Again, and Once More Again on the Nature of the USSR¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 11: Again, and Once More Again on the Nature of the USSR
This chapter mounts a rigorous defence of the theory that the USSR remained a degenerated workers’ state, rejecting any suggestion that the Stalinist bureaucracy constituted a new ruling class. The author opens with a polemic against psychoanalytic explanations of Trotsky’s position, arguing that subjective revolt leads some comrades toward ‘terminological terror’—the impulse to label the bureaucracy a new class. Such a designation, the text insists, would imply the Soviet social formation is a viable historical entity rather than the monstrous abortion it actually is. A damaged workers’ state remains a workers’ state, just as a trade union with reactionary leadership remains a trade union.
The analysis turns to foreign policy, where the author insists that the term ‘imperialism’ cannot be applied to Kremlin expansion without careful elucidation. Marxism reserves that concept for finance capital; Moscow’s policy merely continues tsarist geographical ambitions, not capitalist imperialism proper. The Kremlin’s foreign policy is that of a Bonapartist bureaucracy trapped within imperialist encirclement, not imperialism itself. The occupation of eastern Poland, for instance, constituted a lesser evil only because Hitler represented a greater one. The Fourth International defends the USSR’s social basis unconditionally, but not every Red Army action; it maintains a clear distinction between defence of the workers’ state and support for Bonapartist reaction.
The text then considers ‘bureaucratic collectivism’ as a theoretical possibility, not a revision of Marxism but a concretisation of the fundamental alternative: socialism or totalitarian servitude. While this perspective implies historical pessimism, the author finds grounds for revolutionary optimism in the consciousness of the ruling classes themselves. Both Coulondre and Hitler, the text argues, embody the barbarism advancing across Europe, yet neither doubts that their own barbarism will ultimately be defeated by socialist revolution. This awareness now characterises the ruling classes of all capitalist countries. Their complete demoralisation constitutes a key element in the current relation of class forces. While the proletariat possesses a young and still weak revolutionary leadership, the bourgeoisie’s leadership is rotting while still standing. From the very outset of the war they could not prevent, these ruling-class figures are convinced in advance of their own regime’s collapse. This fact alone, the author concludes, must serve as the source of invincible revolutionary optimism.