Section One: Proletarian Bonapartism¶
Core Argument¶
The Russo-German war exposed the contradictory character of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers' state. German imperialists, believing the bureaucracy's oppression would cause the masses to welcome "liberation," underestimated Soviet resistance. Yet the basic conquests of October—the abolition of private ownership of the means of production—remained intact, and the masses rallied to defend them despite their aversion to the bureaucracy. Stalin could not wage revolutionary war; he fought Hitler only because he had no alternative, defending the Soviet Union in a distorted, bureaucratic fashion while relying on Churchill and Roosevelt, who calculated on the mutual exhaustion of Germany and Russia.
The post-war period saw the decay of capitalism-imperialism and the Cold War impasse, opening a long struggle between Stalinism, capitalism, and the working class. In Eastern Europe, the Red Army filled the vacuum left by the defeated Nazis. The weak bourgeoisie were exterminated or compromised, while Stalinists formed a "popular front" cover, retaining real power over armed bodies and the state apparatus. The bourgeoisie was used to prevent workers from achieving socialist revolution before being expropriated. In Yugoslavia and China, independent state bases allowed resistance to Moscow's control, producing Bonapartist Stalinist regimes rather than proletarian revolutions.
Bonapartism is defined as rule by the sword, where the state assumes relative independence from classes, balancing between them. In capitalism's decline, it is weak and senile. The Stalinist bureaucracy, having eliminated landlords and confiscated "bureaucratic capitalism," temporarily tolerated merchant and industrial capitalism in a neo-NEP before moving to confiscate private industry and expropriate the peasantry. The regime turned on the working class, smashing elements of workers' democracy. Chinese Stalinism, resting on the peasantry and basing itself on the passivity of the proletariat, will likely develop an even more monstrous oppressive machine than Russia's.
The colonial revolution took a distorted pattern due to the lag of revolution in the West and Stalinist degeneration. Where the proletariat could not lead, peasant armies were used for Bonapartist state construction. In Burma, Egypt, Iraq, and Algeria, officer castes established one-party totalitarian states, nationalising foreign-owned interests and expropriating indigenous bourgeoisies. These regimes—proclaiming Buddhist, Muslim, or African socialism—constitute a Bonapartist deformation imposed by the delay of revolution in the West. No backward country, in isolation from a healthy workers' state, can maintain anything but a Bonapartist state.
Proletarian Bonapartism must give way to proletarian democracy through a new political revolution. Without democratic participation by the masses, socialism cannot develop. The Fourth International must make implacable criticism of the nationalism of both Russian and Chinese bureaucracies, stressing internationalist perspectives. The historical task is not only destroying capitalism but ending the national state, which constricts productive forces.