobilization of the masses, and thus to help them to organize itself in the Soviets to go until the real catch of the capacity.
After these some hesitations, all the forces of the party Bolshevik tended towards this only goal: to use the freedoms conquered in February to allow the broadest masses to make their experiment until the conscience of the need for directly exerting itself capacity through the Soviet democracy. This policy of the party Bolshevik will make it possible for the first time to give concrete contents to the formula of Marx, "the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves".
In the districts, in the fleet, the militants Bolsheviks explained, discussed, convince in the light of the events. They explained why one did not have to give any support for the combined provisional government of the capitalists and the landowners. And indeed everyone could check that this government continued the war and refused to make a land reform to give the ground to the peasants. The entry of moderated socialist ministers, mencheviks and socialist revolutionary, in the provisional government had not changed anything with its policy.
To the wire of the months, the illusions on the provisional government and confidence in the moderate socialist parties fell. Little by little, the conscience had matured among the soldiers, the peasants and the workmen that to solve the problems it was necessary to take the things in hand directly. In August 1917, the Bolsheviks were in a majority in the Soviets of the largest cities like Moscow and Petrograd on the watchword "all the power at the Soviets".
Because it was really related to the working class, the party Bolshevik has in these crucial moments, summer able to take the measurement of the various rhythms of evolution of the consciences enter the large cities and the remainder of the country. That enabled him to help the masses there to see clearly in spite of the calumny campaigns, not to yield to the provocations which were likely to end in a blood bath and to even prevent an attempt at coup d'etat.
In the Soviets, the need for reversing the provisional government in order to give the capacity to the Soviets was discussed and put to vote by the militants Bolsheviks. With through all Russia, the Bolsheviks became majority. The military preparation of the insurrection was done at the great day under the direction of the revolutionary military Committee placed under the orders of the Soviet of Petrograd whose Trotski was a president. Only remained secret the day fixed for the insurrection, October 25. Thus the revolution of October far from being a simple coup d'etat, even if it took a military form, was the conscious and voluntary act by which broad masses gave each other the means of carrying out in the facts their aspirations. The insurrection triumphed easily, the provisional government not having almost more any support in the population.
The force and the revolutionary character of the new capacity resulting from the insurrection of October lay in the fact that it was really democratic. This democracy did not rest on the formal respect of such a democratic constitution is it but on a deep confidence in the masses and the will to rely on their initiative, to encourage them. Actually, the first measurements taken by the new power consisted in issuing legal all the initiatives taken by in bottom.
The decrees on peace, the ground, the right of the people were before a whole encouragement with the direct intervention of the masses in the social life. They are the soldiers who imposed Peace while fraternizing with the German soldiers even if it means to shoot their own officers, they are the peasants who organized themselves to take and to divide the grounds of the great landowners. The revolution drew its force from this collective intervention of million soldiers, peasants and workmen, and it is precisely this deeply revolutionary and democratic character which horrifies the leading classes still today.
The "democrats" of today reproach to the Bolsheviks for having dissolved the constituent Assembly. They see the democracy only in the respect of the parliamentary formalism. But parliamentarism has of another function only to set up an elected representation which puts the real capacity of the bourgeoisie at the shelter of the risks of the political life and the vote for all. In any way, this codified parliamentarism, locked perhaps an instrument of exercise of the power by the masses. And in the revolutions of last the respect of parliamentarism was often the means of confiscating the power with the masses to give it to the politicians of the bourgeoisie. In Russia, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly made it possible to set up through the power of the Soviets a real direct democracy... on the principle of the State-Commune of 1871.
Causes of the degeneration: the "fundamental forecast of the Bolchevism"
Did the shortly after the insurrection of October, from which point of view place the Bolsheviks?
Certainly not in that to build "socialism in only one country".
The Bolsheviks were convinced that the particular conditions of tsarism had allowed the first victory of the Revolution in Russia because it was to some extent the "weak link" of the powers imperialists. But conscious of the arrieration of Russia, they knew that insulated, their revolution did not have any chances of survival, like the Commune of Paris in 1871.
For them, the victory of the Russian revolution was only the first stage of a world revolution, developing with the end of the war. They had the certainty that without more or less fast victory of the revolution in a more modern country like in particular Germany, the working State would not be maintained in Russia. Thus, as of the shortly after the revolution, Lénine wrote: "Without revolution in Occident, the Bolchevism will be liquidated, either by against internal revolution, or by the foreign intervention, or by their combination"
There was well a vague revolutionary who swept Europe at the end of the war. Left Russia the revolution was propagated in Germany in Hungary, in Bavaria, the labour movements in Europe but also in the East made great strides without precedent then.
Because they were placed from the point of view of a world revolution, the Bolsheviks called in 1919 with the foundation of an international news: IIIème International, the International Communist. She was given for objective to become the world party of the revolution. In an about sixty country, revolutionary minorities then broke with the socialist parties compromised in the war to found new parties: Communist Parties.
Because it was the first stage of a combat with died between the bourgeoisie and the working class on the scale of the world, the Russian revolution unchained against it the hatred of the dominant classes of all the countries. Quickly the great powers, supported interior by white armies counter-revolutionaries, attacked the Soviet republic, causing a civil war which lasted of 1918 to 1921 putting the country at fire and blood.
In Russia even, all the parties, those of the bourgeoisie until the mencheviks and socialist revolutionary, adopted the counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks quickly became the only party to assume the sovietic responsibility for the power.
To hold in this "besieged citadel" that was then revolutionary Russia, the Bolsheviks had to mobilize all energies, all the forces and to take emergency regulations: like the requisition of food to feed the face and the prohibition of the parties. This Communism of war was certainly not the communist program but emergency measures to face a catastrophic situation....
Some see in these emergency regulations of the errors which would have supported the victory of Stalin and the bureaucracy.
But to measure the consequences of such or such decisions of the Russian revolutionary, it is necessary to understand the real reports of forces between the classes which conditioned the arena of the combat and the narrow margin which was left to them. Moreover lucid, the Bolsheviks regarded themselves as one of the factors of the history, its conscious factor, very significant factor but not only. The deciding factor remained the course even of the fight of class on an international scale. A number of decisions were imposed to them by the circumstances even combat, and one can only smell oneself interdependent of them which, contrary to the other socialist organizations, fought until the end, by using all the possible weapons they had.
The measurements taken during the Communism of war constituted retreats compared to the Soviet democracy, retreats imposed by the combat but which were, in spite of the will of the revolutionary, as many points of supports in the development of the bureaucracy. And it is for that that Stalinism made the theory of some of these measurements independently of the circumstances which had made them essential to save the Revolution.
These emergency regulations, while making it possible to mobilize all energies in a desperate plight, made it possible to put in failure the intervention of the great powers and to save revolutionary Russia. But the years of war had exhausted, disorganized, weakened the country which was nothing any more but one field of ruins. And worst it is than revolutionary Russia only found itself and insulated, brought back to its only forces. Because everywhere the vague revolutionary had failed, in particular in Germany, where the leaders of the young Communist Party, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, had been assassinated with the complicity of the socialist party.
After the years of fight and mobilization of the masses which had allowed the introduction of the Republic of the Soviets, the retreat was going to be very deep. The exhaustion of the masses through the civil war had, in fact, involved a retreat of the Soviet democracy, a retreat in the capacity of the masses to intervene consciously on the political scene. The revolutionary power thus remained as paralysed, the masses having deserted the Soviets, in a devastated country where went up irresistibly hostile social forces feeling encouraged by the revolutionary backward flow. For Lénine, it was a question above all of holding, of preserving what had been acquired with the conviction that the exit could come only from one increase of the fights on an international scale.
It is on the basis of of this retreat, the exhaustion of the revolutionary movement and the insulation of the USSR that a caste bureaucratic has, little by little, eaten the revolutionary power and the party Bolshevik him even. These bureaucrates came from Ancien Régime but also menchéviks and revolutionary Socialists rejoined at the victorious working State after having fought it at worst the moment of the civil war.
Which is the origin of this bureaucracy? How could it be essential?
The bureaucratic phenomenon obviously did not appear the shortly after the Russian revolution. The bureaucracy existed under the mode tsarist as in all the countries besides even if in Russia because of social arrieration, it had taken gigantic proportions! In all the companies, the bureaucracy is born from the need for managing the economy because the level of development and conscience, the reports of classes, do not allow that the masses exert their democratic control collectively. It plays to some extent the role of the police officer who imposes the respect of the law when the company is dominated by "the fight for the individual existence".
The bureaucracy is found in any administrative machinery which replaces the democratic control of the masses.
It is omnipresent in the company divided into class because it is through it that the interests of the minority dominant classes are essential on all the company. It is the product of a social order of which all the ideology aims at making accept their fate with the masses involving the tender in front of the institutionalized authority of the State, but also of the party or of a trade union.
The anti-bureaucratic fight forms integral part of the combat of the revolutionary, since all our combat aims at calling oppressed to take in hand their organization, their fight and finally all the social life. And it is even that to be a revolutionary, to hope only on the capacity of the masses to sweep the official bureaucracy by their own conscious organization, while being released from the fear of the authority, social conformisms which lead to resignation.
The intervention conscious of the Russian masses in the revolution had a character deeply antibureaucratic, while starting to found a real democratic control on the social life. But this dynamics was broken by the civil war and the insulation of Russia, allowing the return of "all the old bazaar".
In the absence of this intervention conscious of the masses, the reorganization of all the social life devastated by the years of war was done through an apparatus which drew a capacity and some privileges from its function even. This bureaucracy constituted a news caste privileged people who became aware of their interests little by little.
In the situation in which was Russia with leaving the civil war, with the party concentrating Bolshevik all the capacity, this development of the bureaucracy was refracted in a fight with the centre even party Bolshevik and of its direction.
The masses not being able more to exert their control, the bureaucracy was turned over against them to guarantee its privileges through a true civil war.
The antibureaucratic fight of the opposition of left: Bolchevism counters Stalinism
It is with a clear comprehension of the dangers of degeneration threatening the Soviet State but as the party Bolshevik as since 1922, Lénine speaks about: "bureaucratic deformation of the working State". It will make of it its last combat until its death in 1924. But already sick, Lénine will not be able to really carry out this battle. With Trotski, they are thus the two principal leaders of the Russian Revolution who decide to fight against the bureaucratization of the party and the State. But that will not be sufficient to stop the social pressures which are exerted on the young working state.
These social pressures are felt until the top of the party Bolshevik. Thus, at the beginning of 1923, within the direction of the Party Bolshevik constitutes a secret alliance, the Troika between Zinoviev, Kamenev two of the principal leaders Bolsheviks and Stalin, with an aim of insulating Trotski.
Behind this will to draw aside Trotski, is expressed the increasing hostility with the idea to continue to mobilize all energies in the prospect for a resumption of the revolution and the aspiration to be blown after the terrible years of the civil war. This hostility which does not dare to continue against Lénine, of share its weight moral on the party, gene not against Trotski which joined the party Bolshevik during the revolution. That results soon in a campaign against him. Intrigues, operations of apparatus and discussions of corridor draw up against him the historical executives of the party.
In January 1924, Lénine dies. After having put its body locked up under a mausoleum, official propaganda delivers a true worship to him, making its alive, pragmatic thought a dead dogma. It is at that time that the bureaucracy invents Leninism, the Marxism-Leninism with blow of sentences and ready-made phrases and without contents that it opposes to another its inventions, the trotskism.
To insulate still more Trotski and the opposition which gathers around him, the bureaucracy makes enter from February at May 1924, 240 000 workmen, it is Lénine promotion. These new come without traditions, nor formation which join a party well installed at the power, is actually a base of support for the bureaucracy. The old guard Bolshevik does not form any more whereas one negligible minority of the party Bolshevik which according to the expression of Victor Serge became: "a party of mass of late workmen directed by parvenu bureaucrates".
The fight at the top of the party Bolshevik is often presented like a fight of succession after the death of Lénine, a personal fight to be able it between Stalin and Trotski. But this combat opposed actually the militants remained faithful to the revolutionary program, with the will to be based on the intervention conscious of the masses and those which, like Stalin, were going to be only the expression of hostile social forces to the revolution, and which will seek to liquidate the revolutionary program.
Stalin represented, according to Trotski, "the most eminent mediocrity of the party".
Militant of the old guard, Stalin during the years of Revolution, then during the civil war had remained with the background, and it could only be thus as long as the party rested on the bonds of ideas, on the conscience. Because Stalin, scorning the ideas, remained before a whole man of apparatus, whose intrigue, the conspiracy, the operations were the element. Nobody and not to even would then have imagined him that it was going to become the dictator of the USSR. If Stalin could take possession of the capacity, it is not thanks to its personal qualities but well rather because it was the toy of social forces which largely exceeded it.
Stalin was certainly more worried by the capacity which its position that by the prospect for the revolution gave him. Seeking to stick fidelities to the various levels of the apparatus, it quite naturally found them near all this new generation of careerists who had invaded the party. The seizure of Stalin on the apparatus of the party led it to the capacity only because the bureaucracy in Russia ended up being binding working to the State young person.
Stalinism could nourish individual failures of the militants Bolsheviks, it was reinforced while being based on the aspiration to blow, on this spirit of adaptation which involves the disinterest for the fight of ideas, the small daily compromises which, by passivity, lead to the disavowal. It was thus made the expression of hostile social forces to the revolution, of a caste bureaucratic for whom the continuation or the possible resumption of the revolution was perceived as a threat for small material safety that they had succeeded in conquering.
The revolutionary of the opposition of left, them, could count only on one alarm clock of the combativeness of the masses and thus they fought, above all, in the field of the ideas while being addressed to the conscience, with the spirit of initiative, the will of the militants, to tear off itself with the weight of the social pressures and ambient conformism.
The exit of this combat between the revolutionary and the bureaucracy depended, above all, of the report of forces between the revolution and revolution counters it, between the working class and the bourgeoisie on the scale of the world. Any retreat of the revolution could only reinforce the bureaucracy and on the contrary only a new revolutionary crisis could remobiliser the Russian working class by giving again the hope to him to leave the USSR its insulation. But the seizure of the bureaucracy on the working State as on the international one was going to constitute an increasingly large obstacle with this revolutionary prospect.
Consequence of the victory of Stalinism
Thus as of the shortly after died of Lénine, Stalin, in complete rupture with the internationalism of the Bolsheviks announced that it was a question from now on of building: "socialism in only one country". That translated the renouncement of the Stalinist bureaucracy of the prospect for the world revolution. Quite to the contrary, it sought the support of social forces external with the working class: tradesmen in the cities, peasants new rich in the campaigns. During several years the watchword "Kulaks you enrich" was going to be used as a basis of the construction of socialism "for step of tortoise".
But these social classes, deeply hostile to the revolution, while thus developing with the assistance of the Stalinist bureaucracy will end up threatening the existence even of the Soviet State, while being of all their weight for the re-establishment of capitalism.
From 1928, the bureaucracy had to attack its allies of the day before, operating a turn with 180°, it launched out then in the forced collectivization of the campaigns in the name of "the elimination of the kulaks as a class", and had to mobilize all energies for an exaggerated industrialization of the country.
Incompetent to conceive a policy guideline in the duration, Stalinism always had a policy as well national as international in zigzags, operating turns with 180° regularly, to each time its blindness had led it at the edge of the pit. From where introduction of the official lie, of the permanent rewriting of the history to justify the turns of the official line, to approve today what was condemned the day before.
Why such a political inconsistency on behalf of Stalinism?
Behind the inconsistency, there is the particular social condition of the bureaucracy, caste of parvenu having usurped the power of the masses. The privileges and the capacity of the bureaucracy rested on its position with the head of a State resulting from a working Revolution. All the aspirations of the Stalinist bureaucracy opposed it to the working class and it permanently sought to be based on foreign social forces with the Revolution but, despite everything, its fate remained related to the existence even of the working State. And it had after a fashion to defend it, during decades, against a re-establishment of capitalism.
Of course, such a situation could not last eternally, already Trotski in 1936 explained why the bureaucracy could not stabilize its capacity as a class and that either it would finish by being carried by an increase of the revolutionary working fights, or it would finish carried by the counter-revolution. Trotski considered a fast evolution, but it was convinced that even if the bureaucracy were to manage to maintain a statu quo for several decades, the USSR would evolve either to a re-establishment of capitalism or towards a resumption in hand of the Soviets by the working class. These is the long process counter-revolutionary which was completed with the end of the USSR in the Nineties.
The emergence of the bureaucracy in the USSR had effects on the whole of the labour movement through the International Communist and the whole of the Communist Parties.
Stalinism became, involuntarily initially then more and more consciously, one of the factors of the failure of a series of revolutionary crises which each one could have opened the prospect to leave the USSR its insulation. Stalinism initially paralysed the revolutionary ruining revolutionary crises as in Germany in 1923, or China in 1927. Then as from the Thirties, the bureaucracy played a role openly against revolutionary as in 1936 in Spain where the Stalinist ones contributed to disarm and to assassinate the Spanish revolutionary at the time of the civil war counters Franco.
Each one of these crises had been for Trotski and the opposition of left a point of support to mobilize energies, to impose the debate, to denounce Stalinist imposture, to formulate a revolutionary policy. But each one of these defeats, while confirming the accuracy of their criticisms against Stalinism, did nothing but accentuate the retreat, increase demoralization and thus weaken the camp of the revolutionary.
With each one of these defeats, the revolutionary were more isolated. The shortly after the crisis of 27, they are excluded from the party, decrees and are off-set, before being physically eliminated in the camps in the Thirties.
It is by terror that Stalinism made conceal and eliminate the revolutionary opposition.
And one of the worst consequences of Stalinism is certainly the massacre of all the generation of the Bolsheviks having taken part in the revolution and the civil war and not having abdicated during the time of retreat which followed. That represented a human capital, an irreplaceable experiment that Stalin feared over all, because their only existence was the alive proof of its imposture and the lies of its propaganda.
Between Stalinism and the Bolchevism, there is not only one cynical lie, there is also a river of blood. Trotski underlined the incompatibility, not only political, but also directly physical of Stalinism and the Bolchevism.
Stalinism succeeded in shutting off the revolutionary current of the real labour movement: physically initially by Stalinist terror, but also politically, continuously to present itself at the eyes of the masses of the whole world like the heir to the Russian revolution and the Bolchevism.
This seizure of Stalinism on the labour movement was during decades one of the principal factors counter-revolutionaries, finally contributing to stabilize the imperialism. Thus Stalinism contributed to cant the movement of revolutionary masses of the people which swept the colonial empires the shortly after the second world war, by maintaining it in the dead end of nationalism. But also the Stalinist bureaucracy was directly given the responsability to play the police officer against the people in his zone of influence by crushing the popular revolts in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979.
Topicality of the anti-bureaucratic fight: Which assessment of the experiment Bolshevik?
Our current, the trotskism, was built through the fight against Stalinism.
By carrying out this combat, Trotski and his comrades, allowed to make live the ideas of the revolutionary Marxism, as a theory of the fight of emancipation of the workers by themselves.
Because far from the Stalinist caricature of the very powerful party, at the base of the Bolchevism there is above all the fight for the broadest democracy. All the intervention of the Bolchevism aimed at making the movement spontaneous of the masses conscious of itself, while being recipient of its combat.
The implementation of the revolutionary theory does not aim at making each decision an infallible rule, quite to the contrary, the Bolchevism was characterized above all by its pragmatism, its capacity to bring concrete answers according to the situations. And it is significant to understand what is the bottom, the goal of the policy of the Bolsheviks and the various answers that they brought during one period extremely rich in new situations.
It is the Stalinism which made Bolchevism a dogma, by theorizing the need for the single party, centralized, disciplined, guide of the masses. It is the Stalinism which made "democratic centralism", a mode of barracks which was used to muzzle very real democratic life, by the operations of apparatus even the most extreme violence. In rupture with all that had been the traditions of the labour movement until there, Stalinism introduced this undemocratic design which it is a question "of directing well the masses" rather than to help them to fight consciously.
For Lénine, the party is in the heart even masses.
To again adapt all the richness of the experiment Bolshevik, they is ourselves to release us from the limits of our characteristic running, and to be aware that the current trotskist which maintained a heritage political in the shade of Stalinism has, in fact, undergone the pressure. The fact of having been constrained to exist out of the masses imposed a narrow framework to him. Nobody escapes the objective conditions.
The various organizations held as they could it, each one defending what it thought of being the heritage of the Bolchevism, the Russian revolution, the trotskism but this heritage out of concrete confrontation with the social movement through a rich person and alive democracy, tendency has to take formal contents. Each group finally made the theory of itself, defendant what was his own dogmas against those of the other groups, thus feeding the sectarianism which divides. This narrow framework of the gauchism which was imposed by the circumstances, explains the difficulty for the revolutionary current really of making revive a political experiment built in the fire of the action of the masses, in the fire of the revolution.
But now that Stalinism died, this narrow framework flew in glare and the revolutionary find themselves in an arena much broader to intervene in the social fight.
And the central question which is asked to us remains that of the democracy. Not of course with the direction skimped of the respect of the institutions of the parliamentary democracy bourgeoise, but of the real revolutionary democracy of which the goal is the mobilization and the hard-working organization of the masses for the defense of their interests and the conquest of the capacity. That implies to think all our intervention from the point of view revolutionary, democratic and thus anti-bureaucratic.
That poses the problem of which revolutionary party it is necessary for us to build. And of course that returns us to the party Bolshevik. Because the party Bolshevik was the first party to allow the masses to take and to exert themselves the capacity, it was the instrument of the only victorious working revolution. The Bolsheviks are only which one can say: "They dared! ".
From where importance of the discussion on what was really the party Bolshevik and what was the bottom of its policy. And does that want to say to reconsider mystification that Stalinism made "That to make?" which found an audience until in the current trotskist like the strange implementations of the design of the democratic centralism.
At did the time of the construction of the party Bolshevik, Lénine defend in a booklet, "That to make?", of centralizing measurements because it was the most effective way to organize most largely possible workmen under the conditions of the dictatorship tsarist. Its goal was to build a centralized organization of militants sufficiently tried out, professionals and thus able to escape repression to structure a network much broader of workmen.
Clandestinity, the centralism were imposed by the same conditions of the dictatorship with all that that implies constraints but the goal was, under these conditions, to create democratic political relationship with the masses.
To want to apply to the letter what Lénine recommended like tactic in 1903 pennies the mode of the dictatorship tsarist, does not have a direction and can only lead to the opposite result of that wanted by Lénine. Instead of widening was the intervention of the revolutionary like that the case in Russia, to consider "That to make?" as a model can today only maintain the reflexes avant-gardist even of sects and isolate the revolutionary at the time when their ideas find a new echo.
Stalinism made party Bolshevik a model by denaturing with the passage what it was really for better imposing his seizure on all the Communist Parties. There is no model, but on the other hand it is significant to impregnate us with what was the militant philosophy of the party Bolshevik, because it is this philosophy which enabled him to intervene in the revolution.
The militants Bolsheviks were deeply attached to the ideas. They had the iron will to adapt best culture of their time, to transmit it around them. With the base of the democratic relationships between the party Bolshevik and the masses, there was full engagement in the combat designed like a freedom of a few thousands of Bolsheviks. These militants had the permanent concern to raise, with rigour, devotion, abnegation, and professionalism the level of conscience by the debate of ideas like the political struggle or the social combat, animated conviction that the ideas are as many weapons which the masses seize for themselves. All the militant philosophy of the Bolsheviks aimed this goal: to make the masses conscious of their own role so that they become actresses of their own emancipation, that they make fully of the policy, their policy.
It is this same militant philosophy which was that of the militants Bolsheviks who fought with Trotski against Stalinism towards and against all.
The anti-bureaucratic combat of Trotski and its comrades was completely in the continuity of the policy of the Bolsheviks. Watchword "all the power at the Soviets" with the anti-bureaucratic fight against Stalinism there is a deep continuity... That of the combat for the revolutionary democracy.
This philosophy animates all our combat, our own activity. Because beyond the exceptional, dramatic character of the Stalinism and the degeneration of the Revolution, of the same conditions of the Russian labour movement, there are political behaviors which are the characteristic of any apparatus which defends of the clean interests disagreements of those of the masses.
Our program integrates this lesson of the antibureaucratic fight in the ex-USSR but also against the Stalinist apparatuses in occident or elsewhere.
All the days, in the trade-union or political apparatuses, the revolutionary militants have the concern of fighting all the obstacles which the routine erects to a real working democracy. I.e. mistrust with respect to the masses, will to pass some by apparatuses recognized rather than to rely on the car-organization from the employees.
To create the conditions of a true democracy passes by the daily combat to face social conformisms which exist within the labour movement, to overcome the lack of confidence of the workers themselves, usually misses them and of practice of the political and democratic life. The democracy that we defend is not so much the compliance with formal rules but the permanent call to take its businesses in hand, with being an actor of its life. It is in this combat that the nonconformism of the revolutionary against the social conformism of the apparatuses resides.
There is a unit between this combat and measurements urgently social and democratic which we defend and who imply that the world of work exerts its control on all the social life. Because the result of this control, it is the questioning of the property which is the principal obstacle with the application of a true democracy in the field of the economy.
By which ways and which means such a democracy will be able it to be set up?
The Commune of Paris brought a first concrete answer to the question of knowing how oppressed could exert the power. It showed that the masses could not use just as it is the State of the bourgeoisie but which they were to found theirs: the State-Commune, instrument of a direct democracy resting on the direct exercise of the capacity, legislature and executive by the masses.
The Soviet revolution of 1917 made for the first time of this principle living the base of its State.
In both cases, in spite of the limits imposed by the report of force with the bourgeoisie and the immaturity of the conditions, the masses showed all including one true direct democracy, imposed by the fight, was carrying.
The Common one was crushed by the Of Versailles ones but in a few weeks the communards showed in the facts that the State-Commune was a formidable lever for a transformation of the company according to the interests of the world of work.
The political emancipation permitted by the Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet democracy could not lead to a real social, economic emancipation on a all company scale, because they remained locked up in the borders of Russia late and devastated because of the civil war and treasons of the social democrats.
In spite of that, the Bolsheviks knew by their policy, while being integrated fully into the revolutionary social movement, to allow the masses to arrive at the conscience of the need for exerting themselves the power to take in hand all the social life.
That their was possible because the party Bolshevik was a revolutionary party related to the masses by the bonds of the democracy.
We make our this philosophy of the militants Bolsheviks which rests on a deep confidence in the masses and the fight of ideas, on the will to be the instrument of the emancipation of the workers by themselves. That supposes a great rigour, devotion, professionalism and full engagement in the combat, all these qualities which made Bolsheviks, according to the expression of Lénine the Jacobins of the proletariat.
Since the Russian revolution, the company evolved considerably, creating a framework much more favorable for a revolutionary transformation. Today, the immense majority of the population is in measurement like never taking the control of the economy indeed in order to put it at the service needs for all.
The material bases so that a true direct democracy can be used as lever with a reorganization of all the economy are developed than ever. As at the time of the Commune of Paris or the Russian Revolution, which is opposed to this democracy, it is the private property of a minority which imposes its social parasitism on all the company.
The new party which starts to emerge from the stressing of the crisis of capitalism will be born from a democratic process, i.e. initiatives of the masses themselves. Consequently, it will be fully integrated in the movements of masses of which it is the product to contribute to the evolution of the consciences until the need for the revolution.
Charles Meno
Return on the Russian revolution and Stalinism, topicality of the Bolchevism and the anti-bureaucratic fight
With the end of the USSR, one period of the history of the labour movement was completed. A page was turned and a news starts to be written in a context deeply new, is it need to say it. We are thus at a time hinge. The militants are in front of an interrogation which does not have any done everything answer: how refonder a revolutionary program for today by integrating the militant experiment of the last period?
Which continuity is it essential for us to maintain with this period, through which ruptures?
The period which is completed knew its apogee with the Russian revolution and the irreplaceable experiment of the party Bolshevik which knew to be integrated consciously into a revolutionary crisis without the preceding one to allow the masses to seize the capacity.
But the capacity resulting from the Russian revolution degenerated, a caste bureaucratic usurped this capacity built by the masses from the ruins of tsarism. During more than 50 years, the counter-revolution, the Stalinist dictatorship imposed their mark on the whole of the labour movement, falsifying the history of the revolutionary movement, canting the communist Marxism and ideas, standardizing the recourse to physical violence with the centre even of the labour movement.
How to explain this imposture of the Stalinism which could justify its dictatorship against revolutionist all while asserting revolution, ideals of Communism?
How to adapt the experiment of the Bolchevism by releasing it from this contemptible caricature?
Our current, the trotskism was built through the antibureaucratic fight, the fight against Stalinism, its lies and its crimes, to maintain the flag revolutionary, to try to make live the democracy in the camp of exploited.
The Stalinism carried by the history, which lesson can we draw from this antibureaucratic fight? In what it was fertile at the point to make today our current one of the essential elements of a rebirth of the labour movement? How to give all its topicality today, to make live all the assets of the current trotskist at the time when, the broken Stalinist yoke, opens a new period of the labour movement?
A total solidarity with the Russian revolutionary vis-a-vis all the lies of propaganda anticommunist and Stalinism is the starting point of this return on the Bolchevism, the Russian revolution and the antibureaucratic fight. It is this revaluation of the experiment passed, from the point of view of our current tasks, which will enable us to be assimilated fully the political contents living of the Bolchevism by releasing us from the limits that the pressure of Stalinism imposed on its same adversaries, to our characteristic running.
The party Bolshevik, instrument of the emancipation of the workers by themselves
Propaganda anticommunist falsifies the history to maintain confusion by assimilating Stalinism and Bolchevism. Behind the idea that the Russian revolution carried in germ the dictatorship of Stalin, there is the prejudice that this revolution, like all the revolutions besides, would have been only the work of a minority of revolutionary seizing the capacity by handling the masses. It is a vision manipulator of the history close to the police vision of Stalin.
The history of the Russian revolution is the denial of this vision. The Russian Revolution is above all, to take again the expression of Trotski: "the violent irruption of the masses in the field where their clean destinies are regulated".
The Russian Revolution is the result of the development of the labour movement, through various periods marked by a series of stages.
The insurrection of June 1848 is the first. For the first time, the world of work became aware of him even, of its own interests and defended the weapons with the hand. About thirty years later, with the Commune of Paris of 1871, the Parisian workmen are assembled to "the attack the sky" by making for the first time the experiment the capacity. With the State-Commune, they knew to build the body of the capacity of the masses, the instrument of a direct democracy by breaking the bureaucratic apparatus of the State of the bourgeoisie.
In the decades which followed the labour movement became extensive without precedent, a character of mass. The working class was organized in trade unions, then in broad political parties: the socialist parties which gathered on the scale of the world in the second international one.
The First World War upset the situation causing a brutal evolution of the consciences. The war involved the collapse of the second international one, the immense majority of the leaders of the socialist parties betrayed the ideas internationalists while adopting the crowned Union. And then the war, itself, dissipated in the spirit of million workers all the illusions on the possibility of a progressive, peaceful transformation of capitalism towards socialism.
The war put the revolution on the agenda.
And thus in February 1917, 4 days of insurrection involved the collapse of the mode tsarist. The insurrection, in fact, summer prepared by the fights of the previous years but no party, no organization took the initiative of it. The insurrection was the work of tens of thousands of anonymities which decided to take their fate in hand to put a term at the war and the deprivations.
On the ruins of tsarism set up itself a provisional government composed of concerned politicians above all the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landowners. Until there, it was the scenario of many revolutions of last which was repeated. The masses had been mobilized to reverse a decridibilized mode, but the new mode set up only sought to make them return in the row to maintain the order social.
But the difference this time, it is that the masses continued to remain mobilized. The workmen, the soldiers to be able to continue to impose their new democratic rights conquered in the fight, gave each other their own organizations, the working councils, Soviets in Russian. The existence even of these Soviets which constituted a second capacity beside the official government created a revolutionary situation. Even if, in these Soviets, had mainly been elected of the moderate Socialists who regarded the revolution as finished, which wanted to rely on the play from the parliamentary democracy very continuously the war.
In this situation which it was the policy of the Bolsheviks?
All the experience gained during the years of construction of the party Bolshevik under the dictatorship tsarist, during the revolution of 1905, as in the years of deep retreat which followed, enabled him to play a role determining in the Russian Revolution. The policy followed by the party Bolshevik for all this period remains an irreplaceable experiment for the labour movement.
The rising of February, like the organization in Soviet of the soldiers to the face, of the workmen in the factories were spontaneous with the direction where neither the party Bolshevik nor no other party impelled it. It is the product of thousand and one individual initiatives in the barracks, with the face, in the factories. The irruption of the masses on political scene A thus creates a dynamic social movement, largely exceeding the framework of the existing organized labour in Russia. A spontaneous movement thus unverifiable...
All the policy of Lénine and the party Bolshevik aimed at helping this spontaneous movement to become a conscious force. Stalinism, to justify its dictatorship on the masses, rewrote the history of the Russian revolution by creating the myth of the party leading Bolshevik of the masses which obey to him contrary to the democratic relationship that the Bolsheviks had known to weave with the masses. It is this democratic relationship which made it possible to the Bolsheviks to intervene in a revolutionary movement of masses while there being integrated consciously to enable him to go until the seizure of power.
It is through their militant action that Lénine and its comrades Bolsheviks brought a practical answer, concretes, with the question of the relationship between the masses in fight and the revolutionary party. The Bolchevism is the expression of all this single militant political experiment.
The Bolsheviks could make it because the party Bolshevik was a popular party deeply related to the masses, with many militants in the factories, the popular districts, with the face, which lived interior the evolutions of consciences in progress.
But especially the party Bolshevik could play his role because it dared to think his political intervention from the point of view of the prospect for the revolution. And it was only even if it were not the only party asserting revolution.
Moreover, in the direction even of the party Bolshevik, one period ago of hesitation. The shortly after the insurrection of February, Lénine was still in exile, Trotski was still in margin of the party Bolshevik, and the first attitude of the leaders Bolsheviks, whose Stalin, was to give all his support for the provisional government, causing besides the anger of many militants Bolsheviks. In a situation which was revolutionary because the masses occupied the front of the scene, the first reflex of the principal leaders of the party Bolshevik was to incline itself in front of the official authority in place. The dividing line was however there: either to incline itself in front of the provisional government, or to be based on the mobilization of the masses, and thus to help them to organize itself in the Soviets to go until the real catch of the capacity.
After these some hesitations, all the forces of the party Bolshevik tended towards this only goal: to use the freedoms conquered in February to allow the broadest masses to make their experiment until the conscience of the need for directly exerting itself capacity through the Soviet democracy. This policy of the party Bolshevik will make it possible for the first time to give concrete contents to the formula of Marx, "the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves".
In the districts, in the fleet, the militants Bolsheviks explained, discussed, convince in the light of the events. They explained why one did not have to give any support for the combined provisional government of the capitalists and the landowners. And indeed everyone could check that this government continued the war and refused to make a land reform to give the ground to the peasants. The entry of moderated socialist ministers, mencheviks and socialist revolutionary, in the provisional government had not changed anything with its policy.
To the wire of the months, the illusions on the provisional government and confidence in the moderate socialist parties fell. Little by little, the conscience had matured among the soldiers, the peasants and the workmen that to solve the problems it was necessary to take the things in hand directly. In August 1917, the Bolsheviks were in a majority in the Soviets of the largest cities like Moscow and Petrograd on the watchword "all the power at the Soviets".
Because it was really related to the working class, the party Bolshevik has in these crucial moments, summer able to take the measurement of the various rhythms of evolution of the consciences enter the large cities and the remainder of the country. That enabled him to help the masses there to see clearly in spite of the calumny campaigns, not to yield to the provocations which were likely to end in a blood bath and to even prevent an attempt at coup d'etat.
In the Soviets, the need for reversing the provisional government in order to give the capacity to the Soviets was discussed and put to vote by the militants Bolsheviks. With through all Russia, the Bolsheviks became majority. The military preparation of the insurrection was done at the great day under the direction of the revolutionary military Committee placed under the orders of the Soviet of Petrograd whose Trotski was a president. Only remained secret the day fixed for the insurrection, October 25. Thus the revolution of October far from being a simple coup d'etat, even if it took a military form, was the conscious and voluntary act by which broad masses gave each other the means of carrying out in the facts their aspirations. The insurrection triumphed easily, the provisional government not having almost more any support in the population.
The force and the revolutionary character of the new capacity resulting from the insurrection of October lay in the fact that it was really democratic. This democracy did not rest on the formal respect of such a democratic constitution is it but on a deep confidence in the masses and the will to rely on their initiative, to encourage them. Actually, the first measurements taken by the new power consisted in issuing legal all the initiatives taken by in bottom.
The decrees on peace, the ground, the right of the people were before a whole encouragement with the direct intervention of the masses in the social life. They are the soldiers who imposed Peace while fraternizing with the German soldiers even if it means to shoot their own officers, they are the peasants who organized themselves to take and to divide the grounds of the great landowners. The revolution drew its force from this collective intervention of million soldiers, peasants and workmen, and it is precisely this deeply revolutionary and democratic character which horrifies the leading classes still today.
The "democrats" of today reproach to the Bolsheviks for having dissolved the constituent Assembly. They see the democracy only in the respect of the parliamentary formalism. But parliamentarism has of another function only to set up an elected representation which puts the real capacity of the bourgeoisie at the shelter of the risks of the political life and the vote for all. In any way, this codified parliamentarism, locked perhaps an instrument of exercise of the power by the masses. And in the revolutions of last the respect of parliamentarism was often the means of confiscating the power with the masses to give it to the politicians of the bourgeoisie. In Russia, the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly made it possible to set up through the power of the Soviets a real direct democracy... on the principle of the State-Commune of 1871.
Causes of the degeneration: the "fundamental forecast of the Bolchevism"
Did the shortly after the insurrection of October, from which point of view place the Bolsheviks?
Certainly not in that to build "socialism in only one country".
The Bolsheviks were convinced that the particular conditions of tsarism had allowed the first victory of the Revolution in Russia because it was to some extent the "weak link" of the powers imperialists. But conscious of the arrieration of Russia, they knew that insulated, their revolution did not have any chances of survival, like the Commune of Paris in 1871.
For them, the victory of the Russian revolution was only the first stage of a world revolution, developing with the end of the war. They had the certainty that without more or less fast victory of the revolution in a more modern country like in particular Germany, the working State would not be maintained in Russia. Thus, as of the shortly after the revolution, Lénine wrote: "Without revolution in Occident, the Bolchevism will be liquidated, either by against internal revolution, or by the foreign intervention, or by their combination"
There was well a vague revolutionary who swept Europe at the end of the war. Left Russia the revolution was propagated in Germany in Hungary, in Bavaria, the labour movements in Europe but also in the East made great strides without precedent then.
Because they were placed from the point of view of a world revolution, the Bolsheviks called in 1919 with the foundation of an international news: IIIème International, the International Communist. She was given for objective to become the world party of the revolution. In an about sixty country, revolutionary minorities then broke with the socialist parties compromised in the war to found new parties: Communist Parties.
Because it was the first stage of a combat with died between the bourgeoisie and the working class on the scale of the world, the Russian revolution unchained against it the hatred of the dominant classes of all the countries. Quickly the great powers, supported interior by white armies counter-revolutionaries, attacked the Soviet republic, causing a civil war which lasted of 1918 to 1921 putting the country at fire and blood.
In Russia even, all the parties, those of the bourgeoisie until the mencheviks and socialist revolutionary, adopted the counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks quickly became the only party to assume the sovietic responsibility for the power.
To hold in this "besieged citadel" that was then revolutionary Russia, the Bolsheviks had to mobilize all energies, all the forces and to take emergency regulations: like the requisition of food to feed the face and the prohibition of the parties. This Communism of war was certainly not the communist program but emergency measures to face a catastrophic situation....
Some see in these emergency regulations of the errors which would have supported the victory of Stalin and the bureaucracy.
But to measure the consequences of such or such decisions of the Russian revolutionary, it is necessary to understand the real reports of forces between the classes which conditioned the arena of the combat and the narrow margin which was left to them. Moreover lucid, the Bolsheviks regarded themselves as one of the factors of the history, its conscious factor, very significant factor but not only. The deciding factor remained the course even of the fight of class on an international scale. A number of decisions were imposed to them by the circumstances even combat, and one can only smell oneself interdependent of them which, contrary to the other socialist organizations, fought until the end, by using all the possible weapons they had.
The measurements taken during the Communism of war constituted retreats compared to the Soviet democracy, retreats imposed by the combat but which were, in spite of the will of the revolutionary, as many points of supports in the development of the bureaucracy. And it is for that that Stalinism made the theory of some of these measurements independently of the circumstances which had made them essential to save the Revolution.
These emergency regulations, while making it possible to mobilize all energies in a desperate plight, made it possible to put in failure the intervention of the great powers and to save revolutionary Russia. But the years of war had exhausted, disorganized, weakened the country which was nothing any more but one field of ruins. And worst it is than revolutionary Russia only found itself and insulated, brought back to its only forces. Because everywhere the vague revolutionary had failed, in particular in Germany, where the leaders of the young Communist Party, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht, had been assassinated with the complicity of the socialist party.
After the years of fight and mobilization of the masses which had allowed the introduction of the Republic of the Soviets, the retreat was going to be very deep. The exhaustion of the masses through the civil war had, in fact, involved a retreat of the Soviet democracy, a retreat in the capacity of the masses to intervene consciously on the political scene. The revolutionary power thus remained as paralysed, the masses having deserted the Soviets, in a devastated country where went up irresistibly hostile social forces feeling encouraged by the revolutionary backward flow. For Lénine, it was a question above all of holding, of preserving what had been acquired with the conviction that the exit could come only from one increase of the fights on an international scale.
It is on the basis of of this retreat, the exhaustion of the revolutionary movement and the insulation of the USSR that a caste bureaucratic has, little by little, eaten the revolutionary power and the party Bolshevik him even. These bureaucrates came from Ancien Régime but also menchéviks and revolutionary Socialists rejoined at the victorious working State after having fought it at worst the moment of the civil war.
Which is the origin of this bureaucracy? How could it be essential?
The bureaucratic phenomenon obviously did not appear the shortly after the Russian revolution. The bureaucracy existed under the mode tsarist as in all the countries besides even if in Russia because of social arrieration, it had taken gigantic proportions! In all the companies, the bureaucracy is born from the need for managing the economy because the level of development and conscience, the reports of classes, do not allow that the masses exert their democratic control collectively. It plays to some extent the role of the police officer who imposes the respect of the law when the company is dominated by "the fight for the individual existence".
The bureaucracy is found in any administrative machinery which replaces the democratic control of the masses.
It is omnipresent in the company divided into class because it is through it that the interests of the minority dominant classes are essential on all the company. It is the product of a social order of which all the ideology aims at making accept their fate with the masses involving the tender in front of the institutionalized authority of the State, but also of the party or of a trade union.
The anti-bureaucratic fight forms integral part of the combat of the revolutionary, since all our combat aims at calling oppressed to take in hand their organization, their fight and finally all the social life. And it is even that to be a revolutionary, to hope only on the capacity of the masses to sweep the official bureaucracy by their own conscious organization, while being released from the fear of the authority, social conformisms which lead to resignation.
The intervention conscious of the Russian masses in the revolution had a character deeply antibureaucratic, while starting to found a real democratic control on the social life. But this dynamics was broken by the civil war and the insulation of Russia, allowing the return of "all the old bazaar".
In the absence of this intervention conscious of the masses, the reorganization of all the social life devastated by the years of war was done through an apparatus which drew a capacity and some privileges from its function even. This bureaucracy constituted a news caste privileged people who became aware of their interests little by little.
In the situation in which was Russia with leaving the civil war, with the party concentrating Bolshevik all the capacity, this development of the bureaucracy was refracted in a fight with the centre even party Bolshevik and of its direction.
The masses not being able more to exert their control, the bureaucracy was turned over against them to guarantee its privileges through a true civil war.
The antibureaucratic fight of the opposition of left: Bolchevism counters Stalinism
It is with a clear comprehension of the dangers of degeneration threatening the Soviet State but as the party Bolshevik as since 1922, Lénine speaks about: "bureaucratic deformation of the working State". It will make of it its last combat until its death in 1924. But already sick, Lénine will not be able to really carry out this battle. With Trotski, they are thus the two principal leaders of the Russian Revolution who decide to fight against the bureaucratization of the party and the State. But that will not be sufficient to stop the social pressures which are exerted on the young working state.
These social pressures are felt until the top of the party Bolshevik. Thus, at the beginning of 1923, within the direction of the Party Bolshevik constitutes a secret alliance, the Troika between Zinoviev, Kamenev two of the principal leaders Bolsheviks and Stalin, with an aim of insulating Trotski.
Behind this will to draw aside Trotski, is expressed the increasing hostility with the idea to continue to mobilize all energies in the prospect for a resumption of the revolution and the aspiration to be blown after the terrible years of the civil war. This hostility which does not dare to continue against Lénine, of share its weight moral on the party, gene not against Trotski which joined the party Bolshevik during the revolution. That results soon in a campaign against him. Intrigues, operations of apparatus and discussions of corridor draw up against him the historical executives of the party.
In January 1924, Lénine dies. After having put its body locked up under a mausoleum, official propaganda delivers a true worship to him, making its alive, pragmatic thought a dead dogma. It is at that time that the bureaucracy invents Leninism, the Marxism-Leninism with blow of sentences and ready-made phrases and without contents that it opposes to another its inventions, the trotskism.
To insulate still more Trotski and the opposition which gathers around him, the bureaucracy makes enter from February at May 1924, 240 000 workmen, it is Lénine promotion. These new come without traditions, nor formation which join a party well installed at the power, is actually a base of support for the bureaucracy. The old guard Bolshevik does not form any more whereas one negligible minority of the party Bolshevik which according to the expression of Victor Serge became: "a party of mass of late workmen directed by parvenu bureaucrates".
The fight at the top of the party Bolshevik is often presented like a fight of succession after the death of Lénine, a personal fight to be able it between Stalin and Trotski. But this combat opposed actually the militants remained faithful to the revolutionary program, with the will to be based on the intervention conscious of the masses and those which, like Stalin, were going to be only the expression of hostile social forces to the revolution, and which will seek to liquidate the revolutionary program.
Stalin represented, according to Trotski, "the most eminent mediocrity of the party".
Militant of the old guard, Stalin during the years of Revolution, then during the civil war had remained with the background, and it could only be thus as long as the party rested on the bonds of ideas, on the conscience. Because Stalin, scorning the ideas, remained before a whole man of apparatus, whose intrigue, the conspiracy, the operations were the element. Nobody and not to even would then have imagined him that it was going to become the dictator of the USSR. If Stalin could take possession of the capacity, it is not thanks to its personal qualities but well rather because it was the toy of social forces which largely exceeded it.
Stalin was certainly more worried by the capacity which its position that by the prospect for the revolution gave him. Seeking to stick fidelities to the various levels of the apparatus, it quite naturally found them near all this new generation of careerists who had invaded the party. The seizure of Stalin on the apparatus of the party led it to the capacity only because the bureaucracy in Russia ended up being binding working to the State young person.
Stalinism could nourish individual failures of the militants Bolsheviks, it was reinforced while being based on the aspiration to blow, on this spirit of adaptation which involves the disinterest for the fight of ideas, the small daily compromises which, by passivity, lead to the disavowal. It was thus made the expression of hostile social forces to the revolution, of a caste bureaucratic for whom the continuation or the possible resumption of the revolution was perceived as a threat for small material safety that they had succeeded in conquering.
The revolutionary of the opposition of left, them, could count only on one alarm clock of the combativeness of the masses and thus they fought, above all, in the field of the ideas while being addressed to the conscience, with the spirit of initiative, the will of the militants, to tear off itself with the weight of the social pressures and ambient conformism.
The exit of this combat between the revolutionary and the bureaucracy depended, above all, of the report of forces between the revolution and revolution counters it, between the working class and the bourgeoisie on the scale of the world. Any retreat of the revolution could only reinforce the bureaucracy and on the contrary only a new revolutionary crisis could remobiliser the Russian working class by giving again the hope to him to leave the USSR its insulation. But the seizure of the bureaucracy on the working State as on the international one was going to constitute an increasingly large obstacle with this revolutionary prospect.
Consequence of the victory of Stalinism
Thus as of the shortly after died of Lénine, Stalin, in complete rupture with the internationalism of the Bolsheviks announced that it was a question from now on of building: "socialism in only one country". That translated the renouncement of the Stalinist bureaucracy of the prospect for the world revolution. Quite to the contrary, it sought the support of social forces external with the working class: tradesmen in the cities, peasants new rich in the campaigns. During several years the watchword "Kulaks you enrich" was going to be used as a basis of the construction of socialism "for step of tortoise".
But these social classes, deeply hostile to the revolution, while thus developing with the assistance of the Stalinist bureaucracy will end up threatening the existence even of the Soviet State, while being of all their weight for the re-establishment of capitalism.
From 1928, the bureaucracy had to attack its allies of the day before, operating a turn with 180°, it launched out then in the forced collectivization of the campaigns in the name of "the elimination of the kulaks as a class", and had to mobilize all energies for an exaggerated industrialization of the country.
Incompetent to conceive a policy guideline in the duration, Stalinism always had a policy as well national as international in zigzags, operating turns with 180° regularly, to each time its blindness had led it at the edge of the pit. From where introduction of the official lie, of the permanent rewriting of the history to justify the turns of the official line, to approve today what was condemned the day before.
Why such a political inconsistency on behalf of Stalinism?
Behind the inconsistency, there is the particular social condition of the bureaucracy, caste of parvenu having usurped the power of the masses. The privileges and the capacity of the bureaucracy rested on its position with the head of a State resulting from a working Revolution. All the aspirations of the Stalinist bureaucracy opposed it to the working class and it permanently sought to be based on foreign social forces with the Revolution but, despite everything, its fate remained related to the existence even of the working State. And it had after a fashion to defend it, during decades, against a re-establishment of capitalism.
Of course, such a situation could not last eternally, already Trotski in 1936 explained why the bureaucracy could not stabilize its capacity as a class and that either it would finish by being carried by an increase of the revolutionary working fights, or it would finish carried by the counter-revolution. Trotski considered a fast evolution, but it was convinced that even if the bureaucracy were to manage to maintain a statu quo for several decades, the USSR would evolve either to a re-establishment of capitalism or towards a resumption in hand of the Soviets by the working class. These is the long process counter-revolutionary which was completed with the end of the USSR in the Nineties.
The emergence of the bureaucracy in the USSR had effects on the whole of the labour movement through the International Communist and the whole of the Communist Parties.
Stalinism became, involuntarily initially then more and more consciously, one of the factors of the failure of a series of revolutionary crises which each one could have opened the prospect to leave the USSR its insulation. Stalinism initially paralysed the revolutionary ruining revolutionary crises as in Germany in 1923, or China in 1927. Then as from the Thirties, the bureaucracy played a role openly against revolutionary as in 1936 in Spain where the Stalinist ones contributed to disarm and to assassinate the Spanish revolutionary at the time of the civil war counters Franco.
Each one of these crises had been for Trotski and the opposition of left a point of support to mobilize energies, to impose the debate, to denounce Stalinist imposture, to formulate a revolutionary policy. But each one of these defeats, while confirming the accuracy of their criticisms against Stalinism, did nothing but accentuate the retreat, increase demoralization and thus weaken the camp of the revolutionary.
With each one of these defeats, the revolutionary were more isolated. The shortly after the crisis of 27, they are excluded from the party, decrees and are off-set, before being physically eliminated in the camps in the Thirties.
It is by terror that Stalinism made conceal and eliminate the revolutionary opposition.
And one of the worst consequences of Stalinism is certainly the massacre of all the generation of the Bolsheviks having taken part in the revolution and the civil war and not having abdicated during the time of retreat which followed. That represented a human capital, an irreplaceable experiment that Stalin feared over all, because their only existence was the alive proof of its imposture and the lies of its propaganda.
Between Stalinism and the Bolchevism, there is not only one cynical lie, there is also a river of blood. Trotski underlined the incompatibility, not only political, but also directly physical of Stalinism and the Bolchevism.
Stalinism succeeded in shutting off the revolutionary current of the real labour movement: physically initially by Stalinist terror, but also politically, continuously to present itself at the eyes of the masses of the whole world like the heir to the Russian revolution and the Bolchevism.
This seizure of Stalinism on the labour movement was during decades one of the principal factors counter-revolutionaries, finally contributing to stabilize the imperialism. Thus Stalinism contributed to cant the movement of revolutionary masses of the people which swept the colonial empires the shortly after the second world war, by maintaining it in the dead end of nationalism. But also the Stalinist bureaucracy was directly given the responsability to play the police officer against the people in his zone of influence by crushing the popular revolts in East Germany in 1953, in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in 1979.
Topicality of the anti-bureaucratic fight: Which assessment of the experiment Bolshevik?
Our current, the trotskism, was built through the fight against Stalinism.
By carrying out this combat, Trotski and his comrades, allowed to make live the ideas of the revolutionary Marxism, as a theory of the fight of emancipation of the workers by themselves.
Because far from the Stalinist caricature of the very powerful party, at the base of the Bolchevism there is above all the fight for the broadest democracy. All the intervention of the Bolchevism aimed at making the movement spontaneous of the masses conscious of itself, while being recipient of its combat.
The implementation of the revolutionary theory does not aim at making each decision an infallible rule, quite to the contrary, the Bolchevism was characterized above all by its pragmatism, its capacity to bring concrete answers according to the situations. And it is significant to understand what is the bottom, the goal of the policy of the Bolsheviks and the various answers that they brought during one period extremely rich in new situations.
It is the Stalinism which made Bolchevism a dogma, by theorizing the need for the single party, centralized, disciplined, guide of the masses. It is the Stalinism which made "democratic centralism", a mode of barracks which was used to muzzle very real democratic life, by the operations of apparatus even the most extreme violence. In rupture with all that had been the traditions of the labour movement until there, Stalinism introduced this undemocratic design which it is a question "of directing well the masses" rather than to help them to fight consciously.
For Lénine, the party is in the heart even masses.
To again adapt all the richness of the experiment Bolshevik, they is ourselves to release us from the limits of our characteristic running, and to be aware that the current trotskist which maintained a heritage political in the shade of Stalinism has, in fact, undergone the pressure. The fact of having been constrained to exist out of the masses imposed a narrow framework to him. Nobody escapes the objective conditions.
The various organizations held as they could it, each one defending what it thought of being the heritage of the Bolchevism, the Russian revolution, the trotskism but this heritage out of concrete confrontation with the social movement through a rich person and alive democracy, tendency has to take formal contents. Each group finally made the theory of itself, defendant what was his own dogmas against those of the other groups, thus feeding the sectarianism which divides. This narrow framework of the gauchism which was imposed by the circumstances, explains the difficulty for the revolutionary current really of making revive a political experiment built in the fire of the action of the masses, in the fire of the revolution.
But now that Stalinism died, this narrow framework flew in glare and the revolutionary find themselves in an arena much broader to intervene in the social fight.
And the central question which is asked to us remains that of the democracy. Not of course with the direction skimped of the respect of the institutions of the parliamentary democracy bourgeoise, but of the real revolutionary democracy of which the goal is the mobilization and the hard-working organization of the masses for the defense of their interests and the conquest of the capacity. That implies to think all our intervention from the point of view revolutionary, democratic and thus anti-bureaucratic.
That poses the problem of which revolutionary party it is necessary for us to build. And of course that returns us to the party Bolshevik. Because the party Bolshevik was the first party to allow the masses to take and to exert themselves the capacity, it was the instrument of the only victorious working revolution. The Bolsheviks are only which one can say: "They dared! ".
From where importance of the discussion on what was really the party Bolshevik and what was the bottom of its policy. And does that want to say to reconsider mystification that Stalinism made "That to make?" which found an audience until in the current trotskist like the strange implementations of the design of the democratic centralism.
At did the time of the construction of the party Bolshevik, Lénine defend in a booklet, "That to make?", of centralizing measurements because it was the most effective way to organize most largely possible workmen under the conditions of the dictatorship tsarist. Its goal was to build a centralized organization of militants sufficiently tried out, professionals and thus able to escape repression to structure a network much broader of workmen.
Clandestinity, the centralism were imposed by the same conditions of the dictatorship with all that that implies constraints but the goal was, under these conditions, to create democratic political relationship with the masses.
To want to apply to the letter what Lénine recommended like tactic in 1903 pennies the mode of the dictatorship tsarist, does not have a direction and can only lead to the opposite result of that wanted by Lénine. Instead of widening was the intervention of the revolutionary like that the case in Russia, to consider "That to make?" as a model can today only maintain the reflexes avant-gardist even of sects and isolate the revolutionary at the time when their ideas find a new echo.
Stalinism made party Bolshevik a model by denaturing with the passage what it was really for better imposing his seizure on all the Communist Parties. There is no model, but on the other hand it is significant to impregnate us with what was the militant philosophy of the party Bolshevik, because it is this philosophy which enabled him to intervene in the revolution.
The militants Bolsheviks were deeply attached to the ideas. They had the iron will to adapt best culture of their time, to transmit it around them. With the base of the democratic relationships between the party Bolshevik and the masses, there was full engagement in the combat designed like a freedom of a few thousands of Bolsheviks. These militants had the permanent concern to raise, with rigour, devotion, abnegation, and professionalism the level of conscience by the debate of ideas like the political struggle or the social combat, animated conviction that the ideas are as many weapons which the masses seize for themselves. All the militant philosophy of the Bolsheviks aimed this goal: to make the masses conscious of their own role so that they become actresses of their own emancipation, that they make fully of the policy, their policy.
It is this same militant philosophy which was that of the militants Bolsheviks who fought with Trotski against Stalinism towards and against all.
The anti-bureaucratic combat of Trotski and its comrades was completely in the continuity of the policy of the Bolsheviks. Watchword "all the power at the Soviets" with the anti-bureaucratic fight against Stalinism there is a deep continuity... That of the combat for the revolutionary democracy.
This philosophy animates all our combat, our own activity. Because beyond the exceptional, dramatic character of the Stalinism and the degeneration of the Revolution, of the same conditions of the Russian labour movement, there are political behaviors which are the characteristic of any apparatus which defends of the clean interests disagreements of those of the masses.
Our program integrates this lesson of the antibureaucratic fight in the ex-USSR but also against the Stalinist apparatuses in occident or elsewhere.
All the days, in the trade-union or political apparatuses, the revolutionary militants have the concern of fighting all the obstacles which the routine erects to a real working democracy. I.e. mistrust with respect to the masses, will to pass some by apparatuses recognized rather than to rely on the car-organization from the employees.
To create the conditions of a true democracy passes by the daily combat to face social conformisms which exist within the labour movement, to overcome the lack of confidence of the workers themselves, usually misses them and of practice of the political and democratic life. The democracy that we defend is not so much the compliance with formal rules but the permanent call to take its businesses in hand, with being an actor of its life. It is in this combat that the nonconformism of the revolutionary against the social conformism of the apparatuses resides.
There is a unit between this combat and measurements urgently social and democratic which we defend and who imply that the world of work exerts its control on all the social life. Because the result of this control, it is the questioning of the property which is the principal obstacle with the application of a true democracy in the field of the economy.
By which ways and which means such a democracy will be able it to be set up?
The Commune of Paris brought a first concrete answer to the question of knowing how oppressed could exert the power. It showed that the masses could not use just as it is the State of the bourgeoisie but which they were to found theirs: the State-Commune, instrument of a direct democracy resting on the direct exercise of the capacity, legislature and executive by the masses.
The Soviet revolution of 1917 made for the first time of this principle living the base of its State.
In both cases, in spite of the limits imposed by the report of force with the bourgeoisie and the immaturity of the conditions, the masses showed all including one true direct democracy, imposed by the fight, was carrying.
The Common one was crushed by the Of Versailles ones but in a few weeks the communards showed in the facts that the State-Commune was a formidable lever for a transformation of the company according to the interests of the world of work.
The political emancipation permitted by the Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet democracy could not lead to a real social, economic emancipation on a all company scale, because they remained locked up in the borders of Russia late and devastated because of the civil war and treasons of the social democrats.
In spite of that, the Bolsheviks knew by their policy, while being integrated fully into the revolutionary social movement, to allow the masses to arrive at the conscience of the need for exerting themselves the power to take in hand all the social life.
That their was possible because the party Bolshevik was a revolutionary party related to the masses by the bonds of the democracy.
We make our this philosophy of the militants Bolsheviks which rests on a deep confidence in the masses and the fight of ideas, on the will to be the instrument of the emancipation of the workers by themselves. That supposes a great rigour, devotion, professionalism and full engagement in the combat, all these qualities which made Bolsheviks, according to the expression of Lénine the Jacobins of the proletariat.
Since the Russian revolution, the company evolved considerably, creating a framework much more favorable for a revolutionary transformation. Today, the immense majority of the population is in measurement like never taking the control of the economy indeed in order to put it at the service needs for all.
The material bases so that a true direct democracy can be used as lever with a reorganization of all the economy are developed than ever. As at the time of the Commune of Paris or the Russian Revolution, which is opposed to this democracy, it is the private property of a minority which imposes its social parasitism on all the company.
The new party which starts to emerge from the stressing of the crisis of capitalism will be born from a democratic process, i.e. initiatives of the masses themselves. Consequently, it will be fully integrated in the movements of masses of which it is the product to contribute to the evolution of the consciences until the need for the revolution.
Charles Meno