Socialism In One Country
The reason that Stalin abandoned this correct formulation, and adopted the theory of Socialism In One Country, was due entirely to his attempt to discredit Permanent Revolution, and to deny any lineage from it to the position of Lenin. If you believe that it is possible for the bourgeoisie to be overthrown by the proletariat of one country, but that that is not the same thing as creating Socialism, for which revolutions in the advanced countries are required, then that is to support the principle of Permanent Revolution, otherwise, you are committing yourself to the idea that the revolution you have undertaken is doomed, and so was merely adventurism. Likewise, to condemn the concept of Permanent Revolution, that Socialism could only be achieved if the revolution is spread to those advanced countries, is to require you to say that, even without those revolutions, it is somehow possible to go, even in a backward country, from merely the achievement of state power to the construction of Socialism. That was the logic that drove Stalin, and his supporters into the idiotic and reactionary theory of Socialism In One Country.
Once having gone down that road, the central pillar of the Stalinist theory becomes the retention of power in the USSR at all costs, so that the soviet regime has the maximum amount of time in which to build that socialist society. That means doing whatever is required to avoid the anticipated military intervention of imperialism in Russia. It involves undertaking secret diplomatic dealings with some of those imperialist powers, including offers not only to hold back revolutionary movements within them, but acts of deliberate sabotage of them; it involves even doing deals with Nazi Germany itself, and so on. The role of Communist Parties in these imperialist countries becomes not to work towards their own revolutionary overturn, but merely to apply pressure upon their own ruling class not to engage in hostile actions against the USSR. This was completely at odds with the position that Lenin had outlined.
Trotsky quotes Lenin's comments from 1918,
“If we have held out ‘the reason ... was that a fortunate combination of circumstances protected us for a short time from international imperialism’ (for a short time! – L.T.). And further: ‘International imperialism could not under any circumstances, on any condition, live side by side with the Soviet Republic ... In this sphere conflict is inevitable.’ And the conclusion? Isn’t the pacifist hope in the ‘pressure’ of the proletariat or in the ‘neutralization’ of the bourgeoisie? No, the conclusion reads: ‘Here lies the greatest difficulty of the Russian Revolution ... the necessity of calling forth an international revolution.’ XV, 126 [Speech on the Question of War and Peace, 7 March 1918, 4th edition, XXVII, pp.69-70. Selected Works, English edition, VII, 288] When was this said and written? Not in 1905, when Nicholas II negotiated with Wilhelm II on the suppression of the revolution and when I advanced my ‘sharpened’ formula, but in 1918, 1919 and the following years.”
And a speech at the Third Congress of the Comintern, in 1922.
“‘It was clear to us that without the support of the international world revolution the victory of the proletarian revolution [in Russia – L.T.] was impossible. Before the revolution and even after it, we thought: Either revolution breaks out in the other countries, in the capitalistically more developed countries, immediately, or at least very quickly, or we must perish. Notwithstanding this conviction, we did all we possibly could to preserve the Soviet system under all circumstances, come what may, because we knew that we were working not only for ourselves but also for the international revolution. We knew this, we repeatedly expressed this conviction before the October Revolution, immediately afterwards, and at the time we signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. And, speaking generally, this was correct. In actual fact, however, events did not proceed along as straight a line as we expected.’ (Minutes of the Third Congress of the Comintern, Russian edition, p.354).”
Stalin chose Permanent Revolution as the ground upon which to try to prove a division between Trotsky and Lenin. Having done so, he was inevitably driven down the path of proposing the idea of Socialism In One Country. Having adopted that position, he is also driven down the course of making preservation of the USSR the prime goal, and world revolution subservient to it. The job of the Communist International becomes merely that of a diplomatic tool to organise pressure, and to act as border guards placed at the frontiers of the USSR. Revolution, as the aim of Communist Parties, must now be abandoned in the name of this role of simply protecting the USSR, and discouraging imperialist intervention, by pressure.
The most obvious example of that was on the outbreak of WWII. In 1939, the Stalin-Hitler Pact was geared to preventing an attack by Nazi Germany on the USSR. Everywhere, Communist Parties were instructed to act accordingly. They became apologists for the Nazis, and opponents of war. But, as soon as Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, and the USSR joined the ranks of the Allies, the position of Communist Parties reversed, literally, overnight. They became passionate patriotic advocates of war, and supporters of their own bourgeois governments.
The Communist Parties, everywhere, became transformed from revolutionary parties, to merely reformist social-democratic parties, and their programmes reflected that, no longer advocating international revolution, but merely nationally based programmes of reforms, often to the right of the Left within the existing social-democratic parties, as the Stalinists sought out Popular Fronts and alliances with various liberal bourgeois organisations. In all of these instances the Stalinist adherence to the stages theory, as against Permanent Revolution, means that the interests of the proletariat are always subordinated to the interests of the liberal bourgeoisie, in order to enable the ephemeral unity between them.
The reality, as Lenin came to also identify, and which led him to abandon the concept of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, was that, in any such arrangement, no matter how large the social weight of the peasantry, it has to be a question of a Proletarian Dictatorship, drawing the peasantry in behind it. That was the formulation that Lenin adopted in 1909, filling out the algebraic formula of the Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry.
“To the Mensheviks, who spoke of the radical change of Lenin’s position, the latter replied:
‘... The formula which the Bolsheviks have here chosen for themselves reads: the proletariat which leads the peasantry behind it.’
‘... Isn’t it obvious that the idea of all these formulations is one and the same? Isn’t it obvious that this idea expresses precisely the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry – that the “formula” of the proletariat supported by the peasantry, remains entirely within the bounds of that very same dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry?’ (XI, Part 1, pp,219 and 224. My emphasis.)
Thus Lenin puts a construction on the ‘algebraic’ formula here which excludes the idea of an independent peasant party and even more its dominant role in the revolutionary government: the proletariat leads the peasantry, the proletariat is supported by the peasantry, consequently the revolutionary power is concentrated in the hands of the party of the proletariat. But this is precisely the central point of the theory of the permanent revolution.”
(Trotsky – Permanent Revolution)
This is also embedded in the concepts set out in the Theses on The National and Colonial Questions.
“the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries; the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form;”
The Stalinists' rejection of Permanent Revolution, in their strategy for the revolutions in the East, meant a rejection of these theses too. The reversion to the Menshevik stages theory, involved subordinating the proletariat to the forces of the bourgeois democracy, and in China, it was to have catastrophic results. The same approach was taken in the Stalinist response to fascism, following the debacle of the Third Period. It was to undermine the workers in France, and to lead to yet a further catastrophe in Spain.
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