Theory of the deformed workers state

Leon Trotsky believed that the regime of the proletarian dictatorship established in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 laid the socialist basis of the state by nationalizing the means of production. However, during about 1923-1929, the Soviet bureaucracy, according to Trotsky, carried out a coup, expropriating power from the ruling class - the proletariat. Trotsky and his supporters, however, did not cease to regard the USSR as a workers state - in their opinion, the Soviet Union was a bureaucratically deformed or degenerated workers state. Leon Trotsky sees the Soviet bureaucracy as a caste, but not a new class.

As one of the reasons for the emergence of this caste, Trotsky in his book “ Devoted Revolution ” calls the allocation of “privileged groups most needed for defense, industry, technology and science” under the difficult conditions of the late 1910s - early 1920s - undeveloped industry, civil war, the pressure of the capitalist states, the absence of any help from the West. At the same time, he notes that "the enormous economic successes of the last period did not lead to mitigation, but rather to exacerbation of inequality, and at the same time to a further increase in bureaucracy, which has now turned from a" perversion "into a management system."

Among the reasons for the bureaucracy to come to power in the party and the Soviet Union, Trotsky sees the death of many conscious Communists during the Civil War and the lack of self-government skills among the masses. In addition: “The demobilization of the millionth Red Army played a significant role in the formation of the bureaucracy: the victorious commanders took leading posts in local councils, in the economy, in school affairs and persistently introduced everywhere the regime that ensured successes in the civil war. So from all sides, the masses were gradually removed from actual participation in the leadership of the country. ”

The Transitional Program , which became the main program document of the Fourth International in 1938, stated the following: “The Soviet Union emerged from the October Revolution as a workers' state. The nationalization of the means of production, a necessary condition for socialist development, opened up the possibility of a rapid growth of productive forces. The apparatus of the workers' state underwent a complete degeneration, turning from an instrument of the working class into an instrument of bureaucratic violence against the working class and, the further, the more into an instrument of sabotage of the economy. The bureaucratization of the backward and isolated workers' state and the transformation of the bureaucracy into an omnipotent privileged caste is the most convincing - not theoretical, but practical - refutation of socialism in a single country ” ^[1] .

According to Trotsky, in order to regain power and control over the socialized means of production, the proletariat must carry out a political revolution, preserving the economic basis of the Soviet state. Otherwise, the victory and strengthening of the power of the bureaucracy, which is increasingly expanding its own privileges and increasing social inequality, will lead to the restoration of capitalism. “The regime of the USSR contains ... terrifying contradictions. But it continues to be a regime of a degenerated workers' state. This is a social diagnosis. The political forecast has an alternative character: either the bureaucracy, which is increasingly becoming the organ of the world bourgeoisie in the workers' state, will overturn new forms of ownership and push the country back to capitalism, or the working class will defeat the bureaucracy and open the way to socialism, ”the Transitional Program said ^{[1 ]} .

As noted, Leon Trotsky sees the Soviet bureaucracy as a specific caste, but not a new class. In The Devoted Revolution, Trotsky describes the social inequality that exists in the Soviet Union and the large number of privileges that the Soviet bureaucracy has. Nevertheless, he argues that the ruling bureaucracy in the USSR does not have the hallmarks of a class: “Classes are characterized by their place in the social system of the economy, primarily by their attitude to the means of production. In civilized societies, property relations are enshrined in laws. The nationalization of land, means of industrial production, transport and exchange, with the monopoly of foreign trade, forms the basis of the Soviet social system. For us, these relations, laid down by the proletarian revolution, determine, mainly, the nature of the USSR as a proletarian state. ”

According to Trotsky, the bureaucracy has no signs of the ruling class: “An attempt to present the Soviet bureaucracy as a class of“ state capitalists “obviously does not stand up to criticism. The bureaucracy has neither stocks nor bonds. It is recruited, replenished, updated in the order of an administrative hierarchy, regardless of any special property relations inherent in it. An individual official cannot inherit his rights to operate the state apparatus. Bureaucracy abuses privileges. ” That is why, according to Trotsky, the bureaucracy seeks to eliminate the gains of the October Revolution and the restoration of capitalism - it needs to legally secure its property rights.

That is why he uses the concept of “Soviet Thermidor” as a description of the seizure of power by the bureaucracy, by analogy with the events of the Great French Revolution . The Thermidorian coup that took place in France in July 1794 against the radical part of the Jacobins led to the establishment of the power of the moderate groups of the Convention. However, the coup of 1794, as well as the subsequent coup of the 18th Brumaire of 1799, who set France at the head of Napoleon Bonaparte , did not lead to the liquidation of the bourgeois system established by the revolution and to the restoration of feudal property. In conditions of social instability and possible feudal counter-revolution, in the name of preserving the rights of private property and other gains of the French Revolution, the ruling class of France, the bourgeoisie, relied on the direct power of the military elite led by Napoleon Bonaparte.

Using this analogy, Trotsky believed that the regime established in the Soviet Union was Bonapartist in nature. That is, the ruling class, in this case the proletariat, has been removed from power by the bureaucracy. Although this bureaucracy has its own privileges and ultimately seeks to restore capitalism in the USSR, while it supports the nationalized means of production, the monopoly of foreign trade and other gains of the October Revolution, it expresses the interests of the ruling class, albeit removed from power, the proletariat.

Throughout the 1930s, Trotsky writes about the danger of the coming world war and the need to support the USSR in it. A number of articles were written by him in 1937-1938 as part of a discussion in the American Socialist Workers Party . In a future war, Trotsky advocates "unconditional support for the USSR" as a workers' state, albeit degenerate. This is based on the need to protect the social basis of the USSR, laid down by the October Revolution.

In January 1937, Leo Trotsky wrote: “Many of my former political friends in different countries, outraged by the policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy, came to the conclusion that we cannot assume the responsibility of“ unconditional defense of the USSR “. To this I objected that it was impossible to identify the bureaucracy and the USSR. The new social foundation of the USSR must be unconditionally protected from imperialism. The Bonapartist bureaucracy will be overthrown by the working masses only if it is possible to protect the foundations of the new economic regime of the USSR ” ^[2] .

The question of "defense of the USSR" turned out to be for Trotsky connected with the question of "political revolution in the USSR." Moreover, in the Transitional Program and a number of other documents of that period, he describes the prospect of a future war, which was supposed to end with a world revolution and a political revolution in the USSR ^[3] .

The spread of the influence of the USSR on the countries of Eastern Europe put before the Fourth International the need to analyze the regimes established in them. In 1951, the Third World Congress of the International took place, which came to define the regimes established in these states as deformed workers' states. The economic transformations in them, in the opinion of the members of the Fourth International, were socialist in nature. At the same time, a bureaucratic regime similar to the Soviet one was initially established in these states ^[4] .

One of the leaders of the Fourth International, Pierre Frank, in his report to the congress, said: “We believe that the buffer zone states [that is, the Eastern European states] are not capitalist and, like the USSR, are basically their own, that is, in the sphere of property and production relations, - by working states. The changes that have been made in their economies — the expansion of nationalization and planning in all areas of the economy — fundamentally distinguishes them from capitalist states. Implemented in these countries is not a purely quantitative increase in nationalization, as happened in some capitalist countries, but it is a qualitative transformation in the economy. This applies not only to the heavy and light industries, which were nationalized and included in the planning system, but also to banks, all transport and trade, foreign and domestic, wholesale and retail trade, to a large extent, at least ” ^[5] .

Most Trotskyists are currently classified as deformed workers states in Cuba , the People's Republic of China , North Korea, and Vietnam . Some, in particular the Free Socialist Party (USA), believe that the PRC is currently on the path to restoring capitalism.

Discussion in the PSA (USA) in 1939-1940

As already noted, the articles of Leo Trotsky, in which he talks about the prospects of the USSR in the impending world war, belong to the years 1937-1938. It is around this topic that the discussion unfolds, mainly in the American Socialist Workers' Party , between Trotsky and his supporters, on the one hand, and Max Schechtman , Martin Aybern and James Burnham , on the other. Criticism of Trotsky’s approach to the nature of the USSR has developed in the American section of the International Left Opposition since the mid-1930s. During 1939-1940, a number of articles were published in the New International magazine: “Intellectuals Retreat” (January 1939, authors - Burnham, Shachtman), “Criticism in the American Party. - An open letter to Comrade Trotsky ”(March 1940, author - Shachtman) and“ Soviet Union and World War II ”(April 1940, author - Shachtman).

In the article “The Soviet Union and the World War” Max Shachtman argued that the USSR in the future world war would act as “an integral part of one of the imperialist camps”. More specifically, the axis Rome - Berlin . In an article, Shachtman wrote: “The Stalinist machine is a labor aristocracy that has developed to the highest degree to a new and unheard of power. Naturally, her ambitions, hopes, appetites are limited, not only by the economic base on which she is, but, above all, by her subordinate position in world politics and economics. This “agent of imperialism” has its own imperialist goals and ambitions. These goals do not have the same roots as British imperialism, but they exist. The Stalinist bureaucracy does not turn away from the acquisition of oil wells in Western Ukraine, copper and nickel mines in Finland, food supplies, ... skilled and semi-skilled workers in the occupied territories, and - this is by no means less important - a broader basis for expanding its bureaucratic power ... ” ^{[ 6]} .

Thus, the Soviet bureaucracy was then considered by Shekhtman as an imperialist, but of a second order. The same considerations apply to the issue of nationalized property, which, according to Shekhtman, criticizing Trotsky, “is not progressive in itself” ^[6] .

Then Shekhtman, Burnham and Abern still did not adhere to any more holistic theory regarding the social character of the USSR. More complete views on the nature of the Soviet state were offered by Bruno Rizzi , who published the book "Bureaucratization of the World" in 1939. It was he who first proposed the term "bureaucratic collectivism." Shekhtman, Burnham and Abern subsequently came to similar views.

• L. D. Trotsky. A dedicated revolution. - M.: Research Institute of Culture, 1991 .-- 256 p. - ISBN 5-7196-0019-1
• Anthology of the late Trotsky. Comp. M. Vasiliev, I. Budraitskis. - M .: Algorithm, 2007 .-- 608 p. - ISBN 978-5-9265-0313-2
• I. Deutscher . Trotsky in exile. - M .: Politizdat, 1991 .-- 590 p. - ISBN 5-250-01472-0

• The works of Leo Trotsky
• Some works of Christian Rakovsky
• H. G. Rakovsky . Letter to G. B. Valentinov from August 2-6, 1928
• Bulletin of the Opposition (Bolshevik-Leninists), 1929-1942
• Discussion materials in the PSA (USA), 1939-1942 (English)
• Proceedings of the Third World Congress of the Fourth International, 1951 (English)
• T. Cliff . About Trotsky’s theory “Russia is a degenerated workers state”
• Marcel van der Linden. Western Marxism and the Soviet Union (2010)