against 'state capitalist' theories on the class nature of the deformed and degenerated workers' states right up to the end. Almost 50 years after writing his careful analysis of the Eastern European buffer countries and his rebuttal of the notion of 'bureaucratic imperialism', he again took up the fight - in a polemic against the British SWP. "THE ATTEMPTED neo-Stalinist coup in the USSR, and its dramatic aftermath, show we are entering a turing point in world history. The political tendency I belong to, the Fourth International, in common with the British SWP, condemned the coup from the start and applauded the mass workers' mobilisations which contributed decisively to its defeat.
But now, as has been clear for a long uno, te issuc is posco whether capilal ism will be restored in Eastem Europe. the Soviet Union, Cuba and China.
For us, contrary to the lozic of the SWP, such an outcome would signify a major victosy for word impenalism. capitalism can only be restored by inficting major defeats on the working class.
The bureaucracy in the deformed and degenerated workers' states is incapable of resisting tapitalist restoration; indoed whole sections of the bureaucracy are preparing to find themselves a new niche as capitalists or in the state appa. talos or a reconstuica capiauisi sysici For us, the working class and the small minority of socialists in these states have to pursue a double struggle. First they have to fight against the bureaucracy to the end, ensuring its political defeat. While in some circumstances it may be possible to address and win over sections of the base of the old Stalinist and neo-Stalinist parties, that is not the political heart of the matter. Politically there must be a relentless struggle to defeat the old Stalinist and neo-Stalinist parties, and build mass inunions and new workers' parties.
But at the same time, socialists must resist every attemot to destrov the col. lectivised property relations - concreicsy tais means bating wabout reservation against attempts to privatise enterprises and destroy the social gains of the working class unfair, chronically disorganised, but on rents and food, ultra-cheap housing and transport, free childeare and health care and - above all - guaranteed emwhatever. But every revolution engenders the danger of counter-revolution. Who could believe that the re-establishment of capitalism in the USSR, China or Cuba could be anything other than a defeat?
But for the SWP this is not the case. For them this would mercly be a "step sideways". The theory of state capital. ism is incapable of respondipg to the needs of the dual struggle against Stalinism and capitalist restoration."
(Excerpt from The Fallacies of State Capitalism: £3.95 from Socialist Ourlook) quences of imperialism's actions and the actions of bureaucratic expansionism.
Just as it is false to determine whether there is socialism by abstracting the role and condition of the masses, so it is wrong to confine oneself to conting the number of policemen and prisons to determine the social role of intervention by a foreign country The comrades actually compare importalst repression (ror cxampic the Te pression of British imperialism in Palestine or in India) with the bureaucracy's repression, which is directod first of all against elements of the possessing In order to determine the social nature of a country, the dialectic method of une situation in its catirety.
To isolate one factor (the state, political regime, ctc.) from this whole and to set it up as the sole criterion for determining the social nature is absolutely contrary to this method."
des fat fin can be becken SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No 91, October 7 1995. Page 9.