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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 172 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 172, February 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Tragedy of Bukharin
Donny Gluckstein
Pluto Press £9.95
Bukharin, a victim of the Stalinist purges in the 1930s, was finally rehabilitated during ‘Glasnost’ and posthumously readmitted to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Some Western scholars have also tried to rehabilitate Bukharin as the leader who presented an alternative to Stalinism.
Making Bukharin the acceptable Bolshevik has the advantage that it avoids the need to examine the revolutionary tradition of Trotsky. Bukharin is safer because he left no political tradition. Much of the recent praise of Bukharin has only been sustained by a highly selective study of his life and work.
The great benefit of Donny’s book is that it deals with Bukharin’s legacy as a whole. Written as a contribution to revolutionary thought it seeks to examine and judge Bukharin warts and all. As the anti-Trotskyist who developed the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ for Stalin, but also as the theorist who advanced Marxism by his analysis of imperialism and the tendency towards state capitalism.
The ultra-left who urged continued war with Germany in 1918 was later the cautious economist who proposed leaving the pace of economic development to the rhythm of peasant agriculture.
Donny shows how Bukharin had a tendency towards an overly mechanical understanding of Marxism. As Lenin wrote in his Testament:
‘... his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve ... (he has never made a study of dialectics, and I think, never fully understood it).’
Donny’s book is the best single study of Bukharin there is. Because Bukharin was so centrally involved in his times the book acts as an excellent introduction to many of the key events and debates of the time.
The first chapter, World Economy and Imperialism, shows Bukharin at his most innovative. Many socialists argued that the outbreak of the First World War meant postponing the struggle for socialism. Bukharin showed that the tendency towards war was inevitable under capitalism. Processes within capitalism itself led to a greater and greater concentration of capital. This results in an intermingling of the state and capital.
Capitalist competition is therefore reproduced at the level of interstate conflict. In the development of this argument Bukharin rediscovered the Marxist theory of the state.
At this stage Bukharin was in advance of Lenin, who only later developed his own work on imperialism. But Bukharin’s ability to grasp general tendencies encouraged a schematic approach. This could lead to political errors. For example, his understanding of world economy led Bukharin wrongly to oppose struggles for national liberation. ‘The slogan of “self-determination of nations” is first of all utopian (it cannot be realised within the limits of capitalism) and harmful as a slogan which disseminates illusion.’ The ultra-leftism of Bukharin in this period – either socialism or imperialism – stands in stark contrast to the political stance of Lenin.
The weakness of Bukharin’s thought is shown by his move from the left to the right of the Communist Party during War Communism, the period of civil war which necessitated harsh measures of control and of direct expropriation of grain from peasants. Bukharin celebrated this necessity as representing the direct transition from capitalism to socialism. The danger of revolt forced a retreat from War Communism to the ‘New Economic Policy’. Now Bukharin decided that this represented the transition to socialism.
The core of Donny’s book is made up of four central chapters that deal with NEP, Bukharin’s approach to the peasant question, Bukharin as the key ideologist of anti-Trotskyism, and Bukharin’s role in the economic debates of 1920s Russia. They are all admirably clear, and bring together much material that is otherwise only available in more specialist studies.
In dealing with difficult economic arguments Donny supplements the differing approaches of Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and other Communists with those of more recent commentators. This makes the critique of Bukharin’s peasant-based policy particularly thorough.
The theory of ‘socialism in one country’ was developed by Bukharin for Stalin’s campaign against Trotsky. It also underlay Bukharin’s disastrous stewardship of the Communist International. ‘Socialism in one country’, developed as an ideological cover for the Russian bureaucracy’s transformation into a ruling class, led to avoidable defeats in Germany, Britain and most horrifically in China.
Recently some of Russia’s pro-market economists have described NEP as: ‘without exaggeration one of the most brilliant pages in the history of our fatherland, indeed in world history.’
Donny shows the failure of NEP. Bukharin, despite the wishful thinking of many, had no solutions. It is ideologically useful to present him as a viable alternative to Stalin – but it is bad history.
By mid-1928 Bukharin was purged by Stalin. But ‘just as a guttering candle has one last burst of flame so too did Bukharin at his show trial in 1938’. By exposing the absurdity of the charges against him he exposed the nature of the prosecution.
Donny ends this book by saying ‘Bukharin will be tried in the practical test of the international working class struggle, which can use both his great strengths and learn from his terrible mistakes. It is here that judgement will be made.’ This book will help us in that judgement. All comrades should read it.
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