<snip>
Leon Trotsky’s
The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: February 1, 1935
First Published: July, 1935
Source: New International, New York, Volume 2, Number 7, July 1935, pages 116-122.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The foreign policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy—within both its channels: the primary one of diplomacy and the subsidiary channel of the Comintern—have taken a sharp turn toward the League of Nations, toward the preservation of the status quo and toward alliances with reformists and bourgeois democracy. At the same time, the domestic policies have turned toward the market and the “well-to-do collective farmer.” The latest drive against oppositionist and semioppositionist groups, as well as against isolated elements who are in the least critical, and the new mass purge of the party have as their object giving Stalin a free hand for the course to the right. Involved here is essentially the return to the old organic course (staking all on the kulak, alliance with the Kuomintang, the Anglo-Russian Committee, etc.) but on a much larger scale and under immeasurably more onerous conditions. Where does this course lead? The word “Thermidor” is heard again on many lips. Unfortunately, this word has become worn from use; it has lost its concrete content and is obviously inadequate for the task of characterizing either that stage through which the Stalinist bureaucracy is passing or the catastrophe that it is preparing. We must, first of all, establish our terminology.
The question of “Thermidor” is bound up closely with the history of the Left Opposition in the USSR. It would be no easy task today to establish who resorted first to the historical analogy of Thermidor. In any case, the positions on this issue in 1926 were approximately as follows: the group of “Democratic Centralism” (V.M. Smirnov, Sapronov and others who were hounded to death in exile by Stalin) declared, “Thermidor is an accomplished fact!” The adherents to the platform of the Left Opposition, the Bolshevik-Leninists, categorically denied this assertion. And it was over this issue that a split occurred. Who has proved to be correct? To answer this question, we must establish precisely what each group itself understood “Thermidor” to mean; historical analogies allow of various interpretations and may therefore be easily abused.
The late V.M. Smirnov—one of the finest representatives of the Old Bolshevik school—held that the lag in industrialization, the growth of the kulak and of the Nepman (the new bourgeois), the liaison between the latter and the bureaucracy and, finally, the degeneration of the party had progressed so far as to render impossible a return to the socialist road without a new revolution. The proletariat had already lost power. With the crushing of the Left Opposition, the bureaucracy began to express the interests of a regenerating bourgeois regime. The fundamental conquests of the October Revolution had been liquidated. Such was in its essentials the position of the group of “Democratic Centralists.”
The Left Opposition argued that although the elements of dual power had indubitably begun to sprout within the country, the transition from these elements to the hegemony of the bourgeoisie could not occur otherwise than by means of a counterrevolutionary overturn. The bureaucracy was already linked to the Nepman and the kulak, but its main roots still extend into the working class. In its struggle against the Left Opposition, the bureaucracy undoubtedly was dragging behind it a heavy tail in the shape of Nepmen and kulaks. But on the morrow this tail would strike a blow at the head, that is, at the ruling bureaucracy. New splits within the bureaucratic ranks were inevitable. Face to face with the direct danger of a counterrevolutionary overturn, the basic core of the centrist bureaucracy would lean upon the workers for support against the growing rural bourgeoisie. The outcome of the conflict was still far from having been decided. The burial of the October Revolution was premature. The crushing of the Left Opposition facilitated the work of “Thermidor.” But “Thermidor” had not yet occurred.
<more>
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1935/1935-bon.htm<also see>
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/6739
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
