Section Four: The Alternative to Stalinism¶
Core Argument¶
In the aftermath of the October 1917 revolution—hailed as the greatest event in human history, in which workers, peasants, and soldiers seized state power through the Soviets—the Soviet Union emerged as a profound paradox. It stood as a symbol of liberation yet bore a record of repression. The planned economy achieved colossal growth: from 1913 to 1963, industrial output rose fifty-two times, steel production reached 100 million tons, and life expectancy more than doubled. These achievements vindicated public ownership and planning. Yet the revolution succeeded in backward, semi-colonial Russia, where capitalism was weak and dependent on foreign finance. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, won mass support with the slogans “Bread, Peace, Land” and “All Power to the Soviets.” The revolution faced immediate military intervention from twenty-one capitalist armies, provoking revolutionary upsurges across Europe. The Red Army grew to five million workers and peasants; mutinies in French, British, German, and Czechoslovak forces saved Russia. London dockers refused to load arms for Poland, and a threatened General Strike stopped intervention.
After the civil war, industrial production fell to one-ninth of 1913 levels, and seven million waifs roamed the country. War Communism—grain requisitioning, famine, over-hasty nationalisation—was the price of survival. The New Economic Policy was introduced as a temporary retreat. The failure of the German Revolution in 1923, due partly to Stalin and Zinoviev, demoralised Russian workers. Lenin admitted that “we still have the same old tsarist state machine today, with a thin veneer of socialism spread on top.” Stalin turned the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate into an instrument for placing his loyalists in key positions. Forced “complete collectivisation” abandoned the gradual, voluntary model urged by Lenin and Trotsky; peasants slaughtered livestock, and ten million died in the ensuing famine. The Comintern’s “third period” declared social democracy and fascism “twins,” splitting the German working class and enabling Hitler’s seizure of power. The terror was unleashed after the Kirov assassination frame-up in 1934; an entire generation of old Bolsheviks was wiped out. By 1939, only two members of the 1917 Central Committee survived. The party was transformed from a revolutionary vanguard into a lever of the bureaucratic apparatus. Workers lost the right to change jobs; slave labour from concentration camps built major industrial installations.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 demonstrated that the programme of Bolshevism remained alive. Workers fought for Lenin’s 1919 demands: workers’ management through soviets, a 4:1 wage differential, elected officials with recall, a workers’ militia, and withdrawal of occupation armies. The revolt was crushed, but its demands matched those Trotsky predicted for a political revolution in Russia. By 1964, bureaucratic control had created serious economic crisis. Industrial productivity growth slowed, wastage reached 30–50% of production, and agricultural output rose only 14% against an industrial rise of 84%. The bureaucracy, unable to provide adequate goods or housing, posed as fighters against bureaucratism while preserving its own rule. Half the meat, milk, butter and eggs consumed in the USSR were privately produced. Agricultural labour productivity was about one quarter of the US level; nearly one-third of the population worked the land, six times the US rural labour force. Moscow was choked, with a maximum of three square metres per person qualifying for a flat. The bureaucracy, once relatively beneficial in Stalin’s day, had become an absolute fetter on progress. Workers averaged 90–100 rubles per month; ministers received up to 5,000 rubles plus privileges. Strikes and revolts occurred, including at Krasnodar where a workers’ soviet was created and soldiers refused to fire. The leadership’s adoption of profit incentive schemes was a gimmick to reconcile irreconcilable contradictions on a bureaucratic basis, provoking unemployment and corruption. Only the programme of Marx and Lenin—against bureaucratism, for Soviet democracy—offered a solution. The working class was now educated and a hundred million strong; the economy demanded popular control. A political revolution on the lines of Lenin’s four points was needed.