Written: Spring 1933.
Source: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 28, 27 May 1933, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
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Socialism developed to completion (communism) means a society without a state. But the transition period from capitalism to socialism demands an extreme strengthening of the functions of the state (dictatorship of the proletariat). This historic dialectic of the state has been sufficiently illuminated by the theory of Marxism.
The economic basis for the withering away of the workers’ state is the high development of economic power, when productive labor no longer needs to be driven and the distribution of human goods no longer needs any juridical control.
The transition from revolutionary dictatorship to classless society cannot be accomplished by decree. A state cannot be dissolved by special order but gradually disappears from the scene, “withering away” to the extent to which the powerful and culturally higher socialist society conquers all the living functions with the aid of its manifold and flexible organs which no longer stand in need of coercion.
The process of the liquidation of the state takes place along two different roads. To the extent that the classes are being liquidated, that is, dissolved in a homogeneous society, coercion withers away in the direct sense of the word, dropping out forever from social circulation. The organisational functions of the state, on the contrary, become more complex, more detailed. They penetrate into ever new fields which until then remained as if beyond the threshold of society (the household, children’s education, etc.) and for the first time subject them to the control of the collective mind.
The general manner of posing the question does not change whether it concerns a single country or the whole planet. If we should assume that a socialist society is realizable within national boundaries, then the withering away of the state could also occur within the framework of a single country. The necessity of defense against capitalist enemies threatening from without is in itself entirely compatible with the weakening of state coercion from within: the solidarity and conscious discipline of the socialist society should yield the greatest results on the field of battle as well as on the field of production.
The Stalinist faction declared as far back as two years ago that the classes in the U.S.S.R. are liquidated “in the main”; that the question who will prevail is decided “completely and irrevocably”; more than that: that “we entered into socialism.” From this, according to the laws of Marxian logic, it should have followed that the necessity of class coercion is “in the main” liquidated and that the period of the withering away of the state had begun. But such a conclusion, insofar as it has been attempted by some indiscreet doctrinaries, was immediately declared as “counter-revolutionary.”
However, let us leave aside the perspective of socialism in one country. Let us proceed not from bureaucratic construction, already brought to an absurdity by the march of development, but from the actual state of affairs: the USSR is of course not a socialist society but only a socialist state, that is, a weapon for the building of a socialist society; the classes are as yet far from abolished; the question who will prevail is not decided; the possibility of capitalist restoration is not excluded; the necessity of a proletarian dictatorship therefore retains its full force. But there still remains the question of the character of the Soviet state, which does not at all remain unchangeable throughout the whole transitional epoch. The more successful the economic construction, the healthier the relation between town and country, the broader therefore should be the development of Soviet democracy. This does not constitute as yet the withering away of the state since Soviet democracy is also a form of state coercion. The capacity and flexibility of this form, however, best reflects the relation of the masses to the Soviet regime. The more the proletariat is satisfied with the results of its labor and the more beneficial its influence on the village, the more the Soviet government attempts to be – not on paper, not in a program, but in reality, in everyday existence – the weapon of the growing majority against the diminishing minority. The rise of Soviet democracy, while as yet not signifying the withering away of the state, is equivalent nevertheless to the preparation for such a process.
The problem will become more concrete when we take into consideration the basic changes in the class structure for the period of the revolution. The dictatorship of the proletariat as an organization for the suppression of exploiters was necessary against landlords, capitalists, generals and kulaks insofar as they gave support to the higher possessing strata. Exploiters cannot be drawn to the side of socialism. Their resistance had to be broken, no matter at what cost. The years of civil war marked the greatest exercise of the power of the dictatorship by the proletariat.
With regard to the peasantry as a whole the task was and is an entirely different one. The peasantry must be drawn to the side of the socialist regime. We must prove to the peasant in practice that the government industry is capable of supplying him with goods on much more advantageous conditions than under capitalism and that collective farming is more advantageous than individual farming. Until this economic and cultural task is solved and we are very far from it, especially as it is solvable only on an international scale – class frictions are inevitable and consequently – also state coercion But if in the struggle against landlords and capitalists revolutionary violence served as the basic method, in relation to the kulaks the problem was a different one; while crushing unmercifully the outright counter-revolutionary resistance of the kulaks, the state was ready to compromise with them on the economic field. It did rot “dekulakize” the kulak but merely limited his exploiting tendencies. With regard to the peasantry as a whole revolutionary violence should have played only an auxiliary and what is more an ever diminishing role. The practical success of industrialization and collectivization should have expressed themselves in the moderation of the forms and methods of state coercion, in the growing democratization of the Soviet regime.
On January 30, 1933, Pravda wrote: “the second five-year plan will liquidate the last remains of capitalist elements in our economic life.” It is clearly evident that from the standpoint of this official perspective the state should have withered away completely during the second five-year plan, since where the “last remnants” (!) of class inequality are liquidated, there is no room for the state.
In reality however we witness processes of a diametrically opposite character. The Stalinists do not dare to assert that the dictatorship of the proletariat has assumed more democratic forms in recent years, but on the contrary, try tirelessly to prove the inevitability of a further sharpening of state coercion. Reality itself, however, is more important than all the perspectives and prognoses.
If we should estimate Soviet reality through the lens of the political regime – such an estimate, although insufficient, is absolutely justifiable and extremely important – we should get not only a gloomy picture but an outright ominous one. The Soviets have lost the last remnants of independent significance and ceased being Soviets. The party does not exist. Under the cover of the struggle with the Right deviation, the trade-unions are completely crushed. The problem of the degeneration and stifling of the party and the Soviets has been discussed many times. Here we find it necessary to take up in a few lines the fate of the trade-union organizations during the period of the Soviet dictatorship.
The relative independence of the trade-unions is a necessary and important corrective in the system of the Soviet state which finds itself under the pressure of the peasantry and bureaucracy. Until the classes are liquidated, the workers must defend themselves, even in a workers’ state, through their trade-union organizations. In other words: the trade unions remain trade unions while the state remains a state, that is, an instrument of coercion. The “statification” of the trade unions can only go parallel with the “destatization” of the state itself. This means: to the extent that the liquidation of classes deprives the state of its functions of coercion, dissolving it in society, the trade unions lose their special class tasks and dissolve themselves in the “withering away” state.
This dialectic of the dictatorship, imprinted in the program of the Bolshevik party, is recognized in words also by the Stalinists. But the actual relations between the trade-unions and the state develop in a diametrically opposite direction. The state not only does not wither away (despite the heralded liquidation of classes), not only does not moderate its methods (despite the economic successes), but on the contrary becomes ever more openly the instrument of bureaucratic coercion. At the same time, the trade unions transformed into offices of functionaries, have completely lost the possibility of fulfilling the role of buffers between the state apparatus and the proletarian masses. Worse than that: the apparatus of the trade-unions themselves has become the weapon of an ever-growing pressure on the workers.
The preliminary conclusion from the above is that the evolution of the Soviets, the party and trade unions does not follow an ascending but a descending curve. If we were to accept on faith the official estimate of industrialization and collectivizaton, we would have to admit that the political superstructure of the proletarian regime is developing in a diametrically opposite direction to the development of its economic basis. Does it mean that the laws of Marxism are false? No, but the official estimate of the social foundations of the dictatorship is false and false to the core,
The problem can be formulated more concretely in this fashion: why was it possible during the years of 1917–1921, when the old possessing classes still fought with weapons in hand, when they were actively supported by the interventionists of the whole world, when the armed kulaks sabotaged the army and the provisioning of the country – why was it possible then to discuss openly in the party the sharp questions of the Brest-Litovsk peace, the methods of the organization of the Red Army, the composition of the Central Committee, the trade-unions, the transition to the NEP, national policy and the policy of the Comintern? Why is it impossible now, after the ceasing of intervention, after the rout of the exploiting classes, after the successes of industrialization, after the collectivization of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry – to allow discussion of the tempos of industrialization and collectivization, of the co-relation between heavy and light industry, or of the policy of a united front in Germany? Why would any member of the party who demanded the calling of the next congress of the party in accordance with its constitution, be immediately expelled and subjected to persecutions? Why would any Communist who openly expressed doubt as to the infallibility of Stalin be immediately arrested? Where does such a terrible, monstrous, unbearable exercise of the political regime come from?
Reference to outside danger from capitalist governments does not in itself explain everything. We do not wish of course to underrate the significance of capitalist encirclement for the inner regime of the Soviet Republic: the very necessity of keeping up a powerful army is a great source of bureaucratism. However, hostile encirclement is not a new factor, it accompanies the Soviet Republic from the first days of its existence. Under healthy conditions within the country, the pressure of imperialism would have only strengthened the solidarity of the masses, especially the welding together of the proletarian vanguard. The penetration of foreign agents, such as sabotaging engineers, etc., in no case justifies or explains the general intensification of the methods of coercion. A social committee of common interests should be able to eject the hostile elements with greater ease, as a healthy body ejects poisons.
An attempt might be made to show that the external pressure has grown and the co-relation of forces on the world scale has changed to the advantage of imperialism. Leaving aside the question of policy of the Comintern as one of the causes for the weakening of the world proletariat, the incontrovertible fact remains that the intensification of pressure from outside can lead to the bureaucratization of the Soviet system only to the extent that it is coupled with the growth of inner contradictions. Under conditions in which the workers must be squeezed between the vise of the passport system and the peasantry between the vise of political departments, the pressure from without must inevitably weaken the inner ties ever more. And vice-versa, the growth of contradictions between town and country must incontrovertibly sharpen the danger from the outside capitalist governments. The combination of these two factors pushes the bureaucracy along the road of ever greater concessions to the external presure and ever greater repressions against the working masses of their own country.
L. Trotsky
Last updated on: 3 September 2015