Leon Trotsky

== Leon Trotsky ==
= Stalinism and Bolshevism =
=== (August 1937) ===
===== Online version: Reprinted in the magazine Living Marxism (No. 18, April 1990.)
Transcribed for the Internet by Mike Griffin for the Trotsky Internet Archive, now a subset of the Marxists’ Internet Archive. =====
Reactionary epochs like ours not
 only disintegrate and weaken the working class and isolate its vanguard
 but also lower the general ideological level of the movement and throw 
political thinking back to stages long since passed through. In these 
conditions the task of the vanguard is, above all, not to let itself be 
carried along by the backward flow: it must swim against the current. If
 an unfavourable relation of forces prevents it from holding political 
positions it has won, it must at least retain its ideological positions,
 because in them is expressed the dearly paid experience of the past. 
Fools will consider this policy “sectarian”. Actually it is the only 
means of preparing for a new tremendous surge forward with the coming 
historical tide. 
==== The Reaction Against Marxism and Bolshevism ====
Great political defeats provoke a reconsideration of 
values, generally occurring in two directions. On the one hand the true 
vanguard, enriched by the experience of defeat, defends with tooth and 
nail the heritage of revolutionary thought and on this basis strives to 
educate new cadres for the mass struggle to come. On the other hand the 
routinists, centrists and dilettantes, frightened by defeat, do their 
best to destroy the authority of the revolutionary tradition and go 
backwards in their search for a “New World”.
One could indicate a great many examples of ideological reaction, 
most often taking the form of prostration. All the literature if the 
Second and Third Internationals, as well as of their satellites of the 
London Bureau, consists essentially of such examples. Not a suggestion 
of Marxist analysis. Not a single serious attempt to explain the causes 
of defeat, About the future, not one fresh word. Nothing but cliches, 
conformity, lies and above all solicitude for their own bureaucratic 
self-preservation. It is enough to smell 10 words from some Hilferding 
or Otto Bauer to know this rottenness. The theoreticians of the 
Comintern are not even worth mentioning. The famous Dimitrov is as 
ignorant and commonplace as a shopkeeper over a mug of beer. The minds 
of these people are too lazy to renounce Marxism: they prostitute it. 
But it is not they that interest us now. Let us turn to the 
“innovators”.
The former Austrian communist, Willi Schlamm, has devoted a small book to the Moscow trials, under the expressive title, The Dictatorship of the Lie.
Schlamm is a gifted journalist, chiefly interested in current affairs. 
His criticism of the Moscow frame-up, and his exposure of the 
psychological mechanism of the “voluntary confessions”, are excellent. 
However, he does not confine himself to this: he wants to create a new 
theory of socialism that would insure us against defeats and frame-ups 
in the future. But since Schlamm is by no means a theoretician and is 
apparently not well acquainted with the history of the development of 
socialism, he returns entirely to pre-Marxist socialism, and notably to 
its German, that is to its most backward, sentimental and mawkish 
variety. Schlamm denounces dialectics and the class struggle, not to 
mention the dictatorship of the proletariat. The problem of transforming
society is reduced for him to the realisation of certain “eternal” 
moral truths with which he would imbue mankind, even under capitalism. 
Willi Schlamm’s attempts to save socialism by the insertion of the moral
gland is greeted with joy and pride in Kerensky’s review, Novaya Rossia
 (an old provincial Russian review now published in Paris); as the 
editors justifiably conclude, Schlamm has arrived at the principles of 
true Russian socialism, which a long time ago opposed the holy precepts 
of faith, hope and charity to the austerity and harshness of the class 
struggle. The “novel” doctrine of the Russian “Social Revolutionaries” 
represents, in its “theoretical” premises, only a return to the 
pre-March (1848!) Germany. However, it would be unfair to demand a more 
intimate knowledge of the history of ideas from Kerensky than from 
Schlamm. Far more important is the fact that Kerensky, who is in 
solidarity with Schlamm, was, while head of the government, the 
instigator of persecutions against the Bolsheviks as agents of the 
German general staff: organised, that is, the same frame-ups against 
which Schlamm now mobilises his moth-eaten metaphysical absolutes.
The psychological mechanism of the ideological reaction of Schlamm 
and his like, is not at all complicated. For a while these people took 
part in a political movement that swore by the class struggle and 
appeared, in word if not in thought, to dialectical materialism. In both
 Austria and Germany the affair ended in a catastrophe. Schlamm draws 
the wholesale conclusion: this is the result of dialectics and the class
 struggle! And since the choice of revelations is limited by historical 
experience and... by personal knowledge, our reformer in his search for 
the word falls on a bundle of old rags which he valiantly opposes not 
only to Bolshevism but to Marxism as well.
At first glance Schlamm’s brand of ideological reaction seems too 
primitive (from Marx ... to Kerensky!) to pause over. But actually it is
 very instructive: precisely in its primitiveness it represents the 
common denominator of all other forms of reaction, particularly of those
 expressed by wholesale denunciation of Bolshevism. 
==== “Back to Marxism”? ====
Marxism found its highest historical expression in 
Bolshevism. Under the banner of Bolshevism the first victory of the 
proletariat was achieved and the first workers’ state established. No 
force can now erase these facts from history. But since the October 
Revolution has led to the present stage of the triumph of the 
bureaucracy, with its system of repression, plunder and falsification – 
the “dictatorship of the lie”, to use Schlamm’s happy expression – many 
formalistic and superficial minds jump to a summary conclusion: one 
cannot struggle against Stalinism without renouncing Bolshevism. 
Schlamm, as we already know, goes further: Bolshevism, which degenerated
 into Stalinism, itself grew out of Marxism; consequently one cannot 
fight Stalinism while remaining on the foundation of Marxism. There are 
others, less consistent but more numerous, who say on the contrary: “We 
must return Bolshevism to Marxism.” How? To what Marxism? 
Before Marxism became “bankrupt” in the form of Bolshevism it has 
already broken down in the form of social democracy, Does the slogan 
“Back to Marxism” then mean a leap over the periods of the Second and 
Third Internationals... to the First International? But it too broke 
down in its time. Thus in the last analysis it is a question of 
returning to the collected works of Marx and Engels. One can accomplish 
this historic leap without leaving one’s study and even without taking 
off one’s slippers. But how are we going to go from our classics (Marx 
died in 1883, Engels in 1895) to the tasks of a new epoch, omitting 
several decades of theoretical and political struggles, among them 
Bolshevism and the October revolution? None of those who propose to 
renounce Bolshevism as an historically bankrupt tendency has indicated 
any other course. So the question is reduced to the simple advice to 
study Capital. We can hardly object. But the Bolsheviks, too, studied Capital
 and not badly either. This did not however prevent the degeneration of 
the Soviet state and the staging of the Moscow trials. So what is to be 
done? 
==== Is Bolshevism Responsible for Stalinism? ====
Is it true that Stalinism represents the legitimate 
product of Bolshevism, as all reactionaries maintain, as Stalin himself 
avows, as the Mensheviks, the anarchists, and certain left doctrinaires 
considering themselves Marxist believe? “We have always predicted this” 
they say, “Having started with the prohibition of other socialist 
parties, the repression of the anarchists, and the setting up of the 
Bolshevik dictatorship in the Soviets, the October Revolution could only
 end in the dictatorship of the bureaucracy. Stalin is the continuation 
and also the bankruptcy of Leninism.”
The flaw in this reasoning begins in the tacit identification of 
Bolshevism, October Revolution and Soviet Union. The historical process 
of the struggle of hostile forces is replaced by the evolution of 
Bolshevism in a vacuum. Bolshevism, however, is only a political 
tendency closely fused with the working class but not identical with it.
 And aside from the working class there exist in the Soviet Union a 
hundred million peasants, diverse nationalities, and a heritage of 
oppression, misery and ignorance. The state built up by the Bolsheviks 
reflects not only the thought and will of Bolshevism but also the 
cultural level of the country, the social composition of the population,
 the pressure of a barbaric past and no less barbaric world imperialism.
 To represent the process of degeneration of the Soviet state as the 
evolution of pure Bolshevism is to ignore social reality in the name of 
only one of its elements, isolated by pure logic. One has only to call 
this elementary mistake by its true name to do away with every trace of 
it.
Bolshevism, in any case, never identified itself either with the 
October Revolution or with the Soviet state that issued from it. 
Bolshevism considered itself as one of the factors of history, its 
“Conscious” factor – a very important but not decisive one. We never 
sinned on historical subjectivism. We saw the decisive factor – on the 
existing basis of productive forces – in the class struggle, not only on
 a national scale but on an international scale.
When the Bolsheviks made concessions to the peasant tendency, to 
private ownership, set up strict rules for membership of the party, 
purged the party of alien elements, prohibited other parties, introduced
 the NEP, granted enterprises as concessions, or concluded diplomatic 
agreements with imperialist governments, they were drawing partial 
conclusions from the basic fact that had been theoretically clear to 
them from the beginning; that the conquest of power, however important 
it may be in itself, by no means transforms the party into a sovereign 
ruler of the historical process. Having taken over the state, the party 
is able, certainly, to influence the development of society with a power
 inaccessible to it before; but in return it submits itself to a 10 
times greater influence from all other elements in society. It can, by 
the direct attack by hostile forces, be thrown out of power. Given a 
more drawn out tempo of development, it can degenerate internally while 
holding on to power. It is precisely this dialectic of the historical 
process that is not understood by those sectarian logicians who try to 
find in the decay of the Stalinist bureaucracy a crushing argument 
against Bolshevism.
In essence these gentlemen say: the revolutionary party that contains
 in itself no guarantee against its own degeneration is bad. By such a 
criterion Bolshevism is naturally condemned: it has no talisman. But the
 criterion itself is wrong. Scientific thinking demands a concrete 
analysis: how and why did the party degenerate? No one but the 
Bolsheviks themselves have, up to the present time, given such an 
analysis,. To do this they had no need to break with Bolshevism. On the 
contrary, they found in its arsenal all they needed for the explanation 
of its fate. They drew this conclusion: certainly Stalinism “grew out ” 
of Bolshevism, not logically, however, but dialectically; not as a 
revolutionary affirmation but as a Thermidorian negation. It is by no 
means the same. 
==== Bolshevism’s Basic Prognosis ====
The Bolsheviks, however, did not have to wait for the 
Moscow trials to explain the reasons for the disintegration of the 
governing party of the USSR. Long ago they foresaw and spoke of the 
theoretical possibility of this development. Let us remember the 
prognosis of the Bolsheviks, not only on the eve of the October 
Revolution but years before. The specific alignment of forces in the 
national and international field can enable the proletariat to seize 
power first in a backward country such as Russia. But the same alignment
 of forces proves beforehand that without a more or less rapid victory of the proletariat in the advanced countries
 the worker’s government in Russia will not survive. Left to itself the 
Soviet regime must either fall or degenerate. More exactly; it will 
first degenerate and then fall. I myself have written about this more 
than once, beginning in 1905. In my History of the Russian Revolution (cf. Appendix to the last volume: Socialism in One Country)
are collected all the statements on the question made by the Bolshevik 
leaders from 1917 until 1923. They all amount to the following: without a
revolution in the West, Bolshevism will be liquidated either by 
internal counter-revolution or by external intervention, or by a 
combination of both. Lenin stressed again and again that the 
bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime was not a technical question, but
the potential beginning of the degeneration of the worker’s state.
At the eleventh party congress in March, 1922, Lenin spoke of the 
support offered to Soviet Russia at the time of the NEP by certain 
bourgeois politicians, particularly the liberal professor Ustrialov. “I 
am for the support of the Soviet power in Russia” said Ustrialov, 
although he was a Cadet, a bourgeois, a supporter of intervention – 
“because it has taken the road that will lead it back to an ordinary 
bourgeois state”. Lenin prefers the cynical voice of the enemy to 
“sugary communistic nonsense”. Soberly and harshly he warns the party of
 danger: “We must say frankly that the things Ustrialov speaks about are
 possible. History knows all sorts of metamorphoses. Relying on firmness
 of convictions, loyalty and other splendid moral qualities is anything 
but a serious attitude in politics. A few people may be endowed with 
splendid moral qualities, but historical issues are decided by vast 
masses, which, if the few don’t suit them, may at times, treat them none
 too politely.” In a word, the party is not the only factor of 
development and on a larger historical scale is not the decisive one.
“One nation conquers another” continued Lenin at the same congress, 
the last in which he participated ... “this is simple and intelligible 
to all. But what happens to the culture of these nations? Here things 
are not so simple. If the conquering nation is more cultured than the 
vanquished nation, the former imposes its culture on the latter, but if 
the opposite is the case, the vanquished nation imposes its culture on 
the conqueror. Has not something like this happened in the capital of 
the RSFSR? Have the 4700 Communists (nearly a whole army division, and 
all of them the very best) come under the influence of an alien 
culture?”. This was said in 1922, and not for the first time. History is
 not made by a few people, even “the best”; and not only that: these 
“best” can degenerate in the spirit of an alien, that is, a bourgeois 
culture. Not only can the Soviet state abandon the way of socialism, but
 the Bolshevik party can, under unfavourable historic conditions, lose 
its Bolshevism.
From the clear understanding of this danger issued the Left 
Opposition, definitely formed in 1923. Recording day by day the symptoms
 of degeneration, it tried to oppose to the growing Thermidor the 
conscious will of the proletarian vanguard. However, this subjective 
factor proved to be insufficient. The “gigantic masses” which, according
 to Lenin, decide the outcome of the struggle, become tired of internal 
privations and of waiting too long for the world revolution. The mood of
 the masses declined. The bureaucracy won the upper hand. It cowed the 
revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the Bolshevik
 party. Stalinism conquered. In the form of the Left Opposition, 
Bolshevism broke with the Soviet bureaucracy and its Comintern. This was
 the real course of development.
To be sure, in a formal sense Stalinism did issue from Bolshevism. 
Even today the Moscow bureaucracy continues to call itself the Bolshevik
 party. It is simply using the old label of Bolshevism the better to 
fool the masses. So much the more pitiful are those theoreticians who 
take the shell for the kernel and appearance for reality. In the 
identification of Bolshevism and Stalinism they render the best possible
 service to the Thermidorians and precisely thereby play a clearly 
reactionary role.
In view of the elimination of all other parties from the political 
field the antagonistic interests and tendencies of the various strata of
 the population, to a greater of less degree, had to find their 
expression in the governing party, To the extent that the political 
centre of gravity has shifted form the proletarian vanguard to the 
bureaucracy, the party has changed its social structure as well as its 
ideology. Owing to the tempestuous course of development, it has 
suffered in the last 15 years a far more radical degeneration than did 
the social democracy in half a century. The present purge draws between 
Bolshevism and Stalinism not simply a bloody line but a whole river of 
blood. The annihilation of all the older generation of Bolsheviks, an 
important part of the middle generation which participated in the civil 
war, and that part of the youth that took up most seriously the 
Bolshevik traditions, shows not only a political but a thoroughly 
physical incompatibility between Bolshevism and Stalinism. How can this 
not be seen? 
==== Stalinism and “State Socialism” ====
The anarchists, for their part, try to see in Stalinism 
the organic product, not only of Bolshevism and Marxism but of “state 
socialism” in general. They are willing to replace Bakunin’s patriarchal
 “federation of free communes” by the modern federation of free Soviets.
 But, as formerly, they are against centralised state power. Indeed, one
 branch of “state” Marxism, social democracy, after coming to power 
became an open agent of capitalism. The other gave birth to a new 
privileged caste. It is obvious that the source of evil lies in the 
state. From a wide historical viewpoint, there is a grain of truth in 
this reasoning. The state as an apparatus of coercion is an undoubted 
source of political and moral infection. This also applies, as 
experience has shown, to the workers’ state. Consequently it can be said
 that Stalinism is a product of a condition of society in which society 
was still unable to tear itself out of the strait-jacket of the state. 
But this position, contributing nothing to the elevation of Bolshevism 
and Marxism, characterises only the general level of mankind, and above 
all – the relation of forces between the proletariat and the 
bourgeoisie. Having agreed with the anarchists that the state, even the 
workers’ state, is the offspring of class barbarism and that real human 
history will begin with the abolition of the state, we have still before
 us in full force the question: what ways and methods will lead, ultimately, to the abolition of the state? Recent experience bears witness that they are anyway not the methods of anarchism.
The leaders of the Spanish Federation of Labour (CNT), the only 
important anarchist organisation in the world, became, in the critical 
hour, bourgeois ministers. They explained their open betrayal of the 
theory of anarchism by the pressure of “exceptional circumstances”. But 
did not the leaders of German social democracy produce, in their time, 
the same excuse? Naturally, civil war is not peaceful and ordinary but 
an “exceptional circumstance”. Every serious revolutionary organisation,
 however, prepares precisely for “exceptional circumstances”. The 
experience of Spain has shown once again that the state can be “denied” 
in booklets published in “normal circumstances” by permission of the 
bourgeois state, but the conditions of revolution leave no room for the 
denial of the state: they demand, on the contrary, the conquest of the 
state. We have not the slightest intention of blaming the anarchists for
 not having liquidated the state with the mere stroke of a pen. A 
revolutionary party , even having seized power (of which the anarchist 
leaders were incapable in spite of the heroism of the anarchist 
workers), is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society. But all 
the more severely do we blame the anarchist theory, which seemed to be 
wholly suitable for times of peace, but which had to be dropped rapidly 
as soon as the “exceptional circumstances” of the ... revolution had 
begun. In the old days there were certain generals – and probably are 
now – who considered that the most harmful thing for an army was war. 
Little better are those revolutionaries who complain that revolution 
destroys their doctrine.
Marxists are wholly in agreement with the anarchists in regard to the
 final goal: the liquidation of the state. Marxists are “state-ist” only
 to the extent that one cannot achieve the liquidation of the state 
simply by ignoring it. The experience of Stalinism does not refute the 
teaching of Marxism but confirms it by inversion. The revolutionary 
doctrine which teaches the proletariat to orient itself correctly in 
situations and to profit actively by them, contains of course no 
automatic guarantee of victory. But victory is possible only through the
 application of this doctrine. Moreover, the victory must not be though 
of as a single event. It must be considered in the perspective of an 
historical epoch. The workers’ state – on a lower economic basis and 
surrounded by imperialism – was transformed into the gendarmerie of 
Stalinism. But genuine Bolshevism launched a life and death struggle 
against the gendarmerie. To maintain itself Stalinism is now forced to 
conduct a direct civil war against Bolshevism under the name of
“Trotskyism”, not only in the USSR but also in Spain. The old Bolshevik
party is dead but Bolshevism is raising its head everywhere.
To deduce Stalinism form Bolshevism or from Marxism is the same as to
 deduce, in a larger sense, counter-revolution from revolution. 
Liberal-conservative and later reformist thinking has always been 
characterised by this cliche. Due to the class structure of society, 
revolutions have always produced counter-revolutions. Does not this 
indicate, asks the logician, that there is some inner flaw in the 
revolutionary method? However, neither the liberals nor reformists have 
succeeded, as yet, in inventing a more “economical” method. But if it is
 not easy to rationalise the living historic process, it is not at all 
difficult to give a rational interpretation of the alternation of its 
waves, and thus by pure logic to deduce Stalinism from “state 
socialism”, fascism from Marxism, reaction from revolution, in a word, 
the antithesis from the thesis. In this domain as in many others 
anarchist thought is the prisoner of liberal rationalism. Real 
revolutionary thinking is not possible without dialectics. 
==== The Political “Sins” of Bolshevism as the Source of Stalinism ====
The arguments of the rationalists assume at times, at 
least in their outer form, a more concrete character. They do not deduce
 Stalinism from Bolshevism as a whole but from its political sins. the 
Bolsheviks – according to Gorter, Pannekoek, certain German 
“Spartacists” and others – replaced the dictatorship of the proletariat 
with the dictatorship of the party; Stalin replaced the dictatorship of 
the party with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy, the Bolsheviks 
destroyed all parties except their own; Stalin strangled the Bolshevik 
party in the interests of a Bonapartist clique. The Bolsheviks 
compromised with the bourgeoisie; Stalin became its ally and support. 
The Bolsheviks recognised the necessity of participation in the old 
trade unions and in the bourgeois parliament; Stalin made friends with 
the trade union bureaucracy and bourgeois democracy. One can make such 
comparisons at will. For all their apparent effectiveness they are 
entirely empty.
The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. In itself 
the necessity for state power arises from the insufficient cultural 
level of the masses and their heterogeneity. In the revolutionary 
vanguard, organised in a party, is crystallised the aspiration of the 
masses to obtain their freedom. Without the confidence of the class in 
the vanguard, without support of the vanguard by the class, there can be
 no talk of the conquest of power. In this sense the proletarian 
revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only 
under the leadership of the vanguard. The Soviets are the only organised
 form of the tie between the vanguard and the class. A revolutionary 
content can be given this form only by the party. This is proved by the 
positive experience of the October Revolution and by the negative 
experience of other countries (Germany, Austria, finally, Spain). No one
 has either shown in practice or tried to explain articulately on paper 
how the proletariat can seize power without the political leadership of a
 party that knows what it wants. the fact that this party subordinates 
the Soviets politically to its leaders has, in itself, abolished the 
Soviet system no more than the domination of the conservative majority 
has abolished the British parliamentary system.
As far as the prohibition of other Soviet parties is 
concerned, it did not flow from any “theory” of Bolshevism but was a 
measure of defence of the dictatorship on a backward and devastated 
country, surrounded by enemies on all sides. For the Bolsheviks it was 
clear from the beginning that this measure, later completed by the 
prohibition of factions inside the governing party itself, signalised a 
tremendous danger. However, the root of the danger lay not in the 
doctrine or the tactics but in the material weakness of the 
dictatorship, ion the difficulties of its internal and international 
situation. If the revolution had triumphed, even if only in Germany, the
need of prohibiting the other Soviet parties would have immediately 
fallen away. It is absolutely indisputable that the domination of a 
single party served as the juridical point of departure for the 
Stalinist totalitarian regime. The reason for this development lies 
neither in Bolshevism nor in the prohibition of other parties as a 
temporary war measure, but in the number of defeats of the proletariat 
in Europe and Asia.
The same applies to the struggle with anarchism. In the heroic epoch 
of the revolution the Bolsheviks went hand in hand with genuinely 
revolutionary anarchists. Many of them were drawn into the ranks of the 
party. The author of these lines discussed with Lenin more then once the
 possibility of allotting the anarchists certain territories where, with
 the consent of the local population, they would carry out their 
stateless experiment. But civil war, blockade and hunger left no room 
for such plans. The Kronstadt insurrection? But the revolutionary 
government could naturally not “present” to the insurrectionary sailors 
the fortress which protected the capital only because the reactionary 
peasant-soldier rebellion was joined by a few doubtful anarchists. The 
concrete historical analysis of the events leaves not the slightest room
 for legends, built up on ignorance and sentimentality, concerning 
Kronstadt, Makhno and other episodes of the revolution.
There remains only the fact that the Bolsheviks from the beginning 
applied not only conviction but also compulsion, often to a most severe 
degree. It is also indisputable that later the bureaucracy which grew 
out of the revolution monopolised the system of compulsions in its own 
hands. Every stage of development, even such catastrophic stages as 
revolution and counter-revolution, flows from the preceding stage, is 
rooted in it and carries over some of its features. Liberals, including 
the Webbs, have always maintained that the Bolshevik dictatorship 
represented only a new edition of Tsarism. they close their eyes to such
 “details” as the abolition of the monarchy and the nobility, the 
handing over of the land to the peasants, the expropriation of capital, 
the introduction of the planned economy, atheist education, and so on. 
In exactly the same way liberal- anarchist thought closes its eyes to 
the fact that the Bolshevik revolution, with all its repressions, meant 
an upheaval of social relations in the interests of the masses, whereas 
Stalin’s Thermidorian upheaval accompanies the reconstruction of Soviet 
society in the interest of a privileged minority. It is clear that in 
the identification of Stalinism with Bolshevism there is not a trace of 
socialist criteria. 
==== Questions of Theory ====
One of the most outstanding features of Bolshevism has 
been its severe, exacting, even quarrelsome attitude towards the 
question of doctrine. The 26 volumes of Lenin’s works will remain 
forever a model of the highest theoretical conscientiousness. Without 
this fundamental quality Bolshevism would never have fulfilled its 
historic role. In this regard Stalinism, coarse, ignorant and thoroughly
 empirical, is its complete opposite.
The Opposition declared more than 10 years ago in its programme: 
“Since Lenin’s death a whole set of new theories has been created, whose
 only purpose is to justify the Stalin group’s sliding off the path of 
the international proletarian revolution.” Only a few days ago an 
American writer, Liston M. Oak, who has participated in the Spanish 
revolution, wrote: “The Stalinists are in fact today the foremost 
revisionists of Marx and Lenin – Bernstein did not dare 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 a correspondence between the reformist 
practices of social democracy and its programme. The Stalinist 
bureaucracy, however, not only had 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 theoreticians pen but with the heel of the 
GPU. 
==== Questions of Morals ====
Complaints of the “immorality” of Bolshevism come 
particularly from those boastful nonentities whose cheap masks were torn
 away by Bolshevism. In petit-bourgeois, intellectual, democratic, 
“socialist”, literary, parliamentary and other circles, conventional 
values prevail, or a conventional language to cover their lack of 
values. This large and motley society for mutual protection – “live and 
let live” – cannot bear the touch of the Marxist lancet on its sensitive
 skin. The theoreticians, writers and moralists, hesitating between 
different camps, thought and continue to think that the Bolsheviks 
maliciously exaggerate differences, are incapable of “loyal” 
collaboration and by their “intrigues” disrupt the unity of the workers’
 movement. Moreover, the sensitive and touchy centrist has always 
thought that the Bolsheviks were “calumniating” him – simply because 
they carried through to the end for him his half-developed thoughts: he 
himself was never able to. But the fact remains that only that precious 
quality, an uncompromising attitude towards all quibbling and evasion, 
can educate a revolutionary party which will not be taken unawares by 
“exceptional circumstances”.
The moral qualities of every party flow, in the last analysis, from 
the historical interests that it represents. the moral qualities of 
Bolshevism self-renunciation, disinterestedness, audacity and contempt 
for every kind of tinsel and falsehood – the highest qualities of human 
nature! – flow from revolutionary intransigence in the service of the 
oppressed. The Stalinist bureaucracy imitates also in this domain the 
words and gestures of Bolshevism. But when “intransigence” and 
“flexibility” are applied by a police apparatus in the service of a 
privileged minority they become a force of demoralisation and 
gangsterism. One can feel only contempt for these gentlemen who identify
 the revolutionary heroism of the Bolsheviks with the bureaucratic 
cynicism of the Thermidorians.
Even now, in spite of the dramatic events in the recent period, the 
average philistine prefers to believe that the struggle between 
Bolshevism (“Trotskyism”) and Stalinism concerns a clash of personal 
ambitions, or, at best, a conflict between two “shades ” of Bolshevism. 
The crudest expression of this opinion is given by Norman Thomas, leader
 of the American Socialist Party: “There is little reason to believe”. 
he writes (Socialist Review, September 1937, p.6), 
“that if Trotsky had won (!) instead of Stalin, there would be an end of
intrigue, plots, and a reign of fear in Russia”. And this man considers
himself ... a Marxist. One would have the same right to say: “There is 
little reason to believe that if instead of Pius XI, the Holy See were 
occupied by Norman I, the Catholic Church would have been transformed 
into a bulwark of socialism”. Thomas fails to understand that it is not a
question of antagonism between Stalin and Trotsky, but of an antagonism
between the bureaucracy and the proletariat. To be sure, the governing 
stratum of the USSR is forced even now to adapt itself to the still not 
wholly liquidated heritage of revolution, while preparing at the same 
time through direct civil war (bloody “purge” – mass annihilation of the
discontented) a change of the social regime. But in Spain the Stalinist
clique is already acting openly as a bulwark of the bourgeois order 
against socialism. The struggle against the Bonapartist bureaucracy is 
turning before our eyes into class struggle: two worlds, two programmes,
two moralities. If Thomas thinks that the victory of the socialist 
proletariat over the infamous caste of oppressors would not politically 
and morally regenerate the Soviet regime, he proves only that for all 
his reservations, shufflings and pious sighs he is far nearer to the 
Stalinist bureaucracy than to the workers. Like other exposers of 
Bolshevik “immorality”, Thomas has simply not grown to the level of 
revolutionary morality. 
=== The Traditions of Bolshevism and the Fourth International ===
The “lefts” who tried to skip Bolshevism in their return 
to Marxism generally confined themselves to isolated panaceas: boycott 
of parliament, creation of “genuine” Soviets. All this could still seem 
extremely profound in the heat of the first days after the war. But now,
 in the light of most recent experience, such “infantile diseases” have 
no longer even the interest of a curiosity. The Dutchmen Gorter and 
Pannekoek, the German “Spartakists”, the Italian Bordigists, showed 
their independence from Bolshevism only by artificially inflating one of
 its features and opposing it to the rest. But nothing has remained 
either in practice or in theory of these “left” tendencies: an indirect 
but important proof that Bolshevism is the only possible form of Marxism for this epoch.
The Bolshevik party has shown in action a combination of the highest 
revolutionary audacity and political realism. It established for the 
first time the correspondence between the vanguard and the class which 
alone is capable of securing victory. It has p roved by experience that 
the alliance between the proletariat and the oppressed masses of the 
rural and urban petit bourgeoisie is possible only through the political
 overthrow of the traditional petit-bourgeois parties. The Bolshevik 
party has shown the entire world how to carry out armed insurrection and
 the seizure of power. Those who propose the abstraction of the Soviets 
from the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the 
party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the 
mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat. The 
Bolshevik party achieved in the civil war the correct combination of 
military art and Marxist politics. Even if the Stalinist bureaucracy 
should succeed in destroying the economic foundations of the new 
society, the experience of planned economy under the leadership of the 
Bolshevik party will have entered history for all time as one of the 
greatest teachings of mankind. This can be ignored only by sectarians 
who, offended by the bruises they have received, turn their backs on the
 process of history.
But his is not all. The Bolshevik party was able to carry on its 
magnificent “practical” work only because it illuminated all its steps 
with theory. Bolshevism did not create this theory: it was furnished by 
Marxism. But Marxism is a theory of movement, not of stagnation. Only 
events on such a tremendous historical scale could enrich the theory 
itself. Bolshevism brought an invaluable contribution to Marxism in its 
analysis of the imperialist epoch as an epoch of wars and revolutions; 
of bourgeois democracy in the era of decaying capitalism; of the 
correlation between the general strike and the insurrection; of the role
 of the party, Soviets and trade unions in the period of proletarian 
revolution; in its theory of the Soviet state, of the economy of 
transition, of fascism and Bonapartism in the epoch of capitalist 
decline; finally in its analysis of the degeneration of the Bolshevik 
party itself and of the Soviet state. Let any other tendency be named 
that has added anything essential to the conclusions and generalisations
 of Bolshevism. Theoretically and politically Vandervilde, De Brouckere,
 Hilferding, Otto Bauer, Leon Blum, Zyromski, not to mention Major 
Attlee and Norman Thomas, live on the tattered leftovers of the past. 
The degeneration of the Comintern is most crudely expressed by the fact 
that it has dropped to the theoretical level of the Second 
International. All the varieties of intermediary groups (Independent 
Labour Party of Great Britain, POUM and their like) adapt every week new
 haphazard fragments of Marx and Lenin to their current needs. Workers 
can learn nothing from these people.
Only the founders of the Fourth International, who have made their 
own the whole tradition of Marx and Lenin, take a serious attitude 
towards theory. Philistines may jeer that 20 years after the October 
victory the revolutionaries are again thrown back to modest propagandist
 preparation. The big capitalists are, in this question as in many 
others, far more penetrating than the petit bourgeois who imagine 
themselves “socialists” or “communists”. It is no accident that the 
subject of the Fourth International does not leave the columns of the 
world press. The burning historical need for revolutionary leadership 
promises to the Fourth International an exceptionally rapid tempo of 
growth. The greatest guarantee of its further success lies in the fact 
that it has not arisen away from the great historical road, but has 
organically grown out of Bolshevism.
28 August 1937
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Last updated on: 3.4.2007