IST APPEAL October 2, 1937 October 2, 1937 SOCIAL jhevism An Article Concerning the Roots and Traditions the Movement for the Fourth International its historic role. In this regard Stalinism, coarse, ignorant and thoroughly empiric, lies at the opposite pole.
The Opposition declared more than ten years ago in its program: Since Lenin death a whole set of new theories has been created, whose only purpose is to jus.
tify the backsliding of the Stalinists from the path of the international proletarian revolution. Only a few days ago an American writer, Liston Oak, who has participated in the Spanish Revolution, wrote: The Stalinists in fact are today the foremost revisionists of Marx and Lenin Bernstein did not dare to go half as far as Stalin in revising Marx. This is absolutely true. One must add only that Bernstein actually felt certain theoretical needs: he tried conscientiously to establish the relationship between the reformist practices of social democracy and its program. The Stalinist bureaucracy, however, not only has nothing in common with Marxism but is in general foreign to any doctrine or system whatsoever. Its ideology is thoroughly permeated with police subjectivism, its practice is the empiricism of crude violence. In keeping with its essential interests the caste of usurpers is hostile to any theory: it can give an account of its social role neither to itself nor to anyone else. Stalin revises Marx and Lenin not with the theoretician pen but with the heel of the iamentary and other circles, conventional or a conventional language to cover their. This large and motley society for mutua live and let live cannot bear the touch lancet on its sensitive skin. The theoreti and moralists, hesitating between diff thought and continue to think that the Bc ciously exaggerate differences, are incapa collaboration and by their intrigues diss of the workers movement. Moreover, the squeamish centrist has always thought sheviks were calumniating him simply carried through to the end for him his thoughts: he himself was never able to.
remains that only that precious quality, mising attitude toward all quibbling and educate a revolutionary party which will unawares by exceptional circumstances.
The moral qualities of every party flo analysis, from the historical interests that The moral qualities of Bolshevism, self disinterestedness, audacity and contempt of tinsel and falsehood the highest quali nature. flow from revolutionary intransi service of the oppressed. The Stalinist imitates also in this domain the words ai Bolshevism. But when intransigeance ibility are applied by a police apparatus of a privileged minority they become a moralization and gangsterism. One can tempt for these gentlemen who identify ary heroism of the Bolsheviks with the bur icism of the Thermidorians.
QUESTION OF MORALS Complaints of the immorality of Bolshevism come particularly from those boastful nonentities whose cheap masks were torn away by Bolshevism. In petty bourgeois, intellectual, democratic, socialist. literary, parCOMING AS PAMPHLET the organized form of the tie between the vanind the class. revolutionary content can be this form only by the party. This is proved by tive experience of the October Revolution and by ative experience of other countries (Germany. finally Spain. No one has either shown in or tried to explain articulately on paper how the iat can seize power without the political leadera party that knows what it wants. The fact party subordinates the Soviets politically to ers, has, in itself, abolished the Soviet system than the domination of the conservative majority lished the British parliamentary system.
ar as the prohibition of the other Soviet parties rned, it did not flow from any theory of Bolbut was a measure of defence of the dictatora backward and devastated country, surrounded ies on all sides. For the Bolsheviks it was clear e beginning that this measure, later completed rohibition of factions inside the governing party ignalized a tremendous danger. However, the he danger lay not in the doctrine or in the tactics he material weakness of the dictatorship, in the ies of its internal and international situation. If lution had triumphed, even if only in Germany, of prohibiting the other Soviet parties would tely have fallen away. It is absolutely indisthat the domination of a single party served as dical point of departure for the Stalinist total system. But the reason for this development her in Bolshevism nor in the prohibition of other as a temporary war measure, but in the numefeats of the proletariat in Europe and Asia.
same applies to the struggle with anarchism. In sic epoch of the revolution the Bolsheviks went hand with the genuinely revolutionary anarchany of them were drawn into the ranks of the The author of these lines discussed with Lenin an once the possibility of allotting to the anarchLain territories where, with the consent of the pulation, they would carry out their stateless ext. But civil war, blockade, and hunger left no such plans. The Kronstadt insurrection? But lutionary government naturally could not prethe insurrectionary sailors the fortress which the capital only because the reactionary peasier rebellion was joined by a few doubtful an: concrete historical analysis of the events ot the slightest room for the legends, built up on e and sentimentality, concerning Kronstadt, and other episodes of the revolution.
e remains only the fact that the Bolsheviks from nning applied not only conviction but also comoften to a most brutal degree. It is also indisthat later the bureaucracy which grew out of the on monopolized the system of compulsion for its Every stage of development, even such catasstages as revolution and counter revolution, flows e preceding stage, is rooted in it and takes on its features. Liberals, including the Webbs, have maintained that the Bolshevik dictatorship was new version of Czarism. They close their eyes details as the abolition of the monarchy and lity, the handing over of the land to the peasants, opriation of capital, the introduction of planned. atheist education, etc. In the same way liberalit thought closes its eyes to the fact that the Bolrevolution, with all its repressions, meant an of social relations in the interest of the masses, the Stalinist thermidorian upheaval accompanies isformation of Soviet society in the interest of ged minority. It is clear that in the identificaStalinism with Bolshevism there is not a trace list criteria.
The essay Stalinism and Bolsherism is being reprinted here by arrangement with the Pioneer Publishers. It will appear in a few days as a 32 page pamphlet for mass distribution. Single copies are available at 10 cents, with orders of five or more at reduced rates. Write to the publishers at 100 Fifth Ave. New York, JUST PUBLISHED RUSSIA TWENTY YEARS AFTER By Victor Serge Do Soviet workers enjoy freedom of the press and opinion?
What are the hidden implications of the new Constitution?
Who are the men and women incarcerated in the penitentiaries and solitaries? What are their crimes?
What is behind the secret service? Is there an effective opposition movement and how does it manage to survive?
What actually took place behind the scenes of the Zinoviev Kamenev trial?
All of these questions and more are answered and fearlessly by a man who actually lived and fought for the revolution.
Victor Serge describes the democratic character of the regime envisioned by Lenin and Trotsky and contrasts it with present social conditions. Using the rise of the vast conservative bureaucracy as an axis, the takes up such important aspects of soviet life as the coalitions of the workers and the inequalities of the wage scale, the methods by which industrialization and collectivization agriculture was carried out, the truth behind the Stakanot movement, the all pervading growth of a police dominated state and the new system of legislation which has replace that of Lenin.
Even now, in spite of the dramatic recent period, the average philistine pret that the struggle between Bolshevism. and Stalinism concerns a clash of person or, at best, a conflict between two shades ism. The crudest expression of this opinic Norman Thomas, leader of the American So There is little reason to believe, he wri Rericu. Sept. 1937, pag. 6) that if Trotsky instead of Stalin, there would have been trigue. plots, and the reign of fear in Russ man considers himself. a Marxist. Or the same right to say: There is little rea that if instead of Pius XI, the Holy See by Norman I, the Catholic Church wou transformed into a bulwark of socialism.
to understand that it is not a question of tween Stalin and Trotsky, but of an antago the bureaucracy and the proletariat. To governing stratum of the is for to adapt itself to the still not wholly liquid of revolution, while preparing at the same direct civil war (bloody purge mass a the discontented) a change of the social re, Spain the Stalinist clique is already acting bulwark of the bourgeois order against so struggle against the Bonapartist bureaucra before our eyes into class struggle: two programs, two moralities, If Thomas th victory of the socialist proletariat over caste of oppressors would not politically regenerate the Soviet regime, he proves all his reservations, shufflings and pious nearer to the Stalinist bureaucracy than to Like other exposers of Bolshevik Thomas has simply not grown up to morals.
QUESTIONS OF THEORY THE TRADITIONS OF BOLSHEVISM AND TI INTERNATIONAL 298 00 of the most outstanding features of Bolshevism its severe, exacting, even quarrelsome attitude questions of doctrine. The twenty seven volumes s works will remain forever an example of the theoretical conscientiousness. Without this funquality Bolshevism would never have fulfilled PIONEER POBLISHERS 100 Fifth Avenue, New York City The lefts who tried to skip Bolshei return to Marxism generally confined isolated panaceas: boycott of the old trade cott of parliament, creation of genuine this could still seem extremely profound in