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Nature of the bureaucratic counterrevolution


the unreal socialism

Juan Carlos Venturini
 
[Automatic translation of Google]

1 Introduction: What we want to discuss?
The landslide of the USSR and the bureaucratic states of East
Europe, systems to which by an irony of history "real socialism" was
denominated to them, has reframed all the problems of the revolution
and the social transformation.
One first evident consequence of this landslide has been the
fortification of the world-wide bourgeoisie and its exploitation
system. The capital can exhibit to the eyes of the amplest masses of
the world, that has been the popular mobilization after the
vindications of the democracy, the political liberties and the market
economy, the one that has finished with these regimes, and not an
invasion or direct contrarrevolucionaria action. The old discussion
and controversy on the nature of the USSR are reframed with force and
new urgencies. For the workers of all the latitudes, the verification
of the despotic and totalitarian nature of the regime restored in the
USSR, was a powerful factor of demoralization and confusion during
decades. This establishment was to mitigate with diverse theories that,
in the end, were inconsistentes.
One of them expressed that that dictatorial character was badly a
necessary one to obtain the "construction of the socialism" in a as
slow country as Russia. After "reaching and surpassing" to Capitalism
was necessary, was said, the political coercion and the absence of
liberties. This idea was developed not only by the official
international apparatus of the estalinismo represented by the
communist parties subordinated to the direction of the Kremlin, but by
numerous "friends of the USSR" that, to the margin of diverse critical
shades, accompanied the experience by this "really existing socialism".
This conception preached that the economic development of the USSR
would take to the democratization of the regime sooner or later and,
consequently, that all action or political mobilization against the
governing aristocracy objectively matched to him to Capitalism.
Another theory much more solid and based was the elaborated one by
Trotsky and defended by many of its continuators. Trotsky makes a
drastic separation between the base or economic structure from the
USSR to which it characterizes like Socialist to be a estatizada and
planned economy, and the political superstructure, in where the
working class has been undressed of the political power by chaste a
bureaucratic exit of its sine. These two coexisting factors take it to
characterize to the USSR like a burocratizado or degenerated working
state. The solution had to come from a new "political" revolution,
nonsocial, that recovered the democracy of soviets.
Although they were located in the antipodal ones, these two
extreme visions and the enormous variety of intermediate positions,
they had in common minusvalorar the contrarrevolucionario phenomenon
of the estalinismo and in making "an optimistic" illusion of the world-wide
evolution. With errors, with the evils necessary, or directly with
crimes, one said that the "socialism" advanced in the world and
Capitalism fell back.
The landslide of the USSR and the bureaucratic states of Eastern
Europe has thrown by earth all these illusions. To the demoralization
factor that meant the association of the socialist perspective with
the estalinista totalitarianism, today the establishment is added to
him from which its liquidation has derived in a process of capitalist
reinstauración and not in the regeneration of the socialism.
The discussion of the destiny of the Russian revolution is more
important that never to reconstruct the socialist and communist
perspective.
The work hypothesis that we will try to demonstrate is that the
defeat of the Russian revolution began to be outlined early already at
the beginning of the decade of the 20. The inauditas difficulties that
the government of soviets faced, by the defeat of the revolution in
Europe, pushed and harnessed all a series of mistakes in the direction
Bolshevik that favored the early bureaucratization of the regime. This
bureaucratic reaction consolidates definitively as of 1928 in a true
bureaucratic counterrevolution that gives rise to a new social
formation, moved away so much of the Capitalism as of the socialism. A
new dominant social class arises that explodes to the workers from its
control of the state and the productive and institutional apparatus.

The spread of this counterrevolution, from the point of view of the
working class, was so, that the workers lost not only the power, but
until the most elementary rights of association and expression. As it
indicated Trotsky correctly to it, the estalinista regime was
comparable in that sense to the fascismo.
Still more, one was not a poscapitalista society (with a greater or
smaller degree of deformations) as one said so many times. A species
of railway station nonwished, bothers, in the long trip towards the
promised Earth of the socialism. No. The consolidated estalinista USSR
from the 1928 counterrevolution, introduced characteristics political
and social regressive, characteristic of old formation precapitalist.
A new dominant social class settled down on the base of the place
occupied in the totalitarian state apparatus. they were derived there
extended privileges, perfectly established and regulated, and
progressively increased as it was promoted until the peak of this true
"nomenklatura". We can find antecedents of this type of political
organization - social in the old Chinese state of the dynasties, or in
old teocracias communitarian of irrigated land of the incaico empire
or the valley of the Nile.
The association of this monstrous totalitarian state with the
socialist and communist perspective has been the great lie of century
XX Lie, generous and interesadamente fed by both great contenders of
the "cold war": the estalinista bureaucracy and the world-wide
bourgeoisie.
For the bureaucracy, this association between its state and the
socialist perspective were fundamental for the defense of its
interests. When appearing to the eyes of the workers like official
representative of the only "possible socialism", like "socialist
mother country", as safe rear of all the anticapitalist fight, the
estalinista bureaucracy obtained the justification of its crimes and
atrocities. Any denunciation, any antibureaucratic fight, was
presented/displayed like "objectively" contrarrevolucionaria, because
"it matched to him" to the capitalist enemy.
From their turn, the crimes and atrocities of Capitalism, were
disguised and justified by the world-wide bourgeoisie, with espantajo
of the totalitarian Comunism. The capitalist society is not perfect,
recognized itself; there is hunger, injustice, operation,
marginalization and corruption, was gotten to accept; but however...
(!!!). is freedom This magical word was swollen and sweetened at sight
of the estalinista totalitarianism, the regimentados and integrated
persecution of the dissidents, unions to the state, the unique party,
etc. With her it was become sleepy to all the Social-Democratic layers
of the western working class fitted behind the utopia to reform to
Capitalism. The conclusion that was wanted to establish era a single
one: the revolution leads to the totalitarian dictatorship, the
gradual reform in the marks of the bourgeois state will take gradually
to the socialism or to the humanización of the capital (the two
perspective were interlaced and stumped to each other in the placid
Social-Democratic dream).
But in which both contenders agreed, imperialism and the
bureaucracy, it was in describing to the regime as the USSR like
socialism or Comunism, defending it, others attacking it. This
maniquea and interested division of the world between a "totalitarian
socialism" and a free "but capitalist world", left without chance the
workers. One was true encerrona.
In their fight against the hated bureaucracy, the populations of
East Europe first, and of the USSR later, adopted a bourgeois liberal
point of view. With it they confirmed that they did not recognize any
"working" characteristic, "" progressive" Socialist "or in the
bureaucratic states that subjugated them. The turn had naturally not
been suddenly. From the first antibureaucratic mobilizations of 1953
in Poland and Eastern Berlin a long way had been crossed. It was left
back the great revolution Hungarian of 1956 where the working advice
raising red flags demanded the return to Lenín. It was left back also
the "spring of the Prague" of 1968 that struggled by a socialism with
human face. The support of Fidel I castrate to the invasion of the
Russian tanks to Czechoslovakia was not a smaller experience for that
fight. For many fighters of East Europe and of the USSR a confirmation
was from which a socialist regeneration was impossible.
Until the moment arrived at which a substantial part of the
estalinista bureaucracy looked for in the restoration of Capitalism
the way to assure its privileges. And in it they were accompanied by
the people who saw in those sectors of the procapitalist bureaucracy
the possibility of finishing with decades of political oppression and
the promise of an improvement of her social situation. It is possible
to be gotten to say that the remedy was worse than the disease,
particularly for Russia, where the "bureaucratic socialism" was
supplanted by a gangster and chaotic Capitalism. But the important
thing is that it did not leave encerrona. The identification of the
socialist perspective with the bureaucratic totalitarianism persisted.
Only that now a vast legion of ex--estalinistas in the world went with
arms and baggages to the direct defense of Capitalism and the
bourgeois order.
The reconstruction of a anticapitalist left (now necessary
redundancy) that it fights by the social transformation only can
undertake from a debate and elucidation on the revolutionary
experiences of this century that finishes. On its errors, its
limitations and the causes of the defeats. The balance of badly the
call "real socialism", that happened in most unreal of the socialisms,
is a substantial part of this debate. If we undertake it thoroughly we
will be discussing as it is the true land in which the social
transformation is possible. Far from appearing like contradictory,
the socialism, the Comunism and the freedom will be verified in their
true appearance, like aspects of a same liberating process against the
operation and all type of oppression.
2 - Virtue (the experience of the government
Bolshevik)
Rose Luxembourg became of the necessity, in November of 1918,
synthesized its critic to the direction of the Bolsheviks with the
exhortation of "not making of the necessity virtue" (1). With it the
great revolutionary wanted to allude to that, if by exceptional
circumstances the Bolsheviks had to adopt draconianas measures of
repression or estatización of the economy, they did not have to make
of it a general theory of the transition to the socialism. In two-way
traffic fundamental the Bolsheviks they fell in the error on which it
alerted Rose. By a side adopting the "Comunism military", not only
like an exceptional resource, but like a general method to advance to
the socialism, by means of the elimination of the market and the
generalized state distribution. On the other hand, not knowing the
revolutionary democracy of soviets, with its pluralism of tendencies
and conceptions, adopting what soon it would be the theory of the
unique party, arrogando itself for himself, the Communist Party (Bolshevik)
the exclusive representation of the "revolutionary vanguard" and for
that reason with powers to exert a dictatorship, not only on the
surpluses of the bourgeoisie, but on the set of the population,
incluída the working class. Víctor Serge (Memories of a revolutionary)
(2) remembers to us that the term "Comunism military" was coined just
in 1921 when NEP is implanted (Nueva Poli'tica Econo'mica). During its
effective execution (1918 - 1921)"Comunism" was denominated simply.
The Comunism military was an extremely voluntarista attempt to implant
a production and distribution totally estatizada of goods in the
picture of a slow agrarian country. It meant therefore an important
aggression against most of the population farmer, which lead a deaf
person and often the shortage of eatable does violence to resistance
to the seizure of the harvests aggravating at chaotic levels. Behind
this error we cerradamente glimpsed a reduccionista conception of the
social transformation that the Bolsheviks inherited of the IIª the
International. According to this vision it was necessary to construct
the "socialist economic bases" (the great industry) to be able to
build a socialist political superstructure. Until arriving at her an
iron dictatorship of the vanguard party was necessary and the
socialist democracy was unthinkable. As Rose raised, the Bolsheviks
did not see that the based Soviet democracy in the land of the working
alliance and farmer (most of the population) was yes the essential
political base to undertake the long way of the social transformation.
Simply it is not certain that the economic structure determines the
political superstructure since has repeated so many times. Between the
base and the superstructure there is a reciprocal interaction, a
mutual agreement. In a period of social transformation the political
superstructure, the democratic and conscious organization of the
popular power, can get to be determining and decisive in the course of
the historical process, facing, limiting or attenuating to the
limitations and agreements of a narrow or restrictive economic base.
This error to try a process of extreme estatización of the economy,
conditional by the enormous difficulties of the isolation and the
civil war, lead to an increasing authoritarianism of the government
Bolshevik in front of a displeasure and also increasing opposition of
vast sectors of the working population and farmer. The repressive
episodes against the Majnovista movement in the Ukraine and soviet of
Kronstad, among others, are a dramatic example of this evolution. In
1920, in the work of Trotsky Terrorism and Comunism (3) this
conception in the level of the theory is shaped. The conception of the
unique and monolithic party is based, like irreplaceable instrument of
the social transformation, getting itself to justify the "substitution"
of the working class by the party. When the Bolsheviks give the forced
turn of the NEP in 1921 does not make a true change of conception.
They conceive to the NEP like a "retirement", similar to which it is
made after a defeat. The planteos of Lenín are known in the sense that
the reestablishment of the mercantile interchange would generate to
every minute "Capitalism" in all pores of the society. The answer as
opposed to this "danger" of capitalist restoration was the one to
accentuate the authoritarian course of the party Bolshevik with the
resolutions of the Xº Congress (prohibition of tendencies and
fractions), consolidating the idea of the unique party and the
monolithic party. Lenín, Trotsky and the set of the direction
Bolshevik, did not see (they could not see) that the greater danger
for the revolution was not the hypothetical or possible capitalist
restoration, but the real and concrete process of bureaucratization in
course, of which they themselves comprised. I believe that the idea
that the permanence of the mercantile interchange and of the small
production deprived means property and circulation generate Capitalism
in automatic form deeply is mistaken. If it were certain, the transit
of Capitalism to the Comunism would be nonviable because single
through a more or less long period it is that the small property can
be reabsorbiendo and transforming into social property. What yes
period of transition requires in essential form east is the exercise
of the political power on the part of the operated and pressed masses.
Own historical Capitalism consolidated like production system, only
from the construction of a political machine of oppression, the state,
able to discipline and to regimentar to the pressed masses. And not by
means of the mere automatic growth of the mercantile economy. The only
fence possible to resist any restauracionista tendency of the capital
is the direct democracy of masses, the political power of the immense
majority through the government of its own organizations, are called
soviets, industrial communes, coordinators, cords, popular,
intersocial assemblies, etc. or the name that give to the history and
the culture him of each town.
3 - 1921-1928: Consolidation of the bureaucratic
reaction
Can be gotten to consider to the month of March of 1921 like a true
turn-in point in the Bolshevism, where methods and authoritarian
conceptions in gestation and application in the previous years come
together, but where a true jump of quality takes place. At that same
moment they are decided the repression to soviet of Kronstad, the
authoritarian resolutions of the Xº Congress, and the preposterous "action
of March" in Germany. The "action of March" was an insurrection
aborted of the German proletariado one, taken ahead by the German
Communist Party in solitary form, when still it was minority since
most of the working-class it followed adhered to the social democracy.
The "action of March" was direct consequence of the extreme centralism
imposed from the "21 conditions" (1920) in the structure of the IIIª
the International. According to them the resident Executive Committee
in Moscow, exerts an absolute power through its "plenipotenciarios
envoys" on the national communist parties. One of these "envoys", Bela
Kuhn, is the main person in charge of the putchista adventure,
nevertheless is Paul Levi (historical leader of the German Comunism,
which it was against the adventure), the one who is sanctioned with
the expulsion of the communist rows in the third Congress of the IIIª
the International, and Bela Kuhn is ratified like member of the
Executive of the International. Although we cannot be extended here in
the point, all the initial experience of the Communist International
was inficionada of the authoritarian and sustitutistas conceptions
that had been developed in the Bolshevism, which lead to innumerable
errors and adventures (invasion to Poland in 1920, action of March in
1921, new German insurrection in 1923)(4), and prepared the later
transformation of the International in a docile and obsecuente
apparatus to the policy and "the national" interests of the
estalinista Soviet bureaucracy. The insubordination of soviet of the
sailors of Kronstadt, comprised of a ampler strike movement of the
workers of Petrogrado against the draconianas measures of the "Comunism
military". The reivindicativo program of the sailors included the
legality of the revolutionary parties, the freedom of the imprisoned
revolutionaries, and the reestablishment of the commercial interchange.
The negative total of the government Bolshevik to negotiate and to
canalize these completely legitimate demands dug a first great abyss
of blood between the government and a sector of the revolutionary
proletariado one. As they review some students, the shade of Kronstad,
as well, projected in the Xº Congress of the party Bolshevik,
harnessing the resolutions of prohibition of the tendencies and
fractions and giving extraordinary powers to the Central Committee.
Issac Deutscher commenting the resolutions of this congress concludes
that: "If it were allowed that the members of the governing party
formed fractions and groups to defend specific opinions within the
Party, how it could prohibit to it him to people outside the Party
that formed its own associations and formulated its own political
programs? No political society can be dumb in nine tenth parts and
hablante in the other tenth. After imposing silence to him to Russia
nonBolshevik, the party of Lenin had to finish imposing it to it to
himself mismo?(5). These facts feed and amplify the tendencies to the
bureaucratization of the party and the state, already developing and
recognized by Lenín. It would not have to be considered accidental nor
secondary which or in July of 1922 a wage scale settles down,
according to the hierarchy that takes care in party-been, which it has
been to the repayment of a high head to a number 10 times superior to
the one of the last category. (To see: Podchekoldin, 1991) (6). One is
the first clear manifestation of a incipiente social stratification,
of the process of gestation of a new class. The disease and death of
Lenin (1923 -1924) only facilitate the encumbramiento of the sector of
the Bolshevism that better responded to the interests of the
bureaucracy. The call "theory of the socialism in only a country", of
the estalinista fraction, looked for to base the subordination of the
interests of the world-wide proletariado one to the diplomatic-national
interests of the Russian bureaucratic state. They are the interests of
this chaste bureaucratic one, arisen from the own march of the
revolution and encaramada in the power, the one that is disguised
behind the utopia to construct the socialism in a single country. The
foundation of the proletarian internationalism is that Capitalism is a
world-wide system of operation, supported in the dominion of the world-wide
market. Any revolutionary triumph in any country must be considered
like provisory, while it does not drift to the heart of the
imperialism represented by the capitalist powers more outposts. The
idea of the socialism in a single country that proposed "to reach and
to exceed", within the framework of the USSR, to the capitalist
economy that dominated the world-wide market, was not only utópica but
reactionary, because the attempt to put it in practice would only be
possible through the assembly of a police state that tried the
cruelest methods of superoperation, repression and atomizaton of the
working class (stajanovismo). This is, through a bureaucratic
counterrevolution. Really: The bureaucratization process was harnessed
and stimulated by the errors of authoritarian type, sustitutistas and
estatistas that develop the Bolsheviks from the power. They cannot be
explained only by unfavorable objective conditions, that naturally
existed. This bureaucratization leads to a backward movement of the
revolution and the differentiation of a new class in gestation, from
its own sine.
4 - 1928-1938: The triumph of the bureaucratic
counterrevolution
The application of the NEP with increasingly bureaucratic methods
on the part of the new direction of the party hegemonizada by Stalin
brings like consequence the promotion and the power of two
antagonistic social sectors: the rich farmers (next to the new
bourgeois, "they nepman") and the state bureaucracy. The working class
and the workers in general, are separated progressively from all
possibility of independent political intervention, process whose
costory in the structure of the party was given by the persecution as
much of first as of the second "opposition of left". The operative
initiate in 1928 by the hegemonic estalinista fraction, of abandonment
of the NEP, extreme estatización of all the economy and of unavoidable
colectivización of the agrarian property, must be characterized like a
true social counterrevolution by means of which a new class in
gestation, the bureaucracy, finishes consolidating like a new dominant
class, eliminates all the vestiges of the revolutionary democracy of
soviets and builds a new social formation, moved away so much of the
Capitalism as of the socialism. This process extended approximately
from 1928 to 1938 has all the ingredients of a typical
counterrevolution, with million deads, the physical liquidation of all
the historical direction Bolshevik and of thousands of assassinated
communist militants. "The one that suffered more was the party. Of
their 2.8 million members in 1934, at least million, antistalinistas
and stalinistas ones, two thirds of shot them were arrested and. Its
old direction of the head was destroyed of the feet: whole committees
at local, regional level disappeared and republican, 1,108 of the
1,966 delegates to XVII the Congress of the party of 1934 were
arrested, and most of shot them, 110 of the 139 numerarios and
substitute members of the Central Committee of 1934 were executed or
impelled to suicidarse"(7). (Stephen Cohen, 1976). East author adds: "On
the bottom of social violence and militarization, the centralized
bureaucracies proliferated in charge to administer the increasing
economy of the State, to watch the population every greater time of
the work fields, to control the activities and movements of the
citizens (having itself returned to introduce the inner passport), and
to regulate the intellectual and cultural life. Also the
transformation of the ideology and the social policy of the State -
divided began. Once finished at the end of the decade of the 30, one
had repudiado officially the revolutionary experimentalismo, the
progressive legislation and the equality in the education, the law,
the familiar life, the income and general the social conduct of
1917-29. They were replaced by traditional, authoritarian norms, that
foretold the paradoxical result of the revolution of Stalin: the
creation of a rigidly preservative society, extremely stratified ". It
is necessary to emphasize: paradoxical result if it is considered to
the turn of Stalin as a "revolution from above" since east author does.
It would have to be clear that this wild repression and all this crude
reactionary policy cannot only obey to the mere demential personality
of Stalin. In any case the personality of Stalin was revealed as most
suitable to defend and to consolidate the interests of the new class.
But those were the interests of this new social sector in ascent that
dictated the estalinista policy. It was the forced policy to restore a
new regime of social operation different from Capitalism, that is to
say, not based on the deprived property of production means but on
usufructo of the property estatizada on the part of the new class that
held the power of the state. New class that, from its inferior layers
to its encumbrados sectors, included to several million people.
Trotsky in 1936 calculated it in 6 to 10% of the totality of the
population. The "construction of the socialism" in this stage was not
more than the construction of this immense totalitarian apparatus that
guaranteed the superoperation of the force of work in benefit of the
new privileged class. Of the exiliados memories of connotados
estalinistas in the USSR, after their participation in the civil war
española(8), can be extracted data of the degree and the extension of
the social differentiation between the workers and the bureaucracy.
Jesus Hernandez, for example indicates that in 1939 - 1940 the wage of
the workers of the last category (the immense majority) went up to
around in the 250 monthly roubles whereas the wage of the high layers
of the bureaucracy extended between the 10,000 and the 15,000 roubles.
This represents 50 times comfortably more than the wages of down. In
order to do an idea to us of which it represents this we translate it
to numbers of income corresponding to a hypothetical process of "socialist
construction" of this type for Uruguay. If we located in 10.000 pesos
the working wage we would have pays of 500,000 pesos for the stops
jerarcas. It is evident that this differentiation of income conditions
and takes to ways of completely different life and conscience.
Especially if we added to him extended privileges as far as house,
services of health and rest, etc. But still it lacks to add us the
essential, the special privilege to belong to that they command, with
extensive troops of subordinates who, in absence of democratic
organisms of deliberation and decision, are forced to obey without
chistar, making possible abuses of all type and diverse and varied
corruption forms. Yet, this new operating social class, in comparison
with the bourgeoisie, is infinitely weaker. It is forced to hide the
social operation that it exerts behind an ideological mistificación
that does not admit fissures. Of there the totalitarian, cerradamente
reactionary character, of the estalinista political regime: the
systematic persecution of the dissidents, the absence of all right of
independent social and political organization for the workers, the
transformation of the official unions in mere governmental offices,
etc. The permanence and sistematicidad of the propaganda, diatriba and
the persecution against the "trotskismo", during decades (when the
trotskismo did not exist like organized political force in the USSR),
do not do more than to reveal the necessity of the new opresora class
to erase the historical memory of the revolutionary political
conquests of the democracy of soviets. Really, to eliminate any critic
or opposition that could create the danger to retake the tradition of
the October revolution. However, this bureaucratic counterrevolution
was made not only against the workers and farmers but against the rich
farmers and new bourgeois (they nepman) beneficiaries of the NEP. Tuvo
because a clear anticapitalist character, in the immediate and close
sense of the term. In fact, a reedición of the estatista direction of
the "Comunism took place military", elevated until the paroxysm. For
the new bureaucratic class one was to assure definitively his
political and social power, sweeping and squashing to the other
candidate who, potentially, could dispute the power to him,
represented by that new bourgeoisie. It did not have to be deduced of
the establishment of this undeniable fact, nevertheless, the
progressive character (and much less "Socialist") of the extreme
estatización of the economy and the unavoidable colectivización of all
the agrarian property. It was fought to the bourgeoisie from the point
of view of the interests of a new operating class, against the
interests of class of million small producers and of workers to whom
it was deprived of the most elementary political rights, organization
and expression, and that it was put under cruel rates of work and
social superoperation. The fight of classes in the estalinista USSR
was not verified fundamentally between bourgeoisie and proletariado,
but between bureaucracy in ascent and poor proletarians and farmers (majority
of the population). In order to consolidate its social privileges the
bureaucracy needed to restore a despotic regime against the majority
worker of the population. This era the sense and the fundamental
content of the leftist turn of Stalin. The characterization of state
working, although burocratizado and degenerated, that Trotsky
maintained until its murder (1940), with respect to the USSR, darkened
east essential aspect and minusvaloraba the reach and the deep sense
of the bureaucratic counterrevolution in march. In the theoretical
scheme of Trotsky there was no place for a state that not outside
neither working nor burgués(9). But indeed, the defeat of the working
revolution at hands of a bureaucratic counterrevolution, raised the
construction of one third alternative: a bureaucratic state,
instrument of oppression of the new operating class. For that reason
we have said in other works that, within the left opposition, seem to
us suitable much more the idea of Rakosky, expressed already in 1928,
that considered to the USSR like a "bureaucratic state, with
proletarian reminiscencias comunistas"(10). These reminiscencias are
those that were seen definitively eliminated from the turn begun in
that year. Finally, and although we did not prune ourselves here to
extend on the point, the clearly reactionary direction of the
estalinismo in Spain, of breathlessness and strangling of the Spanish
revolution, where they did not lack the persecution, tortures and
murder of hundreds of revolutionary militants, finds its explanation
of bottom in the diplomatic interests of the estalinista bureaucracy,
from alliance and subordination to France and imperialistic England,
since they have indicated so many historiadores(10 to it bis). Really,
in the defense of the interests of class of the bureaucracy also in
this land.
5 - The present time of the debate
On the nature of the bureaucratic counterrevolution the landslide
of the USSR and the bureaucratic states of East Europe reframes all
the theoretical questions with respect to the problems of the
revolution, the socialism and the Comunism. One is not an historical
or academic discussion on the past, but on the future of the
revolution. A correct understanding of the deep meaning of the
estalinismo, as real expression of the fight of classes, like
political expression of the social counterrevolution of a new class
promoted to the power, is essential for the theoretical-political
rearmament from the left the bureaucratic counterrevolution were
presented/displayed by vast sectors of the left like a step advanced
in the construction of the socialism, like a "deepening" of the
revolution in the measurement that had an undeniable anticapitalist
character. All the communist parties that integrated the international
apparatus of the Komintern (the Communist International), defended
this version. But also the thickness of the opposition of left of
leninistas Bolsheviks, as they were described to themselves, and that
it was in prison in 1928, committed an error in the same sense. It
considered that Stalin, with reprobables methods, was being oriented
towards the left. Consequently, it adopted a critical support position
towards the estalinista turn, and accepted to reinsertar itself in the
governmental apparatus to collaborate from there. Same Trostky
characterized to the wing of Stalin like "centrist" and vió to the
call "opposition of right" headed by Bujarin and defender of the
continuity of the NEP, like a the enemy fundamental (to see Alexei
Gousev, 1998)(11). Still later authors like Stephen Cohen, who defend
the position of Bujarin, characterize, since already we have indicated,
to the estaliniana counterrevolution like a revolution. I believe that
the ambiguity is inevitable if it is not conceived to the bureaucracy
like a new social class in formation, with specific material and
social interests, own, seated in the backward movement and defeats of
the October revolution. Like all the dominant classes of history, the
bureaucracy takes control of a portion of the excess, of plustrabajo
social. But this appropriation makes not with the methods of
Capitalism (deprived property of production means, transaction of the
merchandise work force) but through the dominion of the state
apparatus that always is, we would have to remember it, the instrument
of oppression of a class on another one. Again here a reduccionista,
schematic vision, of the relation between base and superstructure can
play bad a last one to us. The bureaucracy as it castrates
differentiated is constituting like class from its political dominion
in the level of the state superstructure. This superstructural
characteristic is transformed into essential for the conformation of a
new economic structure, that is to say, new relations of production
where a class works and another one direct, manage, command, using
their political privilege to restore a new type of social privilege.
Watched well, one is not a new phenomenon. From the appearance of the
first clasistas societies (city-been sumerias) and during most of
history, the dominant classes were developed in the "superstructure",
for that reason they were represented mainly by the military, priests
and bureaucrats. This is, sectors that exerting the dominion of a
state apparatus of being able, imposed a certain type of operation and
social subordination. The social operation in these precapitalist
societies was not based on the deprived property of production means.
Capitalism is the first social formation where the merchants moved to
the military, priests and bureaucrats like typical exponents of the
social dominion, giving rise to the formation of a new modern
operating class: the bourgeoisie. I believe that here the cause of the
limitation of Trotsky in the characterization of the USSR resides.
When conceiving it with a socialist economic base but with a
bureaucratic political superstructure, the old revolutionary could not
reach the conclusion that inevitably the state bureaucratic dominion
entailed a new form of social operation. He is as if the estatización
of the economy did not have last name and was always, by definition,
synonymous of socialism. The bureaucratic estatización does not have
anything to do with the socialism or the transition the socialism.
What it has been demonstrated is that the bureaucratic estatización
perfectly can be a transition regime... towards Capitalism. The total
estatización of the economy undertaken by Stalin in 1928, eliminating
all the vestiges of the revolutionary conquests of the Russian October,
was a bureaucratic counterrevolution. The instrument of consolidation
of the social power of a new operating class. I must point out that
when I speak of revolutionary conquests I refer to the revolutionary
democratic conquests of the exercise of the power by soviets and not
the estatización of the economy that, into the hands of chaste a
bureaucratic one, can happen reactionary. The authors who have
characterized to the USSR like state Capitalism (Bethelheim, Tony
Cliff, etc) (12) suffer of the same renguera that Trotsky, but with
the opposite leg. When observing the social and material abyss that
separated a high bureaucrat of the flat worker, recognizes that social
operation existed. But like they cannot conceive that there is
bureaucratic social operation (noncapitalist), conclude that that was
a particular form of Capitalism. With it they show an imperfect
understanding of which it is really the Capitalism that it demands, so
that it exists, the plurality of capitals, that is to say, the
capitalist concurrence based on the deprived property of production
means. An attenuated variant of this lack of understanding is the one
of authors like Romero (to see: Andrés Romero, After the estalinismo,
Ed. Antidote, Bs. Ace, 1995)(13) that considers that to the salary
wage in the USSR there is sale of the force of work of the worker to a
unique buyer represented by the state. The confusion in my opinion
derives from the double use of the word wage (polisemia). The wage
under Capitalism is the variable capital, the portion of capital that
the bourgeois invests in the purchase of the merchandise work force.
In the estalinista USSR the "wage" as much of the worker as of the
bureaucrat (the one of 250 roubles as the one of 15,000) is the
repayment institutionally established by the be in favor of the "work"
of each one, according to scales of categories defined politically. In
the USSR there was extraction of capital gain but no appropriation of
plustrabajo of the worker-producer on the part of the bureaucratic
class (as it happened in so many formation social precapitalist
throughout history). For that reason it is not possible to be spoken
of the permanence of the wage-earning method of operating (Capitalism,
according to Marx) in the USSR, under pain to increase the confusion.
Finally, and still to risk of tiring the undergone reader, I want to
mention other two authors who have had certain repercussion recently.
One is about the Lucien French Sève(14) and the Hungarian Mészáros(15).
I believe that by deficient a theoretical assimilation of the
historical phenomenon of the USSR, these authors they dilute its
specificity makes specific assimilating it, by other routes, to
Capitalism. The Hungarian includes the states of the "real socialism"
within which he calls the "order of the capital" that would have a
capitalist form specifically and another state form (USSR). The
theoretical base of its position is the abandonment of the idea of
Capitalism like way of production and its subsunción in one more a
ampler category of way of social control or social metabolism of the
capital. The problem in the case of the USSR for Meszaros is that it
would not have been managed to go beyond "of the capital", the "order
of the capital" would have remained. Since we have seen, nevertheless,
the "order" under the bureaucratic state era noticeably different from
that we suffered under Capitalism. In this one structural leisure
("industrial army of reserve") plays a role essential of
disciplinamiento of the work force. By something the restauracionistas
bureaucrats who accompanied Yeltsin cried out to introduce leisure
like factor fundamental of disciplinamiento to increase the
productivity. The "order" under the bureaucratic state is of
repressive police type and it obtains itself fundamentally by the
absence of freedom of independent union and political organization for
the workers. On the other hand, after the experience of Stalin as of
1928, that we are discussing, what means to go beyond the capital?
More still, somebody alarmed could be asked. With the terminology used
by Mészáros it would be necessary to say that under Stalin one went
too much beyond the capital in the sense of the extreme estatización
and too much more here in the land of the political institutions,
recreating forms of dominion characteristic of precapitalist societies
In my opinion, when not recognizing the specific character of the
social operation in the bureaucratic states, the character of class of
the new dominant sector, and the concrete mechanisms of the
bureaucratic counterrevolution, Mészáros tends unilaterally to
hipostasiar the function of the ideological and institutional
mechanisms of oppression separating them of his necessary material and
social anchorage, of class. Really, there is a "way of social coercion"
or "order of the capital" that extends in the time and the space
riding by formation social dissimilar but specific ways of production
social, which they are maintained by means of certain and specific
state scaffoldings, political, institutional and no ideological. The
danger of the vision of Mészáros is that it can by ricochet pay
ultraleftist political strategies to any political fight in the
institutional area, parliamentary or still union. On the other hand,
the Séve French assimilates Capitalism and the "real socialism" to
another ampler, productivista or industrialista category, two faces of
the same currency or specular image of the same. The socialism would
not be a period of transition of Capitalism towards the Comunism,
characterized by the conquest of the polìtico power by the working
class and the exploded ones, but the "other" of Capitalism. For Séve
which failed in century XX is directly the socialism, ratifying with
this the homologation of socialism with the "real socialism", in the
purest estalinista tradition. The conclusion that removes is that
there is to reject to the revolution and the objective of the conquest
of the power and to bet to the social transformation towards the
Comunism, by the route of the reform and the development of own
Capitalism. A going ticket, theoretically falsified, towards the
social democracy, that finds its root in the incapacity to badly make
a critical analysis of the call real socialism, like specific
historical phenomenon, product of the defeat of a working revolution
by a bureaucratic counterrevolution. This brief review of some few so
dissimilar authors I only emphasize it the importance and the present
time of the discussion on the experience of the real socialism. I
insist, we are not discussing on the past but on the future, the land
and the way to reorient the revolutionary work against Capitalism, by
the social revolution, by the socialism, the Comunism and the freedom.

6 - Some political conclusions.
The analysis and the critic of badly the call "real socialism", and
of the bureaucratic counterrevolution that consolidated it, far from
questioning to the marxism reaffirm it and they update it in
fundamental questions.
a) All revolutionary process faces not only the capitalist reaction
but the danger of bureaucratic reaction in its sine. The October
revolution was defeated internally by a bureaucratic counterrevolution
that ended up laying the way to the capitalist restoration. Without
working democracy and of masses there is "socialism", nor "transition
to the socialism", but no transition towards Capitalism.
b) The fight against the capital is international. It has been
demonstrated that the idea of the "construction of the socialism in a
single country" is a reactionary utopia that conceals the interests of
the bureaucracy to make sure a new regime social and political
privileges.
c) Between the capitalist society and the communist society a
political period of transition characterized by the political power of
the working organizations is necessary and the organizations of masses
of all the pressed layers, in the course of which she will be operated
all the process of social transformation and the "society will be
reabsorbiendo all the capital" (Manifest Communist). To this political
period of transition Marx and Engels they called "socialism" or
"inferior phase to him of the Comunism".
d) To initiate this period of revolutionary social transformation
the bourgeois state she must be supplanted by the power of the
organizations of the exploded ones. Of this the conquest of the
political power consists that stops Marx was "the conquest of the
democracy". This popular power is a state - not been. Difference of
all the previous states in which it represents most of the organized
town that autogobierna. Their fundamental characteristics are:
elegibilidad and revocabilidad of all the representatives and mandates
at any moment, abolition of all the privileges of function
establishing for all the elect civil employees a repayment similar to
the one of a worker, suplantación of the active army by the town in
arms, and total and unrestricted freedom of political and social
organization.
Notes: 1 - Luxembourg rose, "the Russian revolution, a critical
analysis", Edit. Grijalvo, Mexico, 1980. 2 - Víctor Serge, "Memories
of a revolutionary", Ed. The Pony, Mexico, 1974. 3 - Leon Totsky, "Terrorism
and Comunism", Ed. Júcar, Madrid, 1977. The same opinion we found it
in Nicolai Bujarín, "economic Theory of the period of transition",
written in same 1920, Last and Present Ed., Buenos Aires, 1974. 4 - To
see, Pierre Broué, "Histoire of l`Internationale Communiste, 1919 -
1943", Fayard, Paris, 1997. 5 - Isaac Deutscher, "Trotsky, the
disarmed prophet", ERA, Mexico 1959. 6 - Podchekoldin, "the origins of
the bureaucratization in the USSR", 1991, reproduced in the Argentine
magazine "In defense of the marxism", Nº 1, Buenos Aires, 1991. 7 -
Stephen Cohen, "Bujarín and the revolution Bolshevik", Century XXI,
Madrid, 1976. 8 - Jesus Hernandez, "I was minister of Stalin", Ed.
America, 1953, Mexico. Valentin González "the farmer", "Life and death
in the USSR", Ed. Bel, Buenos Aires, 1951. Of the same author also, "Communist
in Spain and antiestalinista in the USSR", Ed. Guarania, Mexico, 1952.
Ettore Vanni, "I, communist in Russia", Editions Destiny, Barcelona,
1950. Enrique I castrate Thin, "the secret life of the Komintern",
EPESA, Madrid, 1950. 9 - Leon Trotsky, "the betrayed revolution", "In
defense of the marxism", "a neither working nor bourgeois state", etc,
diverse editions. 10 - Christian Rakovsky, "the professional dangers
of the power", in "On the bureaucracy", Akal, Madrid, 1978. 10 bis -
Among others, Hugh Thomas, Burnett Bolloten, Pierre Broué, White
Víctor, Gabriel Jackson, etc 11 - Alexei Gousev, "the unexpected class",
Rev. Tool Nº 7, Buenos Aires, 1998. 12 - Charles Bettelheim, "the
fights of classes in the USSR", Century XXI, Mexico, 1978. Tony Cliff,
"the Capitalism of state in the USSR" (1948), provisional Edition, SWP,
London, 1993. 13 - Aldo Andrés Romero, "After the stalinismo", Ed.
Antidote, Buenos Aires, 1995. 14 - Lucien Sève, "the question of the
Comunism", Ed. House B. Brecht, Montevideo, 1996. 15 - Itsván Mészáros,
"Beyond of the capital", CAP 2, Rev. Tool Nºs. 5 and 6, Buenos Aires
1997 and CAP 18, R. Praxis, Belo Horizon, 1998.