Resolution of the RCP Conference on the Soviet Union¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter digest presents the resolution of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) conference on the Soviet Union, reaffirming the Fourth International’s core programmatic position that the USSR is a transitional regime between capitalism and socialism, defined by a dual nature in which capitalist and socialist forces are locked in conflict. The central argument is that, while the Soviet state exhibits capitalist characteristics—wage labour, commodity production, money circulation, and social differentiation—these do not justify classifying the economy as state capitalist. Instead, the fundamental class nature of the USSR remains that of a degenerated workers’ state, grounded in the nationalised land, means of production, transport, exchange, planned economy, and foreign trade monopoly inherited from the October Revolution. These gains constitute the economic premise for the class characterisation.
The resolution draws heavily on Leon Trotsky’s analysis, attributing the political expropriation of the proletariat and the entrenchment of the Stalinist bureaucracy to Russia’s economic backwardness in 1917 and its isolation by imperialist states. The bureaucracy’s totalitarian control over the state apparatus and economic life has enabled the exploitation of workers and peasants and fostered the growth of rouble millionaires through capitalist degeneration. The text stresses that the USSR’s dual nature could tip back towards capitalism if the working class fails to reclaim political control, or towards socialism if it does, as in the revolution’s early days.
A notable polemic targets theories that define Russian society as a new class-exploitative form, such as managerial society or bureaucratic collectivism. The resolution rejects these as revisionist, substituting pragmatism for historical materialism, and warns that they lead to a break with communism and mistaken policies, including defeatism towards the USSR in war—a stance the RCP repudiates.
The chapter also addresses the failure of the Fourth International, including the RCP’s own leading comrades, to analyse the social transformations in Eastern European countries under Soviet occupation, particularly Czechoslovakia. It notes that while land and means of production have been nationalised there, working-class parties share power with capitalists, creating transitional regimes whose precise class character remains unestablished. The resolution calls for an international discussion and instructs the RCP to open a debate in its theoretical journal, acknowledging theoretical hesitation in the face of complex new social phenomena.