The plans of the imperialists went wrong¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the Second World War produced a result directly contrary to the calculations of both German and Anglo-American imperialism: the Soviet Union emerged not broken and weakened, but as the greatest military power on the European continent. This outcome, the text asserts, has thrown the imperialist chancelleries into panic. The war in Europe was essentially a war between Germany, commanding the resources of the entire continent, and the Soviet Union, from which the latter emerged victorious.
The core of the analysis concerns the dual and contradictory function of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. The Stalinist bureaucracy, the text contends, uses the Red Army for two purposes: as a strategic defence against its imperialist allies, and for the domination and plunder of the Balkan and Central European peoples in the interests of the bureaucracy itself. Stalin has retained capitalism in these occupied areas, making only land reforms to placate the peasants and his allies. The deeper reason for this retention of capitalism is the bureaucracy’s fear of unleashing genuine proletarian revolution, even in caricature form, which would spread beyond its control and threaten its own position within the Soviet Union. Thus, the occupation serves to strangle the European revolution. The chapter declares that with the fall of German imperialism, the primary task of the proletariat shifts from the defence of the Soviet Union to the defence of the European revolution against the Soviet bureaucracy, which now wields the Red Army as a weapon of counter-revolution.
The text presents a stark set of perspectives for the Soviet Union itself. The war has accelerated two contradictory processes: the proletarianisation of new strata of the population, creating a vast working class, and the simultaneous elevation of the bureaucratic caste into a parasitic stratum with increasingly capitalist characteristics. The bureaucracy’s retention of capitalism in Eastern Europe could serve as a starting point for the restoration of capitalism within the USSR. Alternatively, the bureaucracy might be forced to nationalise industry in the occupied countries from above, against its own wishes. The chapter identifies three possible outcomes: the bureaucracy’s maintenance of power on the basis of an ascending economy; a further degeneration leading to capitalist restoration; or a proletarian resurgence overthrowing the bureaucracy and restoring Soviet democracy. The Fourth International is called upon to expose the bureaucracy’s counter-revolutionary role and, where the Red Army is used to crush workers’ uprisings, to call on workers to oppose it by all means, including armed force, while appealing to Red Army soldiers to remember the mission of October.
The text is a polemic directed simultaneously against world imperialism, the Stalinist bureaucracy, and any tendency to conflate the defence of the Soviet Union with the defence of Stalinism. It argues that the bureaucracy has completely assimilated the vices of the capitalist West and that the economic conquests of October—nationalised property—are now in sharper conflict with the bureaucratic stranglehold than ever. The war has revolutionised Soviet society, and the victorious workers, peasants, and soldiers will present their account to the bureaucracy on the morrow.