Khrushchev (was: Re: [Marxism] Petty Bourgeois--the consciousness yardstick

[Lou Paulsen <loupaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Another key element of Trotskyist sectarianism is its tendency to turn
every serious political fight into a conflict between worker and
petty-bourgeoisie. [....]"



Proyect then goes on to make more or less the following assertions, supposedly 
illustrating an omnipresent pattern of behavior over the decades among 
Trotskyist sectarians:

(1) The Schachtman/Burnham/Abern opposition in the SWP, which split in 1940, 
was unfairly labeled as a petty-bourgeois opposition by Trotsky and Cannon

(2) The Trotsky-Cannon assertion (in 1939) that the petty-bourgeoisie would 
welcome war was contradicted by the petty-bourgeois-led antiwar movement in the 
1960's [btw I don't know of anyone who ever asserted that the petty bourgeoisie 
was always for war - LPa]

(3) In the 1950's, the "Stalinist" parties, led by Khrushchev in the USSR, 
moved to the left under the impact of world events; the European Trotskyists 
were "completely correct" to recognize this, as was the Cochrane opposition in 
the SWP-US, and the Cannon leadership was completely incorrect and sectarian in 
refusing to recognize this.

(4) Cannon also unfairly labeled the Cochrane opposition as "petty-bourgeois" 
despite the fact that they were solidly working-class.  Proyect ridicules 
Cannon's assertion that relatively privileged unionized workers can develop a 
petty-bourgeois outlook.



On point (1) I have always thought that "In Defense of Marxism" was a rather 
convincing piece of work, but I don't have anything to add to what Trotsky and 
Cannon wrote on the subject; people will have to make up their own minds, I 
guess.  On point (2) I don't have anything to add to my comment above.  On 
point (4), it's entirely possible that Cannon got it wrong.... although I WILL 
say, on the basis of five years of experience as a railroad worker in the 
1970's, that it is entirely true that a stratum of mostly white, male, 
highly-paid union workers not only did develop petty-bourgeois attitudes but 
did their best to join the petty-bourgeoisie.  We had a whole group of 
locomotive engineers, for example, with small businesses on the side.  Whether 
this was true of auto workers in the 1950's I don't know.

Now as to point (3).  Proyect throws this in as part of the supporting 
structure of his argument as to how bad Trotskyist sectarians are.  First they 
reject, out of pure sectarianism and concern for "purity", obvious world 
developments, such as the Moscow-oriented communist parties "moving to the 
left" under the pressure of events.  How stupid and blind of them!  Then they 
go on and unfairly label their opponents as petty-bourgeois and that just 
completes the picture.

If it weren't for the sectarianism of Cannon, Proyect argues, SWP members would 
have joined the CP-USA, where, after Khrushchev's revelations of 1956, they 
would have gotten "a real hearing".  About what, by the way?  Trotsky's role in 
history?  I have a hard time believing that the CP-USA would have passively 
allowed the SWP-US to pursue an "entry" strategy with them, or that their own 
commitment to internal democracy was so great (greater than Cannon's, I guess) 
that, having done so, they would then have allowed a free internal debate over 
the whole Trotsky-Stalin business.

Anyway, the rhetorical force of this argument fails if you don't first accept 
the notion that Khrushchev represented a move to the left of Stalin.  I don't.  
The Marcy-Copeland tendency in the SWP didn't accept this at the time.  In 
fact, after 1956, the Cannon leadership did tend to treat Khrushchev's "secret 
speech" as a positive development, without attempting an entry strategy, 
whereas Marcy saw it as a move to the right, and this was an important part of 
the background to our own split from the SWP in 1959.

Proyect writes,

"The Europeans appeared totally vindicated in 1956, when the Krushchev
revelations caused the CP's to go into a total crisis. Krushchev, the
leader of the Communist Parties internationally, seemed to share the
critique of Stalin that the Trotskyists had been advancing for decades.
(The European Trotskyists have always been much more in touch with
political reality and the mass movement than the Americans. In the
global regroupment process that is taking place today, the European
Trotskyists can conceivably play a vanguard role in fighting
"vanguardism".)"

This idea that Khrushchev was advancing the Trotskyist analysis of Stalin did 
indeed have a brief appeal, but it was very shallow: both Khrushchev and the 
Trotskyists asserted that Stalin had committed crimes.  However, in his speech 
to the Central Committee, Khrushchev was primarily concerned with 
rehabilitating the Bukharinists, not the Trotskyists.  In his ascendancy, 
Khrushchev then went on to advance the doctrine of peaceful coexistence, not 
that of permanent revolution, and indeed was largely responsible for the 
historically catastrophic Sino-Soviet split.  During the early sixties, the 
Chinese critique of "Soviet revisionism" was pretty much the freshest and most 
exciting ideological current in the world communist movement.  Meanwhile in the 
USSR the party continued to decay ideologically.  Khrushchev represents one 
stage in the development of the disease which ultimately undermined and 
destroyed the inheritance of 1917, to the great detriment of human history.

Of course the CCP and its followers later went overboard in declaring that 
Khrushchev represented counterrevolution and capitalist restoration in his own 
person, but it has been a long time since I have heard anyone on the 
revolutionary left assert that "Khrushchevite revisionism" was a leftward 
advance.

Now, the important thing about this is not who was right about Khrushchev 40 
years ago (in and of itself).  The important thing is that Proyect thinks that 
the supposed wisdom of Cochrane and the European Trotskyists, in being in touch 
with the mass movement, seeing the positive openings afforded by Khrushchev's 
supposed left turn, etc., are models for the struggle against "vanguardism" 
which Proyect wants to wage today.  However, if the "mass movement" is taking a 
wrong turn (if they are all carried away by "defeat Bush" sentiments, say), 
then those who are "in touch" with it have to work to avoid being carried away 
as well.  Over and over these last several years, the groups with the "mass 
touch" have frustrated Louis by getting carried away in the bourgeois current, 
as on Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Kerry, and so on.  They end up making us 
"vanguardists" look good by comparison, which, I suppose, must be equally 
frustrating.



Lou Paulsen

member, WWP, Chicago


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