Tony Cliff

On the Class Nature of the “People’s Democracies”

(July 1950)

Originally published as a duplicated document in July 1950.
Reprinted in Duncan Hallas (ed.), The Fourth International, Stalinism and the Origins of the International Socialists, London 1971, pp. 14–64.
Reprinted in Tony Cliff, Neither Washington nor Moscow, London 1982, pp. 40–85.
Downloaded from Rolf Vorhaug’s Homepage with thanks.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

In the Fourth International the supporters of the position that Russia is a degenerated workers’ state are divided into two basic groups in their evaluation of the class nature of the “People’s Democracies”:

Those who declare that they are capitalist states;
Those who declare that they are workers’ states.

We are convinced that if the first of these groups brought their ideas to their logical conclusion they would realise that Russia is a state capitalist country; the other point of view leads directly to Stalinism. This document attempts to prove this.

I. If the “People’s Democracies” are capitalist countries, what conclusion can we draw about Russia?

II. Were there victorious proletarian revolutions in Eastern Europe?

Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia

Poland

The Soviet Zone of Germany

The Stalinist “social sevolution” and the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state

The Stalinist “social revolution” and the Marxist conception of the role of pProletarian class consciousness

Is Stalinism socially counter-revolutionary?

The basic contradiction

III. On the attitude to Tito

Tito’s Stalinist past

On which side of the dividing line between Stalinism and Trotskyism does Tito stand?

The “democratisation of Yugoslavia” and the perspectives of the FI

The correct attitude to the Tito-Stalin conflict

APPENDIX:
Theoretical bankruptcy and political dishonesty
The record of the International Secretariat (IS) on the “People’s Democracies”

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Last updated on 3 February 2017