The life and death of Trotskyism

"The Life and Death of Stalinism" is a curious book by Walter Daum, a member of the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP), a small Trotskyist group based in New York City. Daum achieved brief notoriety in 2004, when he challenged John Kerry at an election meeting, criticizing Kerry's real or percieved support for the war in Iraq. The media assumed that Daum was a Democrat, and asked whether Kerry would loose "the Daum vote" (meaning the anti-war liberal vote)!

WAS THE SOVIET UNION CAPITALIST?

Daum's book is of interest only to avid left-watchers, and perhaps people interested in exotic theories of the Soviet Union. Daum claims that the Soviet Union became capitalist around 1936-38. Of course, this is a completely absurd and surreal notion. There were no fundamental changes in the Soviet economy during the late 1930's. True, in a very relative sense, there was a "decentralization", but still within the context of a tight planned economy, just as there was a "recentralization" under Khrushchev, somewhat ironically making him even more socialist than Stalin. But these changes didn't affect the overall make-up of the Soviet economy, which was clearly different from capitalism. The only period during which the Soviet economy resembled some kind of capitalism was the New Economic Policy (NEP), launched by Lenin in 1921 and abolished by Stalin in 1929. But according to Daum, the Soviet Union was still a "workers' state" during this period!

A NEW KIND OF CAPITALISM?

While Daum tries to make as much as possible out of the "decentralization" during the late 1930's, there simply isn't a way to make the theory stick. The Soviet economy is still too different from capitalism. So Daum invents a new kind of capitalism: "statified capitalism". There was still capital in the USSR, argues Daum. The state had simply taken it over. Hence "statified capitalism". Thus, statified capitalism looks like what everyone else calls socialism! But there is another problem. Trotsky also believed that capital still existed in the Soviet Union. Yet, Trotsky denied that the USSR was capitalist. To him, nationalized capital proved that the Soviet Union was transitional to socialism. Trotsky would have shaken his head at this book, wondering what the fuzz was all about. The "discovery" that there is "nationalized capital" in the USSR was made by Trotsky himself, and he still insisted that the Soviet Union was a "degenerated workers' state".

Of course, this was not an academic debate for Trotsky. If the Soviet Union was still, at least in some objective sense, transitional to socialism, revolutionary Marxists were duty bound to defend it against capitalist nations, and also internal counter-revolution, despite being politically opposed to Stalin. If the Soviet Union was capitalist, it became possible to argue the exact opposite position: one shouldn't defend it. Indeed, this is the LRP's position. They believe it was wrong to defend the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.

A CURIOUSLY INCONSISTENT THEORY

Daum argues that "statified capitalism" was weaker than private capitalism, since it embodied "real gains of the working class". Indeed, nationalized property is itself a gain of the working class, according to the author. He also believes that these "gains" made it difficult for the Soviet ruling class to exploit the workers. But if the nationalized economy of the Soviet Union was a real gain of the working class, why not defend the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany or the United States? Daum's position is curiously inconsistent on this point. The book was published in 1990, after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, but before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Daum argues that workers should defend the nationalized property against privatizations. Yet, he supports the overthrow of the "Stalinist" regimes! One gets the impression that the theory of statified capitalism is a hybrid of two mutually incompatible ideas: Trotsky's theory of the "degenerated workers' state" and the various theories of "state capitalism". Just like Trotsky, Daum believes that the Soviet Union was different from Western capitalism, that it embodied "gains" of the working class, and that one of these gains was the nationalized economy itself (the nationalized capital, perhaps?). But unlike Trotsky, Daum doesn't draw the logical conclusion, namely that the Soviet Union should be defended. Instead, just like the International Socialists or the ICC, he and his organization takes the exactly opposite position.

IMPERIALISM AND FASCISM

Daum also attempts to prove that the Soviet Union was imperialist and (under Stalin) fascist. Of course, in non-Marxist, everyday speech, I guess you could argue that the USSR was "imperialist" (they did invade other nations) and that Stalin was a "fascist" (he did kill millions of people, demanded virtual worship like a Roman emperor, etc). But it's difficult to see how the Soviet Union could be called "imperialist" or "fascist" from a Marxist perspective. Are we to believe that a society that embodies real gains of the working class, a society where the statified economy is *the* most important gain, a society with a ruling class that's supposedly weak because it can't exploit the workers as much as it wants to, that such a society is "imperialist" and "fascist", and to such an extent, that it becomes pointless to defend it against Nazi Germany?

Daum actually admits that the Soviet Union was forced to subsidize its allied Communist regimes, making it difficult to see in what way the USSR really "exploited" its satellites. That the Eastern European nations where forced to remain within the Soviet orbit is obvious, but were they economically exploited by the Russians in the same way as South America or Africa was exploited by the colonial powers, or indirectly exploited as many Third World nations are today? Apparently not, and Daum has to admit it.

As a side point, one wonders why Daum doesn't apply his categories to other nations he considers "statified capitalist". Why isn't China imperialist? They invaded Tibet and attacked Vietnam. Indeed, they were pro-American during a period. Why isn't China fascist? Can't Mao's regime be seen as "fascist"? If not, why not?

THE REAL PROBLEM

Of course, at bottom books like this reflect a much deeper problem, namely the refusal of many left-wing groups to admit that what existed in the Soviet Union was socialism, really existing socialism. Since the Soviet regime wasn't democratic, didn't have as much economic growth as Western capitalism, and reproduced hierarchies such as patriarchy and national oppression, many left-wingers argue that it can't have been socialist, since Marx said that socialism would be democratic, have tremendous economic growth, and would tear down all oppressive hierarchies. Hence, the Soviet Union (and other socialist nations) are labeled "degenerated (or deformed) workers' states", "state capitalism", "statified capitalism", "bureaucratic collectivism" or whatever. A more constructive approach would be to analyze why socialism developed the way it did in the Soviet Union, and if alternative routes of development were possible. Daum has choosen an easier approach: pin a meaningless label on the USSR, as if that would make the problem go away.

I suppose Daum just lost "the Ashtar Command vote"!