The Question of the Workers’ State

James Burnham - Wikipedia
James Burnham

The major dividing line within the Trotskyist tradition is the question of whether or not the USSR should be seen as a workers’ state. The split happened definitively in 1940, with the orthodox Trotskyists remaining loyal to Trotsky’s conception that the USSR was a workers’ state, and the heterodox Trotskyists labelling it state capitalist instead. To everyone outside Trotskyism, this is little more than a dispute over how many angels can dance over the head of a pin. To Trotskyists, it is a life-and-death political issue, a demarcation point dividing renegades from true revolutionaries. Both sides are absolutely convinced that their position is correct and that the other side are heretics from the cause of Marxism. The split over this issue has probably been the most consequential in the entire fissiparous history of Trotskyism. After Trotsky’s death, his furious battle with the rebellious opposition was compiled in a set of documents put in a book called In Defence of Marxism. All orthodox Trotskyist groups have used this book as a means of educating their ‘cadres’ about the historic rupture in the Trotskyist movement, and as a means of legitimising their poisonous rhetoric.

As another world war approached, the question of what position Marxists should take towards the USSR came on the agenda. Between 1939-1940, there was heated debate within the American Socialist Workers’ Party (Trotsky’s American followers) on this issue. One side, the ‘minority or ‘opposition’, grouped around James Burnham and Max Shachtman, took the position that the USSR was state capitalist, rather than a workers’ state. Since the workers were not really in control, but Stalin was, and since it was becoming even more of a repressive totalitarian state with each passing day, in what sense could it be described as a workers’ state? The workers were just as exploited as under capitalism – if anything, their exploitation was worse. Stalin had reintoduced all the horrors of early capitalism, like piece-work, in order to squeeze more out of the workforce. He had suppressed all democracy within the Communist Party. He made deals with imperialist states. He was worse than any Tsar.

Trotsky, by contrast, insisted that since the USSR had nationalised its means of production and implemented a planned economy, it was a workers’ state, albeit a ‘degenerated’ one. Due to the backwardness of Russia – its isolation, the devastation caused by a WWI and the civil war, underdevelopment inherited from Tsarism – and the failure of the revolution to spread to the more advanced countries of the West, Stalinism had been able to arise and reverse many of the gains of October. However, in spite of Stalin, there remained a key gain of October – the nationalised planned economy, which was the basis for further socialist development and the eventual overthrow of Stalin in favour of genuine socialism. It was vital for Marxists to remain loyal to the USSR in spite of its many imperfections. Every attempt to implement socialism in practice would lead to a deviation from the ideal, but the response was not to give up in frustration, but to see which parts of the project could be salvaged and which had to be discarded.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was his invasion of Finland in 1939. Trotsky took the position that the Trotskyist movement should give critical support to the USSR in its war against ‘bourgeois’ Finland. Trotsky’s reasoning was the following: yes, Finland was a neutral country, but with a world war on the horizon, this neutrality was meaningless in practice. The USSR was justified in taking whatever measures were necessary to defend its borders from attack. Moreover, in invading Finland, the USSR was likely to abolish capitalism and implement a socialistic transformation of the economy along the lines achieved in the USSR. This ‘progressive’ development was worth supporting even though it was being done in a top-down, ‘bureaucratic’ manner, on the point of a bayonet, rather than by the Finnish workers themselves.

Burnham and Shachtman regarded Stalin’s attack on Finland as a typical imperialist assault upon a weaker nation. The USSR was not acting in the interests of world socialism, but was seeking to impose its will upon the Finnish working-class in the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy. The SWP Minority argued that Soviet workers should resist the bureaucracy and join hands with their brother Finns against Stalin. To Trotsky, this was treasonous. It was the duty of the Trotskyists to remain loyal to the world’s only workers’ state in its battle with any capitalist country on the face of the planet.

As if this was not bad enough, Trotsky also defended the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the subsequent invasion of Poland on similar grounds. Yes, Stalin was acting in a ‘bureaucratic’ manner by invading Poland without consulting the Polish working-class, but it was still likely to bring about a ‘progressive’ transformation of the country through the implementation of a planned economy. Trotsky even suggested that Polish workers and peasants would greet the Soviets as liberators rather than Russian imperialists.

Soon, the gloves were off, and the SWP Majority under Cannon and Trotsky were in an almighty confrontation with the Minority led by Burnham and Shachtman. Trotsky accused the Minority of various sins, including eclecticism, empiricism, not understanding dialectics, closet liberalism, sectarianism, ultra-leftism and more besides. To denounce the USSR as state capitalist, said Trotsky, was to commit a mortal sin against dialectical materialism. To take a dialectical approach means to separate the essential from the non-essential. The essential attributes of the USSR – a nationalised planned economy from which private capital had been eliminated – made it worth defending even if it was not perfect. To set up an ideal workers’ state in contradistinction to the actually-existing workers’ state was an act of idealism. It did not use the method of dialectical materialism to understand how the USSR had been shaped and warped by its difficult circumstances. The Minority was swayed by petty-bourgeois moralism and liberalism, which was why it did not have the stomach to defend an imperfect workers’ state from its bourgeois enemies. Trotsky mocked the idea of the Third Camp, which he labelled the refuge of the ‘stampeding petty-bourgeoisie’. Burnham and Shachtman were castigated as flighty intellectuals whose attachment to Marxism was merely skin-deep, and who were in league with left-liberal literary figures to destroy the Trotskyist movement and undermine the revolutionary cause. Trotsky argued that if the Minority took things to their logical conclusion, they would end up abandoning Marxism. There was no half-way house between supporting the world’s only workers’ state, or aligning with the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky, by contrast, was attacked by the Minority for being soft on Stalinism and defending the USSR’s imperialistic actions. As the months wore on, it became clear that reconciliation between the two camps was impossible. That summer, there was a split and the Minority went off to found the Workers’ Party. About 40% of the party membership left and joined the new organisation. This was a disaster from which the Trotskyist movement never recovered. Yet this was not the attitude Trotsky and his loyalists took. They felt that they had saved the Trotskyist movement from the infection of ‘petty-bourgeois’ elements. It was not for nothing that Trotsky wrote, at the beginning of 1940, that the Minority represented a ‘scratch’ that would turn into gangrene if they were not properly educated in the basics of dialectical materialism and other aspects of Marxism. If Trotsky could not make his movement absolutely united behind him and completely homogeneous in its doctrine, then he would drive his opponents out.

It is madness that such an issue should have split the Trotskyist movement. As Burnham pointed out on numerous occasions, it was not a practical issue. The Trotskyist movement was tiny and had next to no influence with the working-class. It was in no position to affect international affairs. Why all this wrangling? There was no reason why there could not be room for disagreement on this issue whilst the two sides collaborated on other, more pressing matters. But Trotsky insisted on making this question a litmus test for how ‘pure’ a Marxist one was. To disagree with his position was to reject dialectical materialism, which was also to reject Marxism. To this day, minor disagreements like these are the cause of splits in Trotskyist sects.

As it happens, I believe that both Trotsky and the opposition were correct. Trotsky was correct to point out that every attempt to implement Marxist socialism in practice will be an aberration from the ideal. There will never be ‘perfect’ circumstances for the building of socialism. To refuse to support an imperfect Marxist regime on the grounds against its capitalist enemies on the grounds that it was not a pure representation of socialism was a form of hypocrisy. The Minority wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wished to continue identifying as Marxists and revolutionaries, yet refused to give critical support to the world’s only existing Marxist regime because it did not fit in with their moral conception of what socialism should be. These criticisms can be applied to all heterodox Trotskyists and dissident Marxists (and others of the left) of the twentieth century and even today. They insist that all actual examples of Marxist regimes are ‘not real socialism’, but they cannot bring themselves to question Marxist ideology itself. They enjoy posturing as radicals, but they are reluctant to take moral responsibility for anything actual Marxist regimes do. Throughout the twentieth century, there were plenty of ‘Third Camp’ Marxists who purported to be against both blocs in the Cold War. In fact, most of their energy was expended attacking the West, whilst they nevertheless absolved themselves of all responsibility for the tyranny of the Soviet bloc. On the other hand, the opposition were correct to point out the fallacy of christening a state ‘progressive’ because it nationalises its means of production. Ironically, this itself goes against dialectical materialism, because it abstracts one aspect of the USSR (‘nationalised means of production’) from every other feature of the regime. Dialectical materialism purports to be about putting things into their full context. Besides, if a regime as monstrous as the USSR is ‘progressive’ from a Marxist point of view, then Marxism itself must be brought into question.

I prefer to take the side of Burnham and the ‘petty-bourgeois’ liberals. I do not accept that a regime as monstrous as the USSR’s was any sort of workers’ state, as the workers had no power. The idea of giving ‘critical support’ to any totalitarian regime is simply beyond my moral compass. That said, I prefer to take the Minority’s position to its logical conclusion. There is no sense in holding onto the Marxist faith when it has been discredited in practice. That is why I am no longer a Marxist. If every attempt to implement Marxism has led to a degeneration, then there is no conceivable set of material conditions which can see Marxism flourish. I therefore repudiate Marxism.