Re: Stalinism And Standards of Intellectual Discourse

[C N Marley <fe99@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Somewhere (I can't remember where -- was it "The Struggle for a
Proletarian Party") James P Cannon, described the Stalinist bureaucracy
as akin to the bureaucracy of a trade union in a capitalist state. That
is, conservative in nature, due to its material interests; but that
those material interests were derived from a material base (the trade
union or the workers state) whose historical interests were incompatible
with the interests of the bureaucracy.

Selling out a strike may be in the interests of the trade union
bureaucracy, but not in the interests of the striking workers.
"Socialism in one country" justified the conservatism of the Stalinist
bureaucracy, but did not help any workers anywhere. The trade union
bureaucracy stamps out internal democracy, the Stalinist bureaucracy, on
a different plain, had their purges.

I think Cannon's analogy is profoundly useful, both in explaining the
contradictions of the Stalinist bureaucracy, _and_ raising the question
of which side of the barricades should a revolutionary be on when the
bureaucracy is under attack by the capitalists.


Simon.






     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------