The basic motivation of the “Theses” is to rearm the world movement for the decisive struggles impending on the national and on the international arena. The need of this reorientation arises from many reasons but for the purposes at hand it can be reduced to the existence of two essentially new factors: 1. Imperialism is forced to launch its war without first being able to defeat and demoralize the revolutionary proletariat of the capitalist countries and the colonial peoples. 2. Stalinist parties are now at the helm of important mass movements, and it is unlikely that in these countries a genuine revolutionary leadership will successfully challenge and supplant them in the workers’ movement before the outbreak of the war.
The question involved is not what is to be done in the event that the crisis of Stalinism takes the form of a split within an important CP or the rupture of an important CP from Moscow. Our movement has been prepared by its whole past for such a development. And whatever weaknesses it had in this sphere were largely corrected during the Yugoslav experience.
The question is what to do if the crisis of Stalinism remains and deepens in its present form: i.e. a growing dissatisfaction of the revolutionary workers in the ranks of the CP with the conservative and treacherous policy of their leadership, but a desire to remain within the party and to transform it by pressure and action into a vehicle for the realization of their revolutionary aspirations. After the dismal failure of the Cucci Magnani affair and the fiasco which a similar attempt has met in France, there can be no doubt that this is the real situation, and one which will tend to become more fixed in the next period precisely because of the imminence of the war. Hence flows the need for a sharp reorientation in these countries, where the question of understanding the contradictions of Stalinism and of finding the approach to the workers under their influence is a matter of life and death for Trotskyism. The tragic experience in China is the first great warning. But this orientation must obviously clash with the past of our movement, with its different perspectives and with the accumulated conservatism which has resulted from that past.
The turn is an audacious one, but for that reason it must be made with the greatest boldness and with the most complete confidence in the basic soundness and loyalty of our movement to its fundamental principles. If the turn is hedged by exaggerated concern for deviations, by overemphasized warnings about dangers, by insistence on alternate and opposite variants, then the whole effect of the reorientation can be lost, and the conservative elements will find shelter for their opposition in reservations, refinements and amendments. In any case, if our movement is not sufficiently mature for such a bold turn, then not all the admonitions in the world will safeguard it from the dangers involved.
It is from this point of view, because I believe that while you begin in agreement with the general line, many of your suggestions will have the effect of weakening and not strengthening the position of the “Theses.” Hence the following comments and proposals. In the instances involved your corrections appear to me to be based in some points on a bad reading of the “Theses,” in others from drawing unwarranted inferences from the text; in other cases I cannot find myself in agreement because of ambiguity, incompleteness of thought, unnecessary emphasis on points that should not be especially stressed. For the sake of convenience I’ll follow the numerical order of your suggestions.
8. “The unfoldment of the class struggle and the lines of class interests in the course of the war would not in all instances and all places necessarily coincide with the official governmental or military lineups. The case of Yugoslavia illustrates such a condition today.” Unless further amplified and explained this statement can lead to serious confusion and even error. Does it mean for instance that the slogan of defense for Yugoslavia against the Kremlin would still be applicable if it were lined up with imperialism and served as a base of military operations for it in the war against the SU? That may not be your meaning, but it can easily be deduced from the above statement, and in fact it happens to be one of the unspoken considerations which the Yugoslavs use as a justification for their line of adaptation and capitulation to imperialism. The statement must either be corrected and amplified or eliminated. (Although for my part I cannot see the advisability or the need of trying to foresee the multitude of complicated forms that the war will assume or to proscribe at this date the tactics that should be pursued.) Otherwise I should like to point out that your point No. 8 is merely a restatement (i.e. without the above) of the point in the “Theses” at the bottom of page 8 that the “tactical applications” of the line of the defense of the USSR “remain subordinate to the free development of the movement of the masses against all attempts of the Soviet bureaucracy, the Russian army and the Stalinist leaders to strangle and to smash it.”
9. While the intent of this section, emphasizing the counter revolutionary role of the Soviet bureaucracy is correct, it is entirely too one sided. It is based primarily on the subjective desires and needs of the Kremlin and not enough on the objective situation which will develop. It is not only a question of what the Kremlin wants to do but of what it is capable under the given conditions of doing. The Kremlin didn’t want the Warsaw insurrection; it permitted it to be smashed by the Nazis. The Kremlin didn’t want the Yugoslav revolution and later the Chinese revolution. But it proved totally incapable of preventing or smashing them. It is good to alert revolutionists to the counter revolutionary character of the Kremlin, but it is also important to indicate the limitations of the counter revolutionary power of the Kremlin based on a real analysis of the class war which will ensue.
10. This point should be eliminated. The “Theses” says:
’Despite the now reinforced orientation of imperialism toward war, the perspective of temporary compromises between the USSR and the USA continues to remain open.” (p. 1) And then on page 2, discussing the question from the standpoint of the Kremlin it says: ’ . . the Soviet bureaucracy also anxious for its own reasons to avert the outbreak of a general war, Will lend itself to the conclusion of limited or even more general partial compromises . . .” In view of this very clear statement, what is the need for further emphasis on this point? Allowance for temporary zig zags and for tactics that derive from such turns belong in a political resolution on the immediate situation and not in the Thesis which provides a basic long term prognoses and which expressly rejects the possibility of a new overall deal such as that of Yalta-Potsdam.
11. Here objection is taken to the description in the Theses of the Communist Parties as “not exactly reformist parties.” To be sure this is not a rigorously scientific definition. Nor was it so intended. But it is far more correct, far more descriptive of the reality than that which you offer in its stead: “it is a national reformist bureaucaracy and an agency of imperialism in the world labor movement.” This is untenable theoretically. Unlike all other reformist parties in history, the Communist Parties do not rest on a bureaucracy and a labor aristocracy deriving its privileges from the super profits of imperialism and from its function as the labor agency of the capitalist state. The supreme test here is in the sphere of foreign policy and war where with rare exceptions the reformist parties slavishly follow the policy of their ruling class. In this sense it must be admitted that events proved the Old Man in error when he predicted that as a result of the lush development of the Peoples’ Front period there would grow up sizable “national communist” wings in the CPs possibly encompassing the major portion of their leaderships. No such thing has occurred, despite many defections but not of a decisive character, either during the Hitler Stalin pact or more recently since the beginning of the “cold war” when CPs like those of France and Italy had far more to lose in privileges by going into opposition on foreign policy. One must ask why despite obvious self interest the Stalinist leaderships have not taken that course. It is ridiculous to say that the GPU holds them in line. Fundamentally it is because they know that they cannot take their mass following with them in a policy of opposition to the Soviet Union. For these masses, whatever their distrust, the Soviet Union remains the revolution, and it is because of the revolution that they follow the CP and not the social democracy. Stalinism is counter revolutionary to be sure, but it is impossible after analyzing the relationship of their leaderships to the Soviet bureaucracy, their base and their relationship with the working class to deny the patent truth that they are “not exactly reformist parties.”
The importance of this definition resides in the fact that it permits us to better grasp the contradictory character of Stalinism and thus to be able to participate with our own line in the revolutionary struggles they can head under “certain favorable conditions.” Now the same cannot be said for the classical reformist, i.e. social democratic parties. They cannot “outline a revolutionary orientation” without a major split, if not in the party itself then at least in the apparatus. And finally, is it not strange that you should conclude your remarks on this point, which grow out of a fear that the formulation in question may open the door to some change in our fundamental characterization of Stalinism, by what appears to me to be an unconscious paraphrase of what is said in the “Theses”? Let me quote: it is not excluded that certain Communist Parties with the bulk of their forces can be pushed out of the strict orbit of the Soviet bureaucracy and can outline a revolutionary orientation. From that moment on, they would cease to be strictly Stalinist parties, mere instruments of the policy of the Soviet bureaucracy, and will lend themselves to a differentiation and to a politically autonomous course.”
I do not deny that improvements can be made in the formulation in question, although the lengthy explanations involved would probably be more fitting in an article than in a resolution. But those which you offer as substitutes fall far short of the goal and are, moreover, incorrect.
12. This is one of those “on the one hand and on other hand” points which nullifies the whole idea on this question contained in the “Theses.” In the first place, the “Theses” does not lay down an iron law. It speaks of “certain Communist parties” and “certain conditions.” It uses the word “nay” not “will.” It says that the CPs “cannot allow themselves to being, in all conditions, reduced to mere agencies for the transmission and execution of the orders of the Soviet bureaucracy. But it is false to emphasize “no less than the other” the point that the “Stalinists could and would even in the midst of war work to strangle revolutions.” That is not our problem. Can it be honestly said in face of the whole history and tradition and training of our movement that it would fail to recognize a counterrevolutionary and class collaborationist course on the part of the Stalinists and to then not find a policy befitting such a situation? As a matter of fact, our movement knew this so well in China that it couldn’t tell the difference between a party that was collaborating with the Kuomintang and one that was fighting it to the death. But even in the variant you mention, the point is by no means as simple as you put it. The Greek experience shows that had the Trotskyists there understood the possibility of a CP to “outline a revolutionary orientation” they would have been deeply involved in the resistance movement and thus in a far better position to cope with the betrayal when it actually came. The only effect of your amendment here will be to give conservative elements a cover to hide behind because they actually exclude the first variant. It will deflect and hinder the real education and reorientation of the movement.
13. I am entirely in agreement with this point. The Theses should be strengthened as much as possible in this sense. Though I should point out that in XVI, XVII and XVIII a considerable contribution is made precisely on this question in the Theses itself.
14. In view of what is written on this question in the first two paragraphs of page 9 of the Theses, I cannot exactly follow this point. Much rests of course on exactly what is meant by “anti Stalinist movements of the people.” The ideas of the Theses are further elaborated in the resolution on the Eastern European countries.
15. This is the most baffling point of all. You insist that the Theses should not recognize “implicitly or explicitly” the “perspective of ’deformed workers states’ as the line of development for an indefinite period ahead.” Why the insistence when there is no such perspective out lined in the Theses and when there is no demand from anyone, not even the author of the phrase in question, that it should be included in any way in the Theses. You want the Theses to stress the aspect that “the extension of the proletarian revolution to one or more advanced country would radically alter the world picture.” It would be an entirely legitimate request provided the Theses did not itself make the same point, viz: “On the other hand the proletariat will completely avoid the bureaucratic deformation of its institutions and especially of its power, only to the degree that the revolutionary camp is broadened in the world and the revolution conquers more and more of the important domains of world economy. ’Socialism in one country’ is not only a petty bourgeois utopia: it also implies an eventual bureaucratic and inevitable opportunist degeneration of the proletarian power.”
There is the essence of the question and that is all the Theses need concern itself with from the point of view of perspectives. It is ridiculous and to my mind somewhat childish to demand a guarantee in the Theses against the development of other “deformed workers’ states” through the projection of the most optimistic line of development. Of course, we all hope that history will take that line. But we already have a certain experience in this matter. At one time, we were all convinced that after Russia there would be no further phenomena of degeneration. While a few in our ranks have proved more perspicacious and correct the majority among us is only now recognizing that such deformations of the workers’ power have also occurred throughout Eastern Europe. Tomorrow, we shall have to recognize the existence of the same phenomena in China, that is my opinion. It seems to me a flight of unwarranted audacity at this point to predict the precise course of the war and of the convulsions it will carry with it. Will it last five years, or ten years or thirty years? And what colossal destruction will it bring in its wake? Korea may very well be considered a prelude and a prototype for what is ahead. I notice that Walter Lippman consigns Europe to the fate of Korea. And who can speak of the revolution in the USA in the same terms as October 1917 in Petrograd? It will be one of the bloodiest and most violent events in history. Suffice it to say that the war for the bourgeoisie will be the war for survival, and that means a sanguinary conflict unprecedented in form and in scale. Is it possible to say that in such a period, or in its early aftermath that such a flowering of the productive forces will occur as to prevent the “deformation of workers’ states?’ I do not pretend to exhaust the question. Obviously a discussion on this question will prove interesting and educational for our movement. But it is not the problem at hand to resolve this question, and it would be utterly false for the Theses to commit the movement to one position or the other.
16. The point is obvious. No comment is necessary.
July 9, 1951
Last updated on 19.8.2005