My last letter to Weekly Worker asking about the exact differences between Leninism and Stalinism was ignored. Contributers were too busy bashing the eejit Stalinist who tried to defend that horrific regime.
However, there is a new article on Stalinism in this week’s issue. That made me write another letter, which will hopefully provoke some response. It will be interesting to see if there are any actual differences raised which are not based on the subjective opinions of the leaders in power.
My last letter to Weekly Worker asking about the exact differences between Leninism and Stalinism was ignored. Contributers were too busy bashing the eejit Stalinist who tried to defend that horrific regime.
However, there is a new article on Stalinism in this week’s issue. That made me write another letter, which will hopefully provoke some response. It will be interesting to see if there are any actual differences raised which are not based on the subjective opinions of the leaders in power.
I will be surprised if anyone tries to argue that the social relations (either in production or in society) were different under Lenin and Trotsky than under Stalin. After all, there weren’t any! I cover this in part 3 of How the Revolution was Lost? (this is serialised in the last three issues of Black Flag).
Somewhat annoyingly, the next release of An Anarchist FAQ has a new section which analyses the Russian revolution, discussing when the Bolsheviks destroyed soviet democracy, the ideological roots of this and their state capitalism as well as an account of strikes under Lenin. But that will not be released until the 11th of November. Until then, I will need to link to various articles and reviews I have done on these issues.
Here is the letter. Hopefully it will get a response this time and, yet again, I have to praise the paper’s open letter policy. Unlike the SWP, I have had no problems getting letters published.
Dear Weekly Worker,
It is somewhat sad to see socialists having to explain why Stalinism was not remotely socialist in this day and age. Surely, defenders of Stalinism can be safely lumped into the supporters of the Flat-Earth category?
However, the latest attempt to explain why Stalinism is not socialist yet again presents problems for those seeking to assert that Leninism was fundamentally different from it (Jack Conrad, “Dripping from head to foot with blood and dirt”, Weekly Worker, no. 742).
Conrad argues that isolated “the Russian Revolution turned into its opposite . . . The working class was politically expropriated.” Yet the working class was politically expropriated under Lenin. As Alexander Rabinowitch has conclusively proved in his new book (The Bolsheviks in Power, which I review in the new issue of Black Flag), it was the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918 who gerrymandered the Petrograd soviet to ensure their majority, so making direct elections from the workplaces irrelevant. It was the Bolsheviks who, in July 1918, gerrymandered the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets to deny the Left-SRs their rightful majority.
And what of the other attacks on soviet democracy? It was the Bolsheviks who systematically disbanded any soviet which elected non-Bolshevik majorities in the spring of 1918. And, finally, it was the Bolsheviks, with Lenin, Zinoviev and Trotsky at the forefront, who proclaimed that the “dictatorship of the party” was the “dictatorship of the proletariat” from early 1919 onwards.
If being “politically expropriated” is the key, then why is Lenin’s regime considered worthy of support while Stalin’s is not?
What of economic class, the social relations of production? According to Conrad, “nor could labour be controlled by the managerial controllers” under Stalinism as workers “exercised negative control.” Yet who imposed a system of “managerial controllers” in the first place? The Bolsheviks under Lenin, who argued against worker’s control and for “individual executives” with “dictatorial powers (or ‘unlimited’ powers).” Needless to say, under Lenin the Cheka was used against any workers who “exercised negative control” or went on strike.
Conrad argues that “bureaucratic socialism . . . shows its own pattern of exploitation, primitive accumulation, killing and death . . . though the capitalist class had been expropriated . . . the peasant and working class masses remain slaves. There is organisation, but no democracy.” In what way was it different under Lenin? There was organisation, “but no democracy.” The working masses did not control their own work nor workplaces and so “remain slaves.” Political and economic power was in the hands of the state and its bureaucracy. Surely the “counterrevolution within the revolution” and “bureaucratic socialism” started under Lenin and Trotsky?
This question is hardly new. I raised it in my previous letter (“Failed Leninism”, Weekly Worker, no. 735) and it remained unanswered. Perhaps this time, I may be more fortunate.
Iain McKay