Stalin agrees with Anglo-US imperialists to hold Europe in chains¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal (November 1943) argues that the Moscow Conference of the Three Powers represents a systematic conspiracy by Stalin, in alliance with Anglo-American imperialism, to suppress the socialist revolution in Europe. The core narrative thrust is that Stalin has abandoned the revolutionary tradition of Lenin and placed the Soviet bureaucracy on the side of capitalism, securing only paltry concessions in return for helping to maintain bourgeois “law and order” across the continent.
The text makes several key claims. First, Anglo-American imperialism, having miscalculated the strength of the Red Army, now recognises the impossibility of holding down Europe without Stalinist assistance. The prestige of the Russian revolution and the admiration felt by the world working class for the Red Army are to be harnessed to stifle the inevitable urge of the European masses toward socialism. Second, Stalin is preparing for a “super-Versailles” peace of revenge against Germany, imposing stringent reparations that will fall on German workers and peasants, not on the capitalists and generals with whom he intends to collaborate. The economist Varga, writing in the Soviet publication War and the Working Class, is cited as evidence that the Soviet Union demands Germany make good the destruction in Russia. Third, the Stalinist regime is conducting a campaign of chauvinist hatred against Germans as Germans, out-Vansittarting Vansittart, printing millions of copies of books denouncing the “Huns” — a preparation for the joint occupation of Germany and the destruction of any attempted social revolution there.
The chapter draws on the historical context of the 1917 October Revolution and the subsequent degeneration of the Soviet state under Stalin. It contrasts the diplomacy of Lenin with that of Stalin, noting that “rivers of blood” flow between them. The polemic is directed against Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy, but also against the Anglo-American imperialists and their liberal apologists. The phrase “law and order” is subjected to a withering attack, linking it to Galliffet’s butchery of the Communards, the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, and the massacres of Mussolini and Hitler. The text also argues against the illusion of peaceful co-existence between the Soviet Union and capitalism, citing Lenin’s warning that the idea of peace under capitalism is a “harmful fairy tale.”
The chapter concludes by asserting that the imperialists and Stalin are miscalculating. The socialist revolution will have the last word, and the programme of October — Bread, Land and Peace — will be realised by the Fourth International, carrying through the programme of Lenin and Trotsky.