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From Labor Action, Vol. 12 No. 31, 2 August 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
One of the strictly minor consequences of the Tito-Stalin rift was a long editorial on the subject in the Socalist Workers Party (Cannonite) Militant for July 12. If it is worth a comment here, it is because it is such a clinically admirable specimen of the kind of evasive doubletalk which is necessitated by the “orthodox” Trotskyist views on Russia and Stalinism.
As a matter of fact, the SWP’s first reaction was to shy away from the implications of the Tito break. The first week after the event, the whole affair was written off as a kind of Tammany Hall brawl between two fit politicians. But Tito’s inconsiderate disregard for the fact that his actions ensnared the Cannonite in a net of theoretical difficulties has forced the Keepers of the Seals to face up to some vital questions:
What is the meaning of this rupture which the editorial labels “irreparable”? What kind of state is Tito’s Yugoslavia? What light is shed on the nature of Stalinism? What attitude should Marxists take toward the events?
The editorial succeeds in answering not one of these
questions. In all its length it is a model of political stuttering
and inimitable self-contradiction, even rivaling some of the hitherto
matchless efforts from their own post. It is calculated to destroy,
once and for all, the naive notion that there is a bottom to the
abyss of political bewilderment.
It is known that the SWP clings with catechismic devotion to the position that Russia is a workers’ state (degenerated) but that its satellite countries in Eastern Europe are capitalist states. The former is a workers’ state because property is nationalized, and because Trotsky said it was up to his death. The latter are capitalist states DESPITE the fact that industry is nationalized, and possibly because that’s what they were at the time of Trotsky’s death.
Only small minds burdened by a desire for consistency will object to this marvelous distinction. They will not understand that although you have tablets engraved with the commandment that Russia is a workers’ state, you must yet take the position that the Eastern European satellites are capitalist – unless you are willing to accept the notion that Stalinism can be a revolutionary force capable of overthrowing capitalism and setting up new workers’ states. This the SWP has THUS FAR refused to admit and so it remains with its “capitalist” puppet states of the Russian “workers’ state.”
That is, until the Tito events. Apparently this theory can now be found only tucked away somewhere in some unanimous resolution. You can scour up and down the editorial without finding a word which even suggests the “fundamentally capitalist structure” of Yugoslavia. Instead we have precisely the ... opposite.
It is an axiom, not infrequently mentioned by the SWP
specialists in First Principles, that the test of theory is in
practice, in its application. If Yugoslavia is “fundamentally
capitalist,” what is this enormous fear (suffered by Tito) of
the restoration of what already exists, namely, capitalism? If the
peasants and workers have “broken with capitalism” and
Tito rests upon them (about which more later!), what is it that is
capitalist about the regime? If Tito is part of a section of the
bureaucracy of Russia, and the bureaucracy of Russia dominates a
workers’ state, by what occult process does the Yugoslav
bureaucracy become the ruler of a CAPITALIST state? If Yugoslavia
will suffer from the same (degenerated-workers’-state)
contradictions as Russia – where are its own capitalist
self-contradictions? If the Cannonites are making sense, why should
anyone be put in a padded cell?
The only explanation that comes to mind, without getting involved in abnormal psychology, is that the SYMPATHIES of the SWP are with Tito and against Stalin. Since it would not become these “revolutionary socialists” to favor a capitalist state against a workers’ state, it became necessary for them to slur over their own position, to forget their own resolutions, to abandon their own theory and to dress up Tito so that he is acceptable.
In fact, not only is the “capitalist” character of Yugoslavia not mentioned, but the editorial throughout SEEMS TO imply that Yugoslavia is practically on its way to being a workers’ and peasants’ state already. I do not assert that the editorial does actually say that Yugoslavia, is a workers’ and peasants’ state. That is precisely the marvel of the accomplishment: the editorial succeeds in stating nothing definite about the social character of Yugoslavia. But if one can measure degrees of ambiguity, the scales seem to tip in the direction indicated.
But there is more to the dressing up of Tito. The core of the analysis, if one can speak of a fog having a core, is that the “class struggle” has now broken out again, Stalin notwithstanding. “It took only a certain alteration of conditions – the extension of Stalinist power beyond the original Soviet frontiers – for the class struggle, which Stalin seemed so free to flaunt and cheat, to erupt into the open.” Again and more of it: “There are many important questions connected with the Yugoslav events. But the aspect that looms above all others is the struggle for the independence of a workers’ and peasants’ Yugoslavia against Washington on the one side and Moscow on the other.”
Is this “analysis” anything else than the reflex action of befuddlement? What class struggle is involved? Between what classes? Where does it spring from? If the SWP were not plugging holes with ritualistic formulas, these questions at least should have intruded themselves on the edtorialist’s mind.
By a class struggle is commonly meant a struggle between classes. In the present situation one of these “classes” would obviously have to be the Stalinist bureaucracy. But one of the hymns in the SWP doxology intones the dogma that the Stalinist bureaucracy is NOT a “class” itself but only a bureaucratic excrescence on the face of the Russian working class. What class struggle, then, are THEY talking about?
Perhaps this class struggle erupted within Yugoslavia? Besides the fact that this was obviously not what happened, we are reminded in this connection that, according to our subjects, Tito “rests” upon the workers and peasants of Yugoslavia. Although the phrase “rests upon” is of calculated ambiguity, the fact is that the SWP practically identifies Tito with the masses of Yugoslavia and thus labels Tito’s revolt as a class struggle leading to a workers’ and peasants’ Yugoslavia (if it is not that already).
The editorial makes this almost clear when it suggests (never does it STATE) that Tito’s action really means that the people of Yugoslavia have struck out against Stalinism and for socialism. One “myth [shattered by the events – S.G.] is that the only choice for all people is the choice between Stalinism and ‘democratic’ socialism.” ... “The people of Yugoslavia are now in a position where they can strike out on the road of socialism.” Now, AS BEFORE, under the totalitarian regime of Tito! How else can these lines be read except as a whitewash of Tito and a miserable attempt to tackle a problem by desperately striking up the drums?
This is the way the SWP theory has met the test of the Yugoslav events. Where it has not been driven into hiding, it has come out with a position which firmly establishes it as utterly bankrupt in the face of the problems raised by Stalinism. Every new development of Stalinism adds another twist to the already hopelessly twisted line of the SWP. It is as if Stalinism is revenging itself upon the SWP for its refusing to baptize it as a product of history. For that is at the root of the matter.
To this day the SWP refuses, with clerical tenacity, to recognize that Stalinism has brought into being a new type of society, with its own dynamism, with its own contradictions. What has not penetrated the citadel of orthodoxy is that Stalinist bureaucratic collectivism is a dynamic social system (which is not equivalent to saying that it is stable or eternal).
The significance of the Tito rupture, which overrides
every other aspect of the situation, is that for the first time, and
sooner than could have been expected, there has appeared the first
stumbling block to Stalinist expansion which originated from the very
nature of Stalinism itself. There has indeed erupted a class
struggle, but a class struggle about which the SWP does not even
understand the nature of the classes involved. It is the struggle
between the RULING classes of two bureaucratic-collectivist
societies, the Russian and the Yugoslavian. What stands out is the
struggle of a reactionary, totalitarian bureaucratic-collectivist
class for its independence from the dictates of Stalin. It remains no
less reactionary and no less totalitarian for its struggle.
If the Tito regime remains the reactionary totalitarian regime which it is, that does not mean that its STRUGGLE against Stalin in the name of the national autonomy of Yugoslavia does not have progressive consequences. It opens a rift in what was considered a homogeneous ruling class, ruling all of Russia and Eastern Europe. It revives again in the satellite countries the inveterate national aspirations of the peoples and highlights the focal position which the idea of national independence has in revolutionary strategy today, something the Workers Party has been underlining for some years. (The SWP, as chairman of history, has ruled the national question off the agenda.)
The Stalinist compulsion to expansion and the reaction of this expansion on Stalinism itself indicate that bureaucratic collectivism, like the exploitive societies which preceded it, is not exempt from the internal contradictions of its dynamism.
In that lies the hope, but that hope depends on an understanding of Stalinism. Of that the SWP has not a glimmer. If its editorial sheds no light on the Yugoslav developments, it should leave no doubt of the SWP’s firm grip on the absurdities of its own position.
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