One of the toughest tasks of the post war Fourth International was to fill the immense gap lett by the death of Leon Trotsky, and develop a coerent political response to the complex changes taking place in the Eastern European 'buffer zone' - the countries liberated by the Red Army. Much of this fell to the young Ernest Mandel, whose document *The Sovlet Union after the War and the Policy of the Communist Parties, drafted in 1946, was adopted as the position of the Fi's International Secretariat. The document, written before the Cold War lurch towards nationalisations and the consolidation of the monolithic rule of Stalinist parties - and without our benefit of hindsight - strongly rejected the notion of a new 'bureaucratic Imperialism', and also the growing view that the Stalinist bureaucracy was 'objectively" carrying through the socialist revolution. Here we print some extracts.
Defence of the USSR against imperialism LET US first state precisely what "unconditional defence of the USSR' does not mean for a Bolshevik Leninist: to hide, to excuse or to avoid condemning any crime of Stalinism, whatever it may be or wherever perpetrated.
2. it does not mean being silent about or hiding any political difference with Stalinism, nor abandoning the policy of ceaseless unmasking the Stalinist leadcis as arowco eremies of the provetarian 3. It does not mean to support any given movement of Soviet troops. any when these go against the interests of the Proretana 4. It does not mean abandoning anywhere any principle of the class struggle. Mandel continued the battle Wherever the Red Army may intervene to support the bourgeois state or property, the Fl will assist the proletariat in opposing by every means, including arms, such counter-revolutionary inter5. It does not mean the slightest abandoning of revolutionary defeatism in the capitalist countries allied with the USSR. lance of any given political, economic or military measure taken by the bureaucTacy in mc couise ora war win s The struggle against the bureaucracy This propaganda can be carried on effectively only if we unreservedly condemn Stalin's barbarous interventions in the buffer countries; only if we show, with concrete exampies, that the Stalinist policy is as ineffective for the USSR as it is fatal for the proletariat; only if we endeavour by every means to dissociate the cause of communism and of the USSR from Stalinism, the gangrene of the workers' movement and of Soviet Kussin In the buffer countries the cause of defence of the USSR' demands the lib. cration of the workers movement from the killing weight of Stalinism; unless the class struggle is consistently carried on in these regions, integral assimilation of the countries into the imperialist bloc is only a matter of time.
the slogan of 'immediate withdrawal of the ocupation troops", ticd to the slogan of carrying on and broadening the revolutionary struggle against the tottering bourgeoisie, is required both in order to achieve the liberation of the workers' movement from the Stalinist grip and to halt the increasing demoralisation of the proletariat which results from the reactionary policy of plunder, police control occupation forces.
This reactionary policy will inevitably throw the netty-bourgeois masses and even many working class layers into the arms of the parties which are agents of imperialism - unless the revolutionary proletariat itself resolutely fights this But at the same time the Fl must be careful not to confuse the revolutionary struggle for withdrawal of the Russian occupation troops with any kind of aid to the anti-Soviet bourgeois reaction. which aims to destroy the reforms introduced since the end of the war.
We oppose the looting, the dismantling and removal of machinery: but we will try to extend and despen the nationalsabons, demancing te abolton or indemnities, expropriation of the banks. generalisation of workers" control and manageache Bureaucratic realisation of the Socialist revolution? "The facts prove the complete falsity of the theory that the Stalinist bureaucracy would be compelled "objectively to carry through the socialist revolution in other countries".
This theory is a complete petty bourgeois revision of the Marxist-Leninist concept both of the state and of thee proletarian revolution.
The social origin of the personnel of the state apparatus is not what determines the nature of the state: on the contrary, the nature of the state derives from its structure, which is determined by the relations of production on which "A policeman who is a 'socialist' is not a socialist but a bourgeois policeEven if the majority of officials of the bourgeois state were members of the Stalinist party - which is not so in any of the buffer countries - the nature of the state would not be qualitatively different.
The Russian state, it is true, long ago lost the structure characteristic of a workers' state: in The Revolution Be. trayed, Trotsky emphasised the fact that its structure was approaching more and more closely that of a bourgeois state. But what we are dealing with there is a process of degeneration in a previously established workers" state. In 1917 the workets and por peasants compicicl destroyed the framework of the bourgeois state, and they consummated this Chief grave-digger of world revolution: Stalin with sucessor Kruschev destruction in four years of civil war.
The Marxist conception of the social. ist role of the proletariat is based precisely on the fact that economically, as Lenin showed, the proletariat is the only class in society which, when it becomes the ruling class, can move on toward the gradual abolition of classes and of the state.
The revisionists strike both at this proletariat, which they describe as "in. capable of fulfilling its historie mission", and also at the very concept of socialism, which is now to be thought of as meaning less and less control by the masses, less and less initiative for the ax, and lens asd less freedcon fx them.
Finally, this thesis completely revises the Trotskyist conception of the objectively counter-revolutionary role of the in other countries.
To be sure the bureaucracy furiously "defends' the economic bases which issued from the October revolution: but it defends them bureaucratically.
The whole struggle of the BolshevikLeninists for 23 years has been based on the belief - verified at every tum of history - that burcaucratic defence of the collective property begets the degenerareaucratic defence of the USSR drives the country from one diplomatic defeat to another, strengthens world imperialism, and deals mortal blows to the world proictanar The whole struggle of the BolshevikLeninists against Stalinism has been the grave-digger of the world revolution and of the USSR. Yet now suddenly this grave-digger is presented to us as the one who will "objectively carry through the proletarian revolution""
It is clear that what we have here is a capitulation under the pressure of Stalinism - a canitulation resultine both from disillusionment in the absence of a victorious revolutionary movement and from complete Iak of confidence in the revolutionary potentialities of the world proletariat."
Bureaucratic
Imperialism? "At the other end of the rainbow of revisionist tendencies on the nature of the USSR is the concept that "the policy of expansion is determined by the state structure and the need for internal acumulation of capital, i.e., by its imperialist character."
We have shown that it is incorrect to compare the bureaucracy's participation in the goint stock companics in the buffer countries with the export of impeWe have also shown the diametrically opposite sociological conse-