Stalinism and Bolshevism¶
Core Argument¶
Reactionary epochs lower the ideological level of the movement, forcing the vanguard to swim against the current, retaining revolutionary positions even when political ground is lost. Defeat provokes two responses: the true vanguard defends revolutionary thought, while routinists and centrists destroy the revolutionary tradition. Willi Schlamm, in criticising the Moscow trials, attempts to forge a new socialism by denouncing dialectics, class struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, retreating to a pre-Marxist, sentimental German socialism. His reaction concludes that Bolshevism degenerated into Stalinism, and Marxism into Bolshevism, so one must renounce Marxism entirely. Others propose returning Bolshevism to Marxism, but this ignores decades of struggle and the October Revolution.
Stalinism is not the legitimate product of Bolshevism. Bolshevism is only one factor in history, not sovereign over the historical process. The Soviet state reflects the cultural level, social composition, and pressure of a barbaric past and world imperialism, not pure Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks foresaw that without revolution in the West, the Soviet regime would degenerate. Lenin warned that the party could lose its Bolshevism under unfavourable conditions. The Left Opposition recorded symptoms of degeneration, but the subjective factor proved insufficient; the bureaucracy won. Stalinism is a Thermidorian negation of Bolshevism, not its revolutionary affirmation. The present purge shows the physical incompatibility between Bolshevism and Stalinism. Anarchists see Stalinism as a product of state socialism, but the Spanish experience shows anarchist theory fails in revolution, which demands the conquest of the state, not its denial.
Marxists agree with anarchists on the final goal of abolishing the state, but argue this cannot be achieved by ignoring it. Stalinism does not refute Marxism but confirms it by inversion. The workers’ state, on a low economic base and surrounded by imperialism, was transformed into the Stalinist gendarmerie. Genuine Bolshevism fought this gendarmerie, and Stalinism now wages civil war against Bolshevism. To deduce Stalinism from Bolshevism is like deducing counter-revolution from revolution; anarchist thought is trapped in liberal rationalism and lacks dialectics.
Arguments that Bolshevism’s political sins—party dictatorship, banning other parties, or compromising with the bourgeoisie—caused Stalinism are empty. The proletariat can only take power through its vanguard party. The ban on other Soviet parties was a defensive measure in a backward, devastated country, not a theory; its danger lay in material weakness, not doctrine. The Kronstadt insurrection is a legend based on ignorance. The Bolshevik revolution, despite its repressions, transformed social relations for the masses, whereas Stalin’s Thermidor serves a privileged minority.
Bolshevism was marked by theoretical conscientiousness; Stalinism is coarse, empirical, and hostile to theory, revising Marx with the GPU’s heel. The moral qualities of Bolshevism—self-renunciation, audacity—flow from revolutionary intransigence in the service of the oppressed; Stalinist bureaucracy imitates these for a privileged minority, producing demoralisation. The struggle is not between Stalin and Trotsky but between the bureaucracy and the proletariat. The Fourth International has grown organically out of Bolshevism, inheriting its tradition of theory and practice.