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From The New International, Vol. XIII No. 4, April 1947, p. 125–126.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Editors:
F. Forest’s article, The Nature of the Russian Economy, is a milestone in the history of Marxist thinking. Trotsky’s theory of Stalinist Russia as a “degenerated workers’ state” and the WP’s rationalized modification of that theory have been demolished. Can any other conclusion be made after a careful reading of this article? If the haywire ultra-leftist zigzags of the Johnsonite Minority (deplorable but logical results of their failure to act on their conclusion in regards to the nature of the Soviet Union) prevent the members of the WP and the International from giving this paper the serious and sober examination it deserves, it will be nothing short of criminal. It comes as a terrific shock to realize that had this article appeared ten years ago the vanguard of the international working class would now be well armed to lead the struggle against the two-headed monster of world capitalism.
While pointing out the mistake Trotsky made in The Revolution Betrayed in dismissing the idea that Russia might be a state capitalist society, Comrade Forest should also have called attention to the astounding statement Trotsky makes on page 246. He writes: “Such a regime (state capitalist) never existed, however, and because of the profound contradictions among the proprietors themselves, never will exist – the more so since, in its quality of universal repository of capitalist property, the state would be too tempting an object of social revolution.” Today it seems incredible that Trotsky would have used such an unscientific argument that because such a society had not previously existed, therefore it could not exist; further, that because the profound contradictions existing in a traditional capitalist society would prevent state capitalism from developing (even this is questionable in the light of the direction of the Nazi state before its collapse), the same would also apply to Russia; finally, no one was ever more aware than Trotsky that the Russian state under Stalin was, as it still is, a “tempting object of social revolution” but has managed to maintain itself only through the most ruthless and complete suppression of its people in all modern history.
That chapter on State Capitalism in The Revolution Betrayed will remain one of the costliest examples of that tendency of Trotsky’s to be carried away by abstract arguments which Lenin so much deplored.
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J. Lovejoy |
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