Stalinism in the Post War World¶
Core Argument¶
Stalinism in the Post War World
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the global order was reconfigured into a bipolar contest between US imperialism and the Russian bureaucracy, with the European powers reduced to secondary status. The decay of capitalism was starkly revealed by the upsurge of national liberation struggles across Asia, which forced imperialist withdrawals from India, Burma, and Indonesia, and bogged down French and British forces in Indo-China and Malaya. In China, the US-backed Kuomintang was decisively defeated. In Eastern Europe, the Red Army filled the power vacuum left by the Nazis. The weak local bourgeoisie proved incapable of solving bourgeois-democratic problems, and the Stalinist bureaucracy constructed ‘popular fronts’ as a cover for building state machines on the Moscow model. The bureaucracy first used the bourgeoisie to block workers from achieving socialist revolution on the lines of October, then later expropriated them.
The Chinese Revolution was a peasant war led by a Stalinist Bonapartist bureaucracy that balanced between classes, using land reform to win peasant support before eliminating landlords and bureaucratic capitalism while temporarily tolerating merchant capital in a neo-NEP. The bureaucracy will eventually expropriate the peasantry, turn on the working class, and establish a totalitarian state approximating Moscow’s. Chinese Stalinism is relatively progressive due to industrial development and national unification, and will likely come into conflict with Moscow. In Yugoslavia, an independent partisan base gave the bureaucracy mass support and a base from which to resist Moscow’s domination, leading to the Tito-Stalin split. Yugoslavia remains a deformed workers’ state, and the Fourth International must fight for a political revolution to establish workers’ democracy there.
In Western Europe, Stalinism saved capitalism after the war by forming coalition popular fronts instead of seizing power when it was possible. It then pursued irresponsible strikes without revolutionary perspective, exhausting the proletariat. In Britain and America, Stalinism remains a weak force with limited mass penetration. In Britain, this is due to historical wealth, ruling-class skill in deceit and compromise, and deep working-class traditions of democracy within the labour movement. In America, the working class remains politically tied to capitalist parties due to wealth and high living standards, but economic crisis could trigger rapid radicalisation. In Spain, the Franco regime is doomed; strikes in Barcelona and the Basque country mark the beginning of a new revolution. A new Spanish Commune would split Western Communist Parties, trigger differentiation in social democracy, and begin the end of Stalinism globally.
The Cold War expresses capitalism’s impasse, and a long period of struggle between Stalinism, capitalism, and the working class opens. War is unlikely for years: the working class in the West is undefeated, and war would risk continental collapse and revolutionary convulsions. Stalinism is a regime of permanent crisis, its socialist economic base contradicting its Bonapartist state and privileged caste. The bureaucracy maintains power through repression and exploiting external threats, but mounting contradictions ensure Bonapartism remains a regime of permanent crisis. Political revolution from below is inevitable, though its timing is indeterminate. Stalinist proletarian Bonapartism must give way to proletarian democracy via political revolution before socialism can begin. Stalinism is a temporary check; either healthy proletarian revolution in the West or Stalinist extension followed by political revolution will prepare its end.