6 THE RISE OF STALINISM

Furthermore the Bolshevik failure to target the criminality of the continuous regime meant that they couldn't claim authority to round them up (for their criminality) once soviet power had been asserted. Ironically because the revolution had removed the illegitimacy of Kerensky and co (which was based on their lack of soviet support), by removing him from power, Kerensky, or at least his cohorts, could call for/claim parliamentary elections/sovereignty. This led to the ridiculous situation whereby even the fascist General Kaledin was let of scot-free to foment (with imperialist backing) civil war.

These murderers (Nicholas, Kaledin, milyukov, Kerensky and co) should have been brought to trial and strung up for their crimes before parliamentary elections; and the power of parliament itself should have been so constitutionally circumscribed as to make the transfer of economic power (hegemonic control over production- through control over finance away from the soviet TREASON - But to do latter it is neccessary to do the former and to do the former, it would have been neccessary to educate/prepare the masses politically for such measures (including the need for sacrifices for reconstruction - which ironically, as seen in Chapter 5 they didn't have to do to win power as no need to delegitimise a parliamentary regime) by targeting the regimes' criminality from the very beginning- April 1917.

As it was, elections to the constituent assembly gave these vermin the perfect opportunity and cover to regroup and crush the soviets. The Bolsheviks having dug themselves into this hole had to limit the damage by dissolving it after a single day - insuring that the war-profiteers and landlordist scum had the best possible opportunity to howl that `democracy had been smashed' - so giving their imperialist backers a precious figleaf of respectability for their invasion/slaughter of the revolution.

This in turn further exacerbated the growing economic chaos that to a large (indeed decisive) extent, resulted from Lenin and Trotsky`s failure to pre-educate the masses to the need for economic sacrifices to finance reconstruction.

As a consequence of this failure a chaotic spiral of pol/econ panic took hold, based largely on the fact that there was no mass conception of economic priorities, because the masses had not been educated in the period preceding the revolution. The masses (out of opportunistic convenience) had been led or allowed to believe that after power had been seized everything would be hunky dory.

As the chaos couldn't be the new power's fault, it had therefore to be the old bourgeois (anyone better of, regardless of wether or not their technical skill warranted it) specialists fault - There was an increasing tendancy towards the victimisation of specialists/managers etc by workers - excessive outright nationalisation (even many of the self-employed were `nationalised') of the puniest concerns. This produced a monstrous tendancy towards reactionary egalitarianism, hyper-inflation and collapse (and the cannibalisation for subsistence of capital); as opposed to egalitarianism based on socialist hegemony and an evolutionary raising of (the general technical level of the populace) social wages and the gradual reduction of importance of the private wage.

So the new power had failed to bring the pol/econ regime to trial for their real crimes and was now increasingly treating the old bourgeois technocrats as criminals (even) if they went about their work conscientiously! It is not to be wondered at if the old bourgeois were unimpressed and unco-operative.

Lenin did try to arrest this chaos, though the pol/econ logic & dynamics (and privations) of the civil war gave an added boost to this tendancy. He effectively admitted lying to the masses when he called for economic order (June 1918), saying that while it was neccessary (post revolution), to have advocated it pre-revolution - would have been `a provocation'. To clarify things he did not merely mean that acceptance of bourgeois economic order was a provocation, but actually meant that to call for & publicly advocate (before the revolution) a reconstruction first austerity program under workers' control would have been `a provocation'. I.e it was neccessary to bullshit to win power, worry about (educating the masses on) reconstruction afterwards.

Reactionary egalitarianism increasingly meant party control over the (a rationing) economy and the evolution of a bureaucratic national security state controlling and effectively limiting/constraining (by grain seizures etc) the productive forces. This bureaucratic caste did not live in gilded opulence (was not initially opportunistic in the conventional sense) was as much the impoverished prisoner of its' own shortcomings as the villain. But party control meant the castration of the soviet as a potential organ of economic democracy, development and planning. And meant the state was not under effective (revolutionary democratic) workers' control and was therefore able to become increasingly more so- a law unto itself.

So the opportunistic failure to pre-educate the masses was the origin of working class disempowerment in Bolshevik Russia (or rather the fact that due to the party's reformist political short-cuts they had never actually been empowered & educated in the first place). It was a failure that flowed from the very logic of the deficiency of (essentially) reformist Marxist/laborist methods of struggle - The failure to target the regimes' criminality which would have enabled the posing of a clear revolutionary reconstructionist agenda (with calls for economic sacrifices) as it would have been clear that there was no alternative but austerity (either for reconstruction or speculation). This non-education (as we shall see) was a critical, in itself decisive, pre-condition for the rise of that dreadful-curious historical phenomena - Stalinism.

It has to be recognised that the inheritance of the revolution was God-awful. While it is technically possible to pre-educate the workers (though due to the unique historic conditions in Russia 1917, it would have been possible for marxist opportunists to steal a march - to `speed things up' indeed therefore, inevitable, because it was possible - on revolutionary reconstructionists) the peasants consisting 90% of the populace were another matter.

The scattered peasantry saw their interests typically in terms of dividing the landlords' land and through individual capital accumulation seeking to acquire more land and expand business individually. They were therefore incipient capitalists. This the Bolsheviks feared threatened the restoration of capitalist hegemony and the subjugation of the USSR to a rotting system of global finance capital.

It was recognised as being theoretically possible through the industrialisation of agriculture, to encourage the peasantry to join collective farms with higher output/lower unit costs of production and greater profitability with the surplus sold and taxed to provide more funds for development in other sectors. But even with the best pre-education of the workers, scope for such development on the basis of workers' sacrifices alone was very limited. The question ultimately reduced itself to `how was the peasantry to be exploited to provide primary capital to finance reconstruction?'

A way out would have been to deliberately support the kulak in milking the poor and middle (subsistence) peasantry in order to then exploit (through taxation) the exploiters to fund the industrialisation of agriculture (VOLUNTARY collectives) - Effectively playing both sides against the middle to squeeze & break-up the subsistence sector.

Agriculture could and should have been looked at in the same way as we might look at a single capitalist enterprise producing washing machines etc. Eg. the contributions (taxes) of the capitalists (big peasants) should have been used to secure (through socialist industrialisation) hegemonic control of the concern (agriculture) over the long-run for the workers (agri-laborers), insuring all profits are continually re-invested/used to finance development in other sectors and not wasteful dividends/speculation (soviet to have direct control of agri-taxation and development - to prevent parliamentary sabotage).

A basic outline of rev-reconstructionist policy would have been to:

Industrialise agriculture (encouraging voluntary collectivisation under control of soviet finance capital).

Increase investment in heavy industry.

increase the technical/education/skills level of the populace.

Increase the social wage (includes 3 above-).

To finance this program:

Reduce/keep to a neccessary minimum the role of the private wage.

Squeeze the subsistence sector (playing both left and right sides against the middle) by encouraging exploitation of the poor/middle peasants by kulaks - who in turn are progressively taxed to fund the development of agri-industrial collectives - securing socialist hegemony over agriculture (materially as opposed to merely political).

Pension contributions to be made by employers in private enterprises to the workers' pension funds, so that it evolves to workers' control as it grows (a bulwark against speculation and share dividend mania later on). Also share-capital for loans (from socialist finance) given instead of exorbitant interest rates.

The above program is clearly recognisable as a socialist hegemonic framework, even if the USSR would have begun from a position with very little (socialist-industrial) flesh on the bone.

As it was pre-October Bolshevik macro-economic policy depended entirely on `the international revolution' (an expectation of credits and industrial development aid - from a revolutionary west - especially Germany), with a refusal (almost on principle) to say (or even consider) what could and should be done in the interim period.

Industrial collapse (largely due to reactionary egalitarianism) greatly exacerbated by civil war meant no industrial products to sell to the peasants for grain. This led inevitably to the resort by the Bolsheviks to seizures of grain (from peasants refusing to sell grain for worthless paper money) to feed the cities, leading to a consequent refusal by the peasants to sow more than a subsistence (for themselves) - The collapse of agricultural output and an ever more desperate conflict between town and country.

Because the peasantry on balance feared restoration of (finance-backed) landlordism more than (immediate) the grain expropriations, they were willing to tolerate (i.e. not join the white gaurds) the Bolsheviks and their seizures as the lesser evil until the end of the civil war. But reactionary egalitarianism (the pol/econ logic of) which had been given a boost by the civil war, had been raised from a panic measure (or a system of panic - which Lenin had belatedly denounced) to an ideal in itself; which the nat.sec. state sensed instinctively that it could not go back on without calling into question its' own right to govern. Therefore after the victory they continued and actually sought to entrench the rationing system of war communism. This led to the mutiny of peasant conscript sailors (at Krondstat naval base) incensed at reports of continued (and more brutal) grain seizures.

The Krondstadt rebellion was essentially a revolt of the productive forces against the anti-productive restrictions of the nat.sec.state. It was supported by sizeable sections of the working class, though it was led by the petit-bourgeois; as the workers were effectively knocked out of the game as an autonomous revolutionary force able to pursue their own progressive rev. reconstructionist agenda, by their lack of pol/econ education (for such a role) in the preceding period - resulting in their active element supporting reactionary egalitarianism. This meant that victory would (most likely) have meant a restoration not just of market relations (which would have been a good thing), but actual capitalist hegemony over the pol/econ - and the subjugation of Russia to a rotting system of global finance.

This revolt compelled the Bolsheviks to abandon partially war-communism and grant concessions (introduction of the new economic policy -NEP) to the poor and middle peasants - allow them to sell a part of their grain product in the market and allow limited private investment/manufacture.

The emphasis however was in getting the peasants to supply cheap grain to the cities. This emphasis on cheap grain for sale to workers instead of for sale by the state at market prices to finance industrial investment & reconstruction, represented a partial retention of the rationing economy.

They refused (merely to placate the party faithful) to allow large-scale investment in private manufacture or - its' agricultural corollary - the kulaks to exploit the poor and middle peasants, who in turn could be milked/taxed (to provide funds for the industrialisation of agriculture/funds for industrial investment. So that the effect was (albeit to partially restore agricultural output - which had been decimated by grain seizures - in the short term) to entrench not smash the subsistence sector.

This policy led by 1923 to a failure of industrial output (due to the consequent lack of capital for investment) to keep pace with rising agricultural production and a marked gap between high cost industrial products and comparative lower cost agricultural products and renewed tension between town and country. The regime responded by seeking to (artificially) hold down the price of (scarce) industrial goods to the countryside to encourage the peasants to continue to sell their grain to the state - many of these goods were bought up and sold on by middlemen (NEPmen) at their market price, meaning the state effectively threw away precious revenue/funds that could have been used for (industrial) investment; worsening the imbalance over the long run.

Ever more concessions were granted to the (in any case emerging) kulaks (without appropriate levels of taxation) as (stagnating) socialised industry's relative position weakened and the (increasingly opportunistic and self-serving) bureaucracy felt itself more and more to be an arbiter between classes, indeed a class apart from the workers.

As a consequence the industrial centres/cities had nothing to exchange for grain which meant falling procurement prices (paid by the state), and the kulaks held grain back from sale, hoping for a higher market price. The critical factor was that the subsistence sector/middle peasantry (buttressed by previous Bolshevik concessions/refusal to squeeze the subsistence sector) acted as a point of support for the kulaks as they to were being denied industrial products in exchange for their grain.

But if the kulaks (through a program of socialist hegemony) had been allowed to milk the subsistence sector and in turn been milked to provide funds for investment:

Industrial production would have been higher. The cities would actually have had something to exchange for grain - through the market mechanism.

Industrialised agri-collectives would be on the path to achieving material (as opposed to merely financial or much worse political) hegemony over capitalist agriculture.

The subsistence sector would (instead of being buttressed for useless political reasons) be facing ruin and quite incapable of providing a point of support for the kulaks, and increasingly they would come to hate them (marginalising the kulaks as a threat still further) rather than share any interest in common with them against the socialist market sectors. So that even if the (marginalised) kulaks resented the grain tax they would be incapable of offering serious resistance to it.

To have simply allowed the kulaks to hold back the grain (without exploiting them and hammering those that refuse to pay a tax in kind) would have led not just to the restoration of market relations (which would have been a good thing) but the subjugation of Russia to the rotting system of global finance.

The Lenin/Trotsky faction as early as late 1923 could see where this situation was evolving (towards a crisis of the defacto rationing system - the tax in kind for cheap food rather than to fund investment) and began to push for a (somewhat more garbled) variant of socialist hegemony, calling for the progressive taxation of the richer peasants to fund industrialised agri-collectives.

The very fact/reason they pushed for (a garbled variant of) socialist hegemony was because of the final exhaustion of left-reformist (arguing for higher wages etc.) options (in the unique political and economic conditions of Soviet Russia) which in turn meant that the only mode of revolutionary factional struggle left was to push for industrial revolutionary reconstruction.

As to the question of how was it possible for revolutionary elements like Lenin and Trotsky to (be allowed to) remain in the party for so long and at such a high level, as it shifted rightwards (became increasingly independent of the workers), the answer is that they were in effect, like sea-shells atop a mountain, the remnants of a previous epoch - and they had less and less control/influence over the agenda of the bureaucratic ruling caste/class.

Mimicking the pattern of previous (pre-global finance) revolutionary movements, as the crisis deepened, popular support for Trotskys' left-opposition increased. However because the nat.sec. state had (its' progressive role) kept Russia free from the control of global finance, there was (in Russia) scope for implementing internal revolutionary reforms in response to such a radical shock (which moreover was combined with memories of 1917 and a fear by the bureaucracy of what might be done to them), which could expand/develop the economy and (most importantly) keep the nat. sec. state in its' positions of pol/econ control.

They could and did resecure control of the agenda by first smashing the political threat from the left and then leaning on sections of workers as a (now compliant) point of support to smash the (capitalist restorationist/hegemonic) danger from the right by crushing the kulaks - consolidating the centre with a massive program of (bureaucratically executed) industrialisation.

It was neccessary to smash the left first otherwise rev-reforms would merely have given the workers confidence to struggle for more and threaten the very existence of all sections of the elite. But because this program of industrialisation opened up greatly differentiated economic opportunities for different sections of workers (depending on skill etc) this meant the working class became highly fragmented in terms of its' immediate expectations and much less inclined therefore or able to push for a radical alternative to bureaucratically controlled industrialisation; this fragmentation stabilised the rule of the nat.sec. state.

To what extent did exploitation of the kulaks (or capitalist agriculture as a whole) play in financing industrialisation? Hardly any. The kulaks were merely crushed, peasants with a couple of cows were branded kulaks and increasingly forced into (non-industrialised) collectives against their will (as opposed to market forces impoverishing them and compelling them to join industrialised agricultural collectives for wages) - they responded with a massive slaughter of livestock - agricultural output consequently fell and was a drag factor on industrial development not a motor. The costs of industrialisation were borne almost entirely by the working class through gulags/slavery.

The effective (as opposed to stated) purpose of Stalins' attack on the kulaks was to re-establish party control over agriculture and therefore consolidate (total) nat.sec. state control over the entire pol/econ. This was historically progressive in that it served to keep Russia free from the rotting system of global finance, but reactionary in that it resulted/caused the insane destruction of agricultural production and general productive potential of the economy.

But (wildly excessive) repression of the kulaks and also of the middle (and other sections of the) peasantry, served the nat.sec.states' need for `an enemy within' to justify the extreme privations being inflicted on large sections of workers to finance reconstruction - but far more importantly - justified the continued existence of the nat.sec. state.

To push for socialist hegemony and a continuing need for exploitative kulaks (and in turn the exploitation of the kulaks themselves) would have led to questions about the role and privileges of the bureaucracy themselves (useless exploiting `political kulaks'). But by creating the spectre of `an enemy within' the bureaucracy could continue to control the pol/econ agenda with passive support of sections of the urban workforce.

In capitalist expansionary cycles, eventual market saturation leads to a crisis of over-production and recession. ultimately this process becomes generalised and there develops an increasing tendancy for capital to shift into (more profitable) parasitic speculative investment. Historically this downward cyclical trend (longwave) only ends when a generalised shock to the pol/econ (eg. expansion of the USSR into E.Europe and W.European uprisings post WW2) forces capitalism to purge some of the worst deadwood - giving it new scope for economic expansion so stabilising the pol/econ for a period.

In Stalinist expansionary cycles, the nat.sec.state (anti-market) attempt to maintain political (anti-decentralist) control of the system/economy (by artificially holding down prices - obviously this couldn't be done by artificially raising them) leads (led in 1932/33) to the boom collapsing under its' own bureaucratic/administrative deadweight (contradictions in the rationing/war - nat.sec.state economy)and a crisis of under production.

We have seen already that:

Pol/econ charachteristics of crisis:

1921

- Reactionary egalitarianism leading to the partial cannibalisation of the capital base and (politically inspired) reppression of the petit bourgeois productive forces and proletariat (by a section of the proletariat).

1928

- The threat of capitalist hegemony's restoration as the cities had nothing to exchange for grain Due to the stagnation of bureaucratic socialist industry due to the lack of funds for investment; as a consequance of the Bolsheviks' failure to tax the - in any case - emerging kulaks to provide funds for investment. This led to a grain strike by the richer and middle peasants (for whom these worthless politically inspired concessions were made).

Reaction by productive forces against the restrictions of the system:

1921

- Petit-bourgeois led revolt of productive forces (including sections of workers) - beginning at Krondstadt naval base/rebellion.

1928

(1) Strengthening of the Left-Opposition (led by Trotsky) advocating a variant of socialist hegemony.

(2) And a reactionary revolt of the Kulaks threatening the restoration of capitalist hegemony.

Reform/ remedy compelled/ implemented:

1921

- Partial reform of the rationing economy/system. But based on propping up (not smashing) the subsistance sector for purely political reasons - ultimately leading to....(see 1928)

1928

Revolutionary reform. Bureaucratic socialist expansionism combined with reppression of the Left- Opposition. Also of the peasantry in general leading to agricultural catastrophe - in order to achieve party control of agriculture. Exploitation of the workers (including through gulag slavery) to fund this.

But in the 1932/3 economic crisis the bureaucratic stranglehold over industry and development did not lead to a leftist rebellion, but did compel the ruling elite to either reform the system or directly confront the working class in order to continuously consolidate its' bureaucratic rule.

But in order to confront the workers and reconsolidate its' power, it would need a pretext to justify its' continued and entrenched rule such as came about with German Nazi rearmament (aided by Britain's ICI-Noble), enabling such a clampdown 1935/6-41 (paralysing the workers completely -fear of an external capitalist restorationist threat) - taking it by another route in the direction of a variant of fascism.

Without this pretext the nat.sec. state was compelled (fighting this process every inch of the way - eg. by murdering Kirov who threatened to depose Stalin, and blaming it on the Trotskyists) to implement limited decentralist reforms (which gave more power to socialist market forces) to breathe new life into the system and give room for expansion/development. These reforms represented a proportional shift of power away from the core elite to socialist market forces/workers. In the abstract, such a process taking place over a number of reccessionary & expansionist (reforming) socialist market decentralist waves, would lead (ultimately) to a healthy revolutionary democracy.

This would appear on the face of it to justify Leon Trotskys' assessment of the USSR as a `deformed workers' state'. Certainly it could not be characterised as an exaggerated form of state-capitalism, otherwise it would have evolved in linear fashion as an integral part of the global capitalist economy.

But it would be more accurate to characterise the USSR as a core-radical component of a single global pol/econ. Both in terms of the historical peculiarities of its' origins & development - in an age of global finance collapse - and also in terms of the global pol/econ role it fulfilled and could only fulfil.

Its' existence and development (WW2 and post-war territorial expansion) as we shall see later, forced the USA-led reform of global finance capitalism - Which breathed new life into the pol/econ system of capitalist hegemony - post WW2.

However it was fundamentally impossible for (socialist market forces in-) the core-radical USSR (we shall examine its' satellites later), to achieve regional or global hegemony. For if capitalism declined (or was threatened with the loss of hegemony), it of neccessity became militaristic/fascistic. And if it engaged in massive rearmament (as in the case of Nazi-era rearmament), instead of actually overtaking the big capitalist powers, the Stalinist elite had an excuse (they so desperately craved/needed) to clampdown and reconsolidate their core-elite control over the pol/econ - pointing to an external threat. And the workers, fearful of the open restoration of capitalism, tolerated this elite ever more compliantly the worse things became (out of fear of a greater danger), leading ultimately to a variant of fascization by another route (we shall examine the impact of the ultimate failure of the ultra-reactionary military option - in Afghanistan/Poland - on USSR pol/econ, in the final chapter).

Only a defensive war (as in 1941-5) could breathe new life into the system by giving it a real external threat - enabling the ruling elite to cling to power and lean on the masses for support, again, with the appearance that the continued existence of the nat.sec.state was justified, at least for a period, until the next collapse.

How should this have affected a revolutionary approach to the Soviet Union? Well, not much. It was correct to give unconditional support to the defense of the USSR (as Trotsky advocated), as the military pol/econ expansion of monopoly & finance imperialism & repression - especially into the core-radical states - leads to repression and core-elite financiers' reconsolidation in the INVADING capitalist states; as well as parasitic financier/monopolistic exploitation (or simple political revanchist destruction0 of the old core-radical states' economy. But nevertheless, revolutionary hegemony was impossible until the global pol/econ system broke down and (illusions in the USSR and laborism generally due to its collapse - are lost among potentially vanguardist elements) the legitimacy of the global pol/econ system and finance mafia could be/is directly targeted on a global scale.

But as to the question "Did Stalinism (nat.sec.state) evolve from Marxism-Leninism or was it caused by a combination of external factors (eg. imperialist invasion and encirclement) and the backwardness (pol/econ contradictions) of Russia's development, aggravating civil war and bureaucratic centralisation?"

We can answer-

Aside from the failure to target the criminality of Kerensky and co (leaving them as a political `undead', able to cry that `democracy had been smashed' better enabling them to wage civil war with imperialist backing), the nat.sec.state was the direct result of Marxisms' failure to economically pre-educate the masses - leading to reactionary egalitarianism. Once this system had come into being, even though a doomed fraction of the state leaned towards revolutionary reconstruction, it was a law unto itself and there was no hope of the workers capturing the pol/econ agenda.

Even though the theoretical projections and conclusions of what the end objectives must be (especially in the sphere of economic analysis) of Marxism tends towards revolutionary democracy, the laborist/reformist constraints of its operational logic (& consequant failure to pre-educate the masses), inevitably leads to the creation of a nat.sec.state (where due to land and legitimacy questions it can take power) or much more often - to outright defeat (as a consequence of its' failure to target regimes' legitimacy).

Though it should be made clear (in further conclusion) that a viable socialism (capable of eclipsing global capitalist hegemony) which can only be based on the common ownership of information, means global civl war with global finance capital. Which in turn only be viable/winnable now that all room for dialogue between capital & labor has been exhausted with the rise of global finance beyond the control of any nation state (eliminating all room for reform - which requires the leadership of a sufficeintly powerful core state). So that as global fiance is unable to consolidate a viable reformist solution, the revolution for the first & last time, has the chance to martial sufficient forces globally to take power & consolidate a viable rev pol/econ settlement/centre of gravity.

Efficiency of USSR war machine was largely due to competition with the USA. The crapness of (most of) its civil goods was due largely to a lack of competing schools of thought, technique & production (which western capitalism had/ has).

Solution?

1)Common ownership of information, RND through schools, colleges, universities, ALL draw freely from the well.

2)Banks under socialist hegemony have hegemony over production (profits of corps to fund RND enabled by socialist hegemony).

3)The tax system insures that there be the absolute minimum of differentiation of pay scales neccessary to encourage the innovation required (we don't need profiteering, we don't need speculation - they both be grossly inefficient) & the culture of the common threats to humanity(as outlined in `Valhalla on earth') also helps keep such barberous exhorbitancy in check.