The Method of Mandel

The document of the IS majority faction “Revolution and Counter-revolution in the USSR” represents a fundamental departure from the method of Marxism. Under the guise of a “balanced” analysis, it attempts to point in all directions at the same time, confusing and blurring the process, so that it is difficult, if not impossible, to say where exactly the authors stand. This is not an accident. For some time now, the representatives of the IS majority faction have abandoned the scientific Marxist perspectives in favour of the “method” of eclecticism, empiricism and impressionism.

Hiding behind the alleged “complexities” of the present world situation (what situation is not complex?), and so-called “conditional perspectives” (what perspective is not conditional?), they put forward a number of different scenarios in every situation, without clearly stating which perspective they defend.

In this way, of course, they are never “wrong”, because they never actually put forward a real perspective. This was the method of Mandel in the past, which we used to ridicule, before it became, regrettably, the fashion in our own ranks.

Thus, on Afghanistan, one supporter of IS majority tendency put forward half a dozen different “perspectives” in one article, while privately assuring everyone who could listen that Najubullah would be overthrown very quickly by the Mujahidin. Similarly at the time of the Gulf War, they publicly maintained that the likelihood of war was “50:50”, while privately ridiculing the idea that war would take place at all. The problem with this method, apart from its inherent dishonesty, is that it is impossible to have a serious discussion of differences. It is like boxing with shadows which flit endlessly from one position to another. A worse feature of something which was entirely alien to our tendency, is the systematic distortion of the positions of your opponent. Not for nothing did Marx and Lenin insist on quoting at length from the writings of their opponents, so as to avoid any possible distortions or inaccuracy.

Supporting the Coup?

At the outset of this discussion on the August events in the USSR, the IS majority faction did not hesitate to repeat the lie that AW and EG had “supported the coup” despite the fact that neither of us had ever hinted at such a position, and when asked a direct question on this issue in the IS, answered clearly and unambiguously in the negative.

The accusation of supporting the coup was too scandalous to be taken seriously. The IS majority faction therefore dropped it in favour of a more “balanced” slander that EG and AW’s position amounted to a position of “doing nothing” in the face of the coup. This is how these comrades try to present the position of class independence, which from the outset was put forward by the Opposition.

Why did they find it necessary to launch such a campaign against the Opposition? The answer is quite simple. The coup took the comrades by surprise. They anticipated nothing, understood nothing, and therefore were prepared for nothing.

A fake perspective sooner or later is reflected in mistakes in action. The perspective of the IS majority and its supporters in the USSR was that the coup was off the agenda. Indeed, in the period immediately prior to the coup, they tried to show that EG was “incapable of understanding the contemporary situation in the Soviet Union”, citing as the prime example of this the fact that he had predicted that there would be a coup!

In a transparent attempt to cover their tracks, the majority document cites a couple of quotes in the British paper, one dated 17th January 1991, the other as far back as July 1989 to show they also predicted a coup. Throughout this period there was repeated speculation both in the Soviet and Western media about the dangers of a coup. From a Marxist point of view this was obvious, and no special prescience was necessary to predict it.

We were, therefore, quite surprised when one of the majority supporters who is working in the USSR bluntly accused EG of committing an unpardonable error by predicting a coup. This statement was not repudiated or corrected by any of the IS majority who were present. On the contrary, it was repeated in a chorus after the IEC meeting by supporters of the majority: “You see how out of touch EG is – he predicts there will be a coup in the Soviet Union!” The supporters of the majority had a good laugh over this – right up to the events of the 18th-21st August, which took them completely by surprise.

The quotes from the British paper are a smokescreen. Why quote from January 1991 and July 1989? Why not quote from the article which appeared in the paper on 16th August just three days before the coup, signed “by a Moscow correspondent”? This article takes up an entire page, and yet does not even hint at the danger of a coup. That would not be so bad, were it not for the fact that, throughout the summer, the whole of Moscow was buzzing with reports of fresh activities of the hardliners which is not reflected in this.

The majority had made up their mind that EG’s prediction of a coup was a mistake, because it did not immediately materialise. This is typical of the empirical approach they adopt to all questions. Trotsky defied Marxism theory as the “superiority of foresight over astonishment”. A tendency which bases itself on empiricism is forever doomed to lurch from one “surprise” to another. The problem is that the organisation as a whole pays a very heavy price for such enterprises.

Instead of honestly admitting their mistake, the supporters of the IS majority immediately launched on an aggressive campaign, alleging without the slightest attempt of proof, that EG and AW “supported the coup”. As if predicting something meant supporting it!

But worse was to come. Having been taken completely off guard by events, the comrades pushed themselves into a position which meant advocating a de facto bloc with Yeltsin, and the mixing up of revolution with counter-revolution. It is difficult to imagine a more serious mistake for a revolutionary to commit than that.

Of course it was always possible that these initial articles which appeared in the British paper, clearly written in haste, contained carelessly written formulation. But the most cursory glance at this material, especially the first (unsigned) article, reflecting the EB position, clearly gives the impression of uncritical support for the movement around Yeltsin. No attempt to explain the class character or reactionary aims of the Yeltsinites. Just a mass of impressionistic statements, idealising the “heroic defenders of the Russian parliament.”

People’s Power?

The first thing that strikes you about these articles (22/8/91) is their complete lack of class content. In the initial broadsheet the word “people” is repeated thirteen times. Thus we have “people power”, the “Soviet people”, the “Russian people” and so on and so forth.

This is not the language of Marxism. The Stalinists and reformists have always abused words like “people” and “masses” to cover up the class nature of the movement and conceal their class collaborationist policies. This was always rejected by Lenin and Trotsky who insisted in bringing out sharply the class nature of each and every movement, because they always based themselves on the independent movement of the working class.

Strangely enough, in these first reports, apart from odd mentions of workers building barricades and “two large factories in Leningrad on strike” (20/8), there is no attempt to show any massive presence of workers on the pro-Yeltsin demonstrations.

This is no accident, because the big majority of workers took no part in them. The report from Moscow dated 21/8 admitted that “Before the scale of the coup had sunk in, many, particularly workers, had an ambivalent attitude towards it. More opposed it, but few felt inclined to support Gorbachev or Yeltsin. One worker commented that he could see no significant difference between Yeltsin’s economic programme and the junta’s. Another called it ‘a big game being played by the ruling elite'”.

There is no doubt this mood was widespread, especially among the workers, as the author is obliged to admit, while adding that it “began to change as the protest grew in size and as the consequences began to sink in.”

Nevertheless, despite this assertion, the fact remains that, when the report was written, the participation of workers in both demonstrations and strikes against the coup was clearly minimal. This is shown by the complete lack of any facts and figures (except for “two large factories” in Leningrad) in the eyewitness reports themselves. It was left to the editors to add the assertion that “Across the Soviet Union, demonstrations took to the streets after Yeltsin’s appeal for a general strike, workers stopped work from Kuzbass in the south to Vakuta in the north. Workers in Leningrad factories formed armed defence squads” (22/8/91).

“From the Kuzbass in the south to Vakuta in the north” constitutes an extremely large geographical area. The implication is that, if not all then a very large part of the 150 million of workers of the Soviet Union responded to “Yeltsin’s appeal for a general strike”.

That is what the article says, but what are the facts?

The only significant section of the workers who responded to Yeltsin’s call for a general strike were a part of the miners in the area mentioned and a few factories in Leningrad and the Urals.

This is what Reuter’s correspondent had to say about the response to Yeltsin: “But Yeltsin’s appeal for strikes was meeting with a patchy response. In the Soviet Union’s biggest coalfield, the Kuzbass, whose miners had previously shown themselves willing to use their industrial clout as a political weapon against the Kremlin, only about half the workers downed tools. In the Vakuta coalfield of Siberia, only five mines were to respond positively to Yeltsin.” (The Guardian 22/8/91)

So only half the coalminers went on strike. Also the oil workers, a decisive section to whom Yeltsin specifically directed his appeal, debated the call and decided to take no action.

Try as they will (and they have put a lot of time and effort in over a period of months) the supporters of the IS majority faction (including the “eyewitnesses”) have been unable to come up with any facts or figures which would demonstrate the existence of a serious response to Yeltsin’s call for a general strike. That is not surprising, for the simple reason that the call was a total flop.

Despite claims of the editors, “from Kuzbass in the south to Vakuta in the north”, there were virtually no strikes. No strikes in the Ukraine, the most important centre of industry, where the problems of workers are exacerbated by the national problems. No strikes in Byelorussia, where a big movement had earlier taken place. Half the miners refused to come out, as did all the oil workers and railwaymen. Little or no response in Moscow. Nothing in the Baltice, the Caucasus or Central Asia.

That leaves us with Leningrad, which has been seized upon by the IS majority, for the simple reason that they have been unable to come up with anything else. And what of Leningrad? The report dated 20/8 states that: “Today only two large factories in Lengrad went on strike, the Kirovsky (which used to be the famous Putilorsky) and an engineering factory. But many left work to go and demonstrate in the Winter Palace and returned.” (22/8/91)

The vagueness of the last sentence is typical of many such assertions. “Many” demonstrated, it says – how many, from which factories? What ideas were they defending? The silence of the eyewitness is most eloquent. Clearly, one cannot say what one does not know! (We are confident that if the facts were known, they would have been provided down to the last detail).

The next issue of the paper adds nothing substantially to the first. Again the Kirovsky plant is mentioned, adding that it represents “a workforce 40,000 strong” (the clear implication is that all 40,000 went on strike). The eyewitness from Leningrad stated that dockers had “taken action” on the first day without saying what that consisted of, and that “many workers had simply left work for a couple of hours”. Again, one searches in vain for any precise account of the number of factories in Leningrad which actually answered the call for a general strike.

The report from Leningrad on 13/9/91 sheds little light on this question, but does someqhat clarify the assertions made earlier that the Leningrad dockers had “taken action”. We quote the words of the president of an independent dockers’ union in Leningrad, reproduced in the article: “At the port on the first day we had a meeting to discuss taking action. But the manager asked us not to strike. Only a few of us went to the big meeting (demo in the Winter Palace). But if the putschists had not given up the ghost, we would not have given up the ghost, we would have taken action.” (13.9/91)

So here we have it. On 30/8/91, it is confidently stated that the Leningrad dockers “took action on the first day” (implying that they went on strike.) This was on the central pages. By the 13/9/91. in a brief report tucked away at the bottom of page 13, it appears that the dockers did not take action, but only discussed taking action, and in the end did not do anything, on the advice of Sobchak, the pro-capitalist mayor of Leningrad. This is the way the “eyewitness” reports “inform” the readers of the paper!

Finally on 18/10/91, a month and a half after the coup, the paper published a centre page spread entitled “How we beat the coup”, quoting an eyewitness account from Leningrad, including a very interesting item signed by leaders of the unofficial workers’ committee of the Kirov factory, frequently cited by the comrades in earlier articles. He describes the real response of the workers to the call to participate in a demonstration to the Winter Palace, led by Sobchak, the pro-capitalist mayor: “There were workers who stayed in some because departments like the forge cannot be closed down easily, others because they didn’t feel strongly either way and still others because they thought a coup wouldn’t be a bad thing. Probably a third of the workforce of 30,000 went out on the processions.”

These lines are highly significant. They clearly show that the prevailing mood in the working class was one of enormous confusion, with a minority supporting the coup, another minority opposed, and another section, by far the biggest, didn’t feel strongly either way – for the very good reasons that they saw no fundamental difference between the hardliners and the pro-capitalist counter-revolutionaries around Yeltsin.

Confusion and Indifference

After five years of “perestroika” (or “katastroika” as the Soviet workers have re-named it), the mass of the workers have drawn a balance sheet and come up with a colossal zero. Empty shops, queues and shortages, spiralling inflation, chaos and the threat of hunger have caused a collapse of support for Gorbachev and a growing rejection of the whole pack of “reformist” politicians. The existence of a quite widespread mood of support or at least acceptance of the coup is not seriously in doubt.

In the same centre pages of 18/10/91, we read: “While I was travelling on the bus two elderly people loudly discussed the timeliness of the state of emergency and the necessity if introducing it and of removing Gorbachev. The author tried to argue with them, but then added ‘They agreed with each other that Gorbachev and Yeltsin and all the others should have been tried a long time ago. You couldn’t argue with that!”

The report from Moscow published on 30/8/91 had stated that, “Some workers, particularly in Moscow, had felt at the very beginning that it was about time that something was done to stop the slide into chaos, and even call a halt to Boris Yeltsin’s apparently unstoppable progress towards becoming a new dictator. A group of older workers argued with students protesting against tanks in Menage Square, saying they had enough of democracy. Others accused Gorbachev of being a CIA agent.”

This mood was also widely commented on by Western journalists. Thus, when the president of the Ukrainian parliament, Leonid Kravchuk took an ambiguous stand in relation to the coup, the Reuter’s correspondent noted that “Mr Kravchuk was reflecting opinion on the streets of Kiev, where Ukrainian journalists reported that many people expressed support for the coup”. (The Guardian 20/8/91)

John Rettie reported from Moscow that “Most people were too apathetic, cynical or just plain frightened of the consequences to obey Mr Yeltsin’s strike call” (Ibid 22/8/91). The size of the demonstrations were not as great as they were made out to be by the majority. “Moscow,” wrote Neal Ascherson “is a city of ten million people, and the mass around Boris Yeltsin’s ‘White House’ could not have numbered more than 300,000 at its largest. A few streets away, people went indifferently about their business, scarcely aware that history was being made. The city as a whole did not strike or wear badges or fly defiant flags, but looked the other way.” (Independent 25/8/91)

The impression assiduously created by the supporters of the ‘majority’ faction is that the crowds that moved the barricades were overwhelmingly proletarian in composition. This simply asserted, without bothering to produce the necessary evidence. We are supposed to believe it, that is all. And if anyone objects, there is the authority of “eyewitnesses” to slap them down.

But what is the evidence? At one point some tanks crashed into the barricades, and three people were killed. The Sunday Times (25/8/91) gives us the details. “It was indicative of the make-up of the Yeltsin camp that they were, respectively, an economist, an architect and a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan. These were the people who had first experienced the benefits of perestroika, who looked beyond the price of cheaper bread and higher wages and were not about to go back and be treated as sheep.”

The tanks did not, of course, select their targets. Anyone could have been killed, but is it just coincidence that the victims were precisely professional people, or “middle class” intellectuals, in Western terminology. The Sunday Times correspondent confidently affirms that it was not, as these people were absolutely typical of the “make-up of Yeltsin’s coup”. And this bourgeois journalist does not confine himself to empty platitudes about “democracy” but correctly states that this social stratum had experienced the benefits of perestroika. And what benefits are we talking about? Nothing airy fairy, but material gains for a social group, numbering millions of qualified people, students, engineers, speculators and black marketers. They sense the movement towards the “market economy” and the possibility of gaining power, wealth and positions.

Their implacable hostility towards the Stalinist bureaucracy has nothing to do with “democracy”, far less a defence of the workers’ interests. It derives from the fact that the bureaucracy currently occupies the position in society which they themselves are thinking to take over. This is the opposite of the standpoint of the workers for whom the struggle against the bureaucracy, for democratic rights is linked with the question of “bread” and a living wage. The great majority of Soviet workers distrust the intellectual “reformers” – and are regarded by the latter as “sheep”.

From their own class point of view, the strategists of capital draw similar conclusions to the Marxists. The Us stockbroker company (not intended for general distribution) carried an article from its own “eyewitness” who claimed that, “Moscow is a power vacuum. It isn’t that the centre doesn’t hold. It just isn’t there. That’s one side of it. The other is that there is no popular revolution. A rotten power clique encountered encountered very little democratic resistance, and yet the coup, its edifice and the apparatus of power collapsed” (17/9/91) And further on, “Indeed, popular resistance to the coup was minimal for most of the first few days… I was struck in Moscow by the lack of popular revolt”.

A Russian professor writing for the same journal spoke of a conversation on a Moscow bus on the 19/8: “One middle aged man only said loudly that he was glad of the restoration of order, no one either supported or objected. Gloom and fear, and maybe equanimity and resignation hung over the people.”

Such examples may be multiplied at will, yet the supporters of the IS majority faction persist in maintaining that the coup had ‘no social base’ and was therefore doomed to failure.

Social Base for the Coup

Having at first argued that a coup was impossible in the USSR, the IS majority naturally felt obliged to explain away their mistake by claiming that the coup was “bound to fail anyway”. As an additional insurance policy, in their document they added that “even if the coup had succeeded it would have collapsed within a few weeks and months”, there would have been “another Romania”, and so on and so forth.

Frankly, these comrades are the only people in the world who believe this (assuming they really believe it themselves). Bush did not think that the coup stood no chance of success, nor did Major, Kohl and Mitterand, who hastened to offer to do business with the new men in the Kremlin. Yeltsin certainly did not think so, nor did the majority of the people in the Soviet Union, including those who demonstrated before the Russian parliament.

Let us refer once more to our stockbroker’s report (9/9/91) which wrote that it “seems that most of the public would have silently accepted the rule of the junta if the coup had been successful… Demagogic as it was, its promise of a quick economic amelioration, given that desperation and cynicism over the state of the economy are so widespread, shows that any rulers who look capable of achieving any progress towards capitalism could not expect to finds popular support. I am not all sure that the broad masses of the population understand and accept the idea that there is no alternative to marketisation and shock therapy.” (17/9/91)

It is simply not true that the coup had “no social base” which would have permitted it to succeed. It had a base in those layers of the population who are sick of the chaos of “katastroika” and yearn to go back to the “good old days”.

More importantly, it had a base in a far wider layer who, without supporting the coup, were repelled by the pro-capitalist counter-revolutionary policies of Yeltsin and therefore remained passive. The passivity of the great majority of the workers class would have been sufficient to ensure the success of the coup, if it had been carried out with sufficient decision.

This was admitted in an article by Francis Fukuyame in the Independent (25/8/91): “Despite divided loyalties in the army and police, the coup plotters could have succeeded in the short term had they been more competent and determined, as was the Deng regime in Tiananmen Square. They had sufficient numbers of loyal KGB and interior ministry troops to arrest or kill Yeltsin, shut down the press and enforce a curfew. But the plotters were afflicted with a lack of belief in themselves and their cause.”

The author of these lines, incidentally is not an ordinary bourgeois journalist, but one of the strategists of capital, a consultant of the Rand Corporation in Washington and formerly a member of the U.S. State Department. This is the sober voice of a serious representative of the bourgeoisie, who has arrived, from the standpoint of his class, at the same conclusions as a Marxist. Far better to heed the voice of a serious bourgeois analyst than to listen to the superficial chatter in the popular press, designed to fool the workers and gloss over and confuse the real process, with empty calls about “peoples power” and the links. Unfortunately much of the material in our own paper was on a similar level to this.

Those who argue that the coup failed because it had no “social base” entirely miss the point. The Bolsheviks had a colossal social base in October 1917. Yet if Zinoviev and Stalin had led the party at that time instead of Lenin and Trotsky, the revolution would have been defeated and instead of a victorious workers state, there would have been fascism in Russia. The law of revolution and counter-revolution are basically the same. You can have the most favourable objective conditions, the widest social base, but if you do not act with absolute determination and audacity, you will go down to defeat. The coup in Moscow was not defeated by the “lack of a social base”, but by the subjective factor, the pathetic failure of the coup leaders to deal with the opposition in a ruthless and implacable manner. That was what led to their undoing, and not the lack of a “social base”, still less the opposition of an alleged mass movement of revolutionary workers, which only exists in the imagination of the IS majority faction.

A Bungled Coup

The evidence that the coup was bungled from the beginning to end is ample and does not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to contrast their conduct with Jarolzelski in 1981, who arrested all the leaders of the opposition in the middle of the night before launching his coup. Former dissident, Roy Medvedev makes this very comparison: “Jarolzelski was far more efficient than they were when he cracked down on Poland. He cut off communications and arrested 200 people. Actually, he didn’t even arrest them, he just put them in isolation. Here, though, they didn’t even arrest Yeltsin.

In particular the failure to arrest Yeltsin left a focal point for the opposition and exposed the plot in the eyes of key sections of the army, police and KGB chiefs as a botched operation. From an initial position of waiting in the sidelines, these sections finally decided to distance themselves from the coup leaders who found themselves suspended in mid air. The coup collapsed because it was a botched and premature attempt, which did not succeed in attracting the support of decisive sections within the state apparatus itself. It was not overthrown in struggle. It simply collapsed from its own internal contradictions and weakness.

This was the opinion of all serious strategists of capital, while the popular press in the West (and our paper) raved about “peoples power”. Look also at the analysis of Western intelligence. “Preliminary assessments made by intelligence analysts in Britain and America suggested the coup was hastily organised by a small group of people who fatally misjudged the mood of the organisations they controlled. There is no evidence of any pre-coup rehearsals by any security forces.” (Sunday Times 25/8/91)

And further: “In the early part of last week there was no sign of any significant mobilisation. ‘This was not a revolution that failed because of people power’ said one Western intelligence source, ‘There were fewer people on the streets than the plotters might have expected. It failed because they did not put enough troops on the ground or use them effectively.'” (Ibid)

The complete lack of any preparation was the main reason why Western intelligence, which had previously warned of the risk of a coup, was taken by surprise. Unfortunately for the plotters who represented only one wing of the bureaucracy, it was not only Western intelligence which was caught off guard, but also decisive sections of the top bureaucrats in the army and KGB, who were not informed of the coup till after it had started. This does explains why they at first adopted a wait and see attitude, and then when they realised that the attempt was premature and ill prepared, finally came out against it. It was this fact, and not any non-existent worker’s revolutionary movement (real or ‘potential’) which caused the rapid collapse of the coup.

The fact that the coup attempt was the result of a panic reaction of top bureaucrats, provoked by the Union Treaty, explains the complete lack of serious and decisive action, which is the prior condition for the success of a coup d’etat, as much as an insurrection. Not only did they fail to arrest Yeltsin, they did not even take action against a group of Gorbachev supporters operating within the Kremlin itself! The leader of this group, one Valentin Karasev, later describes how they began to react, once they realised that the coup leaders were failing to act: “By the 20th it was clear to all that nothing had happened. There were no arrests nothing.” (Wall Street Journal 29/8/91)

And after making the obligatory reference to the role of the “people” in the defeat of the coup, the Wall Street Journal makes the following observation: “But details now emerging indicate that the collapse of the putsch actually owes much to the putschists themselves, some of whom got cold feet early on. One, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, started backsliding within hours of the Monday morning announcement of the takeover. A second, Defence Minister Yazov, had early doubts which he later acted upon. Mr Yanayev himself admitted the seizure of power was illegal within hours of deposing Mr Gorbachev.”

It should be noted that these hesitations and splits within the junta are reported from the very beginning, that is before Yeltsin’s show of opposition outside the Russian parliament. The ditherings and vacillations of the coup leaders rapidly communicated themselves to the army and KGB generals, who quickly decided that the coup was an adventure and moved to distance themselves from it. General Moiseyev, for example, initially signed the order instructing the troops to occupy the centre of Moscow, but subsequently chaired the meetings of army generals which decided to withdraw support from the coup, thus ensuring its collapse. That is precisely what Karasev meant when he said “This coup destroyed itself”. (WSJ 29/8/91)

Threat of Mass Action

Unable to point to any serious mass movement of the workers against the coup, the IS majority faction resorts to subterfuge. Admitting shamefacedly that there was no evidence of a real movement of the working class, they try to seek refuge in excuses in their document. “The coup collapsed so quickly there was no need for a general strike, but if it had succeeded, there would have been a general strike and an armed uprising, another Romania”.

In this way the argument is stealthily shifted from the coup being defeated by a “mass movement of workers” (‘the biggest since 1917’ no less!) to the coup being defeated by the mere threat of a mass movement of the workers. The tanks and guns of the Red Army were defeated not by a real movement, but by a potential movement.

In 1981, Jarozelski was faced, not by a potential movement, but by a mighty force of ten million organised workers in Solidarity. After the coup, despite the arrest of all the leaders, the cutting of telecommunications and all the other measures, there were strikes, demonstrations, even armed clashed with people killed and wounded. That did not prevent the dictatorship from installing itself in power and lasting for seven years.

Try as they may, the majority comrades cannot find anything in the USSR remotely to resemble the scale and power of the movement in Poland. Yet they blithely assure us that, if the coup had succeeded, it would “inevitably” have been swept away.

But the whole of history speaks against them. If the coup had managed to consolidate its hold on power for a few days and this would have meant a ruthless policy of crushing the opposition, then it could undoubtedly have lasted for some time.

The example of Poland shows that isolated and unorganised outbreaks of strikes and disturbances would not have been able to prevent the coup from consolidating itself. To think anything else is to blind oneself to reality, something the comrades of the majority faction have shown themselves to be adept at, and not only in relation to the Soviet Union.

The comparison with Romania is entirely false. There it was a case of a movement of the working class, pursuing the classical method of the proletariat. It was a movement similar to Hungary in 1956. There was no question of going back to capitalism. The movements of the Romanian workers, up to and including the recent miners march on Bucharest were clearly directed against privatisation.

Unfortunately the leadership of the Soviet miners, even before the coup, had fallen into the hands of pro-capitalist restorationists. Yeltsin and Sobchak were fighting against the coup in order to move even more rapidly in the direction of capitalism. This “little detail” makes all the difference when we analysis the content of the movement in the USSR.

No Independent Action

The authors of the document “Revolution and Counter Revolution in the USSR” correctly state that “dictatorship inevitably throws back the consciousness of the working class” (para 6). Decades of Stalinist rule, which has led to a complete impasse, have had a much more negative effect on the consciousness of all layers of Soviet society than we originally thought possible. Both the document and the articles make this point, but the conclusions the IS majority draw from it are entirely confused and contradictory. Not a single idea is thought out to the end. Instead, they try to talk out an insurance policy by pointing in all directions simultaneously.

They argue that the defeat of the coup means that “the confidence of the working class will have to be enormously raised” (our paper 2/8/91) “Their mood is not of fear but confidence, euphoria even.” (ibid) “Those who participated in the events or simply watched them on TV as they unfolded will have all been infected, not with radiation sickness but with revolution, etc feeling of confidence.” (our paper 30/8/91(. “Already those who argue for the establishment of a genuine workers party are meeting with success.” (ibid).

If the confidence of the Soviet workers has experienced such a dramatic raise, then the question arises, how does this express itself in practice?

The document ties itself in knots trying to resolve the evident contradiction between an allegedly revolutionary movement of the working class which has produced counter-revolutionary results. “While among big sections Yeltsin is regarded as a hero, he is also distrusted and feared by a big layer of the workers. For them relief at the defeat of the coup has given way to enormous foreboding about the consequences of the pro-market policies of Yeltsin and Gorbachev” (para 10).

The motto of the authors of this document is that of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland: “Words mean exactly what I want them to, nothing more, nothing less.” What does this statement in the document mean?? What big sections “support Yeltsin”? How Many? What layers of society? And how does it come about that the “big layers” of the workers, who are supposed to be full of confidence in their own strength, are suffering from “enormous foreboding” about the man they just rescued from the coup, albeit by a “potential general strike”?

If the workers’ confidence has been enormously strengthened, and if they are now filled with foreboding about Yeltsin, then why has there been no movement of the workers to resist the monstrous counter-revolutionary decrees of Yeltsin? How does this new confidence and strength manifest itself in practice? On this and many other issues, the IS majority faction and its “eyewitnesses” maintain an embarrassed silence. And this is not at all accidental.

Unconsciously, the authors of these articles reveal just how far the consciousness of the Soviet workers has been thrown back when they speak of the need for “the establishment of a genuine workers party”. That single phrase indicates a steep historical decline in consciousness. It indicates that in many respect the movement has been pushed back to the level of 1883. It is true there have been big strike movements, which represents a promising start. But no more than that. The fact that the miners, who acted as the spearhead of the strike movement, have fallen under the domination of pro-restorationist Yeltsin supporters is an indication of this.

The decisive fact about the coup was precisely that the working class, in its overwhelming majority, did not react. The IS majority faction, in effect, have given up attempting to prove what cannot be proved, and take refuge behind a “potential general strike”, which they maintain would have taken place if the coup had succeeded!

They entirely miss the central point which is the complete absence of any independent movement of the soviet workers. That applies not only to the big majority who did not take part in any action, either strikes or demonstrations. It applies still more to the small minority of workers who did participate in the movement directed against the coup.

In reality, the IS majority are condemned out of their own mouths. Thus, the representative of Kirov plant, which they have chosen as their prime example, explains that only one-third of the workforce (30,000 not 40,000 by the way) went to demonstrate outside the Winter Palace. Moreover, they went back to work after the demonstrations (hardly an indication of an unstoppable movement towards a general strike)

However, the most important point about this is the fact that they had previously discussed their plans with Sobchak, the pro-capitalist mayor. Likewise, the dockers, whom the paper wrongly claims to have “taken action on the first day”, decided not to take action on the basis of discussion with Sobchak.

What does this indicate? That the minority of workers who participated on these demonstrations were not acting as an independent class force, but were entirely subordinated to the Yeltsins and Sobchaks. That is not to say that they were consciously supporting the programme of restoration (although some probably did), but it remains a fact that there was no independent movement of the class. And that is decisive if we wish to analyse the precise nature of this movement.

The majority faction tries to get around this by playing with words. They say that there were elements of the political revolution. But to say this is to say precisely nothing. Every counter-revolution contains elements of revolution, just as every revolution contains elements of counter0revolution. That is to dodge the issue. The question which must be answered is which element predominates?

The Stance of the Opposition

In the most unscrupulous fashion imaginable, the IS majority faction at first attempted to smear the Opposition by claiming that we had “supported the coup”. This lie was too blatant to be maintained and they were quickly forced to drop it, while nevertheless insinuating we advocated a “neutral” position and that support for the coup was “implicit” in our analysis of the situation. But what are the facts?

At the December European meeting, several months before the coup, AW pointed out that under certain circumstances it would be correct to give critical support to the Stalinists in Eastern Europe or the USSR in the struggle against capitalist counter-revolution.

What precisely were these conditions? When and if a wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy came out in defence of nationalised planned economy and leant upon the sections of the workers in a struggle against the pro-capitalist restorationist forces.

Such a position is ABC for the Trotskyist movement. It is not a question of supporting the Stalinist bureaucracy, which has led the nationalised planned economy into a complete impasse, but of opposing capitalist counter-revolution, and appealing to the workers to defend by all means possible, what remains of a nationalised planned economy.

The first duty of the Soviet Marxist is to expose the Yeltsins and Sobchaks, to sow distrust in the so-called “democrats” and “reformists” and to implacably oppose every step in the direction of capitalist restoration.

In the past, these ideas were taken for granted by our tendency. In Romania, for example, we maintained an absolutely principled position in support of the miners in University Square, who were not supported by the SWP and the other sects. This was despite the fact that the ex-Stalinist leaders of the NSF, and even the hated securitate, were involved in the miners movement and made use of it to consolidate their grip on power, which they subsequently used to try to move down the road of capitalism.

Our stand in relation to Romania was absolutely correct, and the IS majority faction has (at least for the present) made no attempt to deny this. Did we give “critical support” to the NSF? We gave support to the miners who were fighting against capitalist counter-revolution. Insofar as the NSF was on the same side of the barricades (for their own reasons), you might say we “critically supported” them against the open agents of bourgeois counter revolution. But in the words of comrade PT, it was very critical “support” – “almost all criticism, and very little support”. We supported the actions of the miners in smashing the counter revolution, but did not for a moment abandon our implacable criticism of the NSF leadership.

What relation exists between that concrete situation and the August events in the USSR? None whatsoever. The programme of the coup was not to defend the nationalised planned economy, but to move towards a “market economy” in a more gradual and cautious manner. That is why many workers, as the “eyewitnesses” reports reveal, said they could see no fundamental difference between the two rival gangs. Under these circumstances there was absolutely no question of giving “critical support” to the coup. The possibility was never even hinted at by EG and AW, which did not prevent the IS majority faction from putting this disgraceful lie into circulation.

What is, however, undeniable is that the reports carried in our paper, particularly the initial reports, attempted to prettify the movements around Yeltsin, presenting is as a revolutionary movement of the working class. The initial reports carried little or no criticism of Yeltsin. Only under the hammer blows of criticism of the Opposition did the paper subsequently try to rectify this mistake, emphasising an anti-capitalist slant, while at the same time persisting in its earlier position of a mass workers movement. Again under the pressure of our criticism, this was progressively watered down, first by claims that the Yeltsin movement contained “revolutionary elements” and later by the discovery of a “potential general strike” (and insurrection a la Romania) “if the coup had succeeded.”

The attempt to face all ways at once leads these comrades into all manner of amusing contortions as we have already seen. The glaring contradictions in this analysis centre on a key question: how does it come about that a “revolutionary” movement of the working class ending, moreover, in a major victory, immediately leads to an orgy of capitalist counter-revolution?

On this issue, the authors of the document try to make up in inventiveness what they lack in Marxist understanding. The movement in Russia, if you please, was “like Eastern Europe” only that the “processes were telescoped into a much shorter time span” (para 23)

This is an astounding proposition. To begin with, the “movement in Eastern Europe” did not take place in the same way in every country. Which countries are these comrades referring to: Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia? One seeks in vain for enlightenment. With a wave of the magic wand, all problems are solved with a vague reference to “Eastern Europe”. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye!

In Poland we had a movement of ten million workers in Solidarity, a general strike and the setting up of soviets. In Czechoslovakia, the movement was not on the same scale, but, there too, the working class played a key point in the movement at a certain point. In Eastern Germany, the workers and students originally came out onto the streets, not under the banner of unification, but singing the “Internationale”. In Romania, there was a classical uprising of the working class. In all these cases, the movement, which undoubtedly began with important elements of political revolution (above all in Romania) was subsequently de-railed because of the absence of the subjective factor.

But what of the Soviet Union? Where was there a similar involvement of 150 million strong Soviet working class? Evidently the processes were so “telescoped” that nothing remained of it, except, that is a “potential” general strike, “if the coup had succeeded.”

In saying this we do not for a moment doubt that there will be a movement of the workers of the USSR. Such a movement is absolutely inevitable, and is possible even in the next few months, especially on the basis of Yeltsin’s attempt to move quickly in the direction of capitalism. We are firmly convinced of this. There is not an atom of pessimism or lack of confidence in the Soviet working class in our analysis. But there is no point whatsoever in trying to invent a movement where no one exists, and a midwife who mistakes the first month of pregnancy for the ninth will produce only abortions. The consequence of such a method will unfortunately lead to more than one abortion in Britain and internationally, unless we decisively correct it.

The contradictions in this document are on practically every line. On the one hand, we are told of a revolutionary movement of the workers which will have enormously raised their self confidence. The next we are told that “At a certain stage, they (i.e the pro-capitalist leaders) will inevitably meet fierce resistance from the working class as they attempt to implement their programme of mass sackings, privatisation and price rises.” (para 23)

But wait a minute! If the revolutionary workers were responsible for defeating the coup (whether by actual action or by the threat of such action is immaterial, since the threat, if it means anything, means that the workers were ready to act), why don’t they act now to defend their interests? Why postpone the movement against privatisation to an ill-defined “certain stage”?

The fact that they have to relegate the real movement of the Soviet workers to the future is clear evidence that it does not exist now. And on that point, we entirely agree with them. There was hardly any movement of the workers against the coup. And, at least for the present, there is not much of a movement against privatisation either. In saying this, we are neither optimistic, nor pessimistic. We just say what is.

That is why the analogy with Kornilov’s coup in 1917 is entirely fake. We were dealing then with a mighty independent movement of the proletariat, organised around the Soviets. That is why it was possible, in Lenin’s phrase, to “lean on Kerensky as a gun rest” to destroy Kornilov.

The whole point about the coup is precisely that the working class did not act in an independent way. The big majority of the working class did not participate in any way, and those who did were acting, not as an independent class force, but under the banners of pro-capitalist restoration.

The shock troops of Yeltsin were the students, intellectuals, professional people, white-collar workers, petit bourgeois, spies, spectators and others linked to nascent bourgeois elements. There was also a certain number of workers. But the presence of these workers could not in any way alter the essential nature of the movement. On the contrary, these workers, irrespective of their intentions, were compelled to subordinate themselves to the interests of the Yeltsins, Sobchaks and Popovs – that is to say to bourgeois counter revolution. This, and only this, explains how the immediate result of the defeat of the coup was an orgy of counter revolution, which has nothing whatsoever progressive about it.

The anecdotes about individual groups of workers building barricades, of even forming defence squads, changes absolutely nothing. They could not, and did not, dictate the physiognomy of the movement as a whole, its basic class content, its programmes, aims and results. To imagine such a thing is to fall into impressionism of the most vulgar and superficial kind. And lo, behold! Despite all the barricades, defence squads and “potential” general strikes, we are then informed that “Yeltsin’s victory represents a bourgeois political counter revolution in the Soviet Union” (para 10).

The Bureaucracy and the State

We have already been duly warned that while “big sections” regard Yeltsin as a hero, there are other “big sections” which are enormously worried about him. “You pay your money and take your choice” as they say. But, anyway the defeat of the coup, despite “revolutionary elements” has led immediately to “an enormous strengthening of the pro-capitalist wing of the bureaucracy” (para 8). The new government is said to be “pro bourgeois”, but this “does not represent the final triumph of the capitalist counter revolution” (para 9). The government is a :bourgeois regime in the process of formation.”

In reality, the present government of the USSR is already a bourgeois government, which is attempting to move towards the liquidation of the remnants of a nationalised planned economy. Whether it succeeds or not will depend upon the struggle of living forces. The victory of capitalism in the USSR is by no means a foregone conclusion. But it is also entirely fake to argue, as these comrades do, that there are only two alternatives, capitalist counter revolution or a victorious political revolution of the working class. Thus, they argue in para 47 “However, there is a fundamental difference in the situation today as compared to when Trotsky was alive. Such is the complete degeneration of the bureaucracy, the collapse of their confidence in the old system of central planning, that capitalism is seen as the only way forward by all significant sections of the bureaucracy in today’s situation.”

What are the authors trying to say? That a new movement (including the coup) back to a Stalinist regime of bureaucratically run planned economy is ruled out? That is a clear implication of what they write and say. But as usual, they carefully insert all kinds of get-out clauses… just in case. Thus: “In the future, faced with a massive movement of the proletariat, the ruling strata could attempt to re-establish greater state control(?) and be compelled to take measures(?) against the capitalists’ interests.” (para 48).

But just in case anyone might think this is a bit too “unconditional”(!), safety clause is piled upon safety clause, “Given the extremely unstable nature of the new regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe it is difficult to determine in advance how far this process could go.” (para 48)

And this is called what nowadays passes for “perspectives” in our tendency. Not a single idea is though out to the end. Nothing concrete, nothing precise. It is like the meanderings of a man sinking into a gradual state of pleasant inebriation while philosophising about the problems of the world. This method of “one of sand and one of cement” has nothing in common with Marxism. We ask supporters of the IS majority faction a straight question: is a Stalinist counter-revolution in the USSR possible – yes or no? Let’s see if we get an answer.

The completely empirical approach of the document is shown up by little phrases like “in today’s situation” and “in the future they could…” These are meant as additional insurance policies … just in case.

As a matter of fact, even in “today’s situation”, the arguments of these comrades are entirely false. It is true that bureaucracy has suffered a complete degeneration after decades of Stalinist rule. They are the children and grandchildren of bureaucrats “born into the purple”. They have lost any connection with the ideas of Marxism, socialism and the working class, which even the Stalinists had at least to pay lip service to. That explains how they could go over in droves to the idea of capitalism and “market economy”, on the basis of impasse of bureaucratically controlled planned economy and the temporary boom in the West.

But it is entirely false and undialectical to imaging that this rules out the possibility of a swing back to a Stalinist planned economy, under certain conditions, even at the present time. What happens does not depend mainly on the subjective intentions of different wings of the bureaucracy, which are also not static, but changes according to all kinds of external factors.

It is not an accident that Gorbachev himself, while playing the role of de facto stooge of world capitalism, has swung constantly backwards and forwards, now advocating a “market economy”, and asking to join the World Bank, now talking about “socialism” and appealing to Lenin. What does this reflect? The arbitrary whims of a lunatic or the pressures of different wings of the bureaucracy, as they desperately try to find a way out of the blind alley? On more than one occasion, faced with chaos and social breakdown, sections of the bureaucracy, including Gorbachev, have toyed with the idea of going back to the good old days of Brezhnev, at least.

What would have happened, for example, if Yanayev and co had seized power? Is it a foregone conclusion that they would have carried out their stated aims of moving towards a “market economy” albeit at a more gradual pace? For the IS majority faction this is a simple question to answer: “In today’s situation”, “objectively” …yes. But that does not exhaust the question.

The degree of collapse of the Soviet economy has reached such a frightening degree, with the appearance of massive unemployment (the threat of 40 million by the end of the decade), hyperinflation and the threat of actual starvation, that drastic measures would have been required simply to get the economy moving again. Even the bourgeois experts are gloomy about the real prospects for capitalism, despite the defeat of the coup.

A Yanayev regime would have been faced with an economic boycott from the West. Not even the limit amount of food aid which has been given to stave off the threat of hunger this winter, would have been forthcoming. Faced with the risk of social disturbances, the regime would have been compelled to resort to drastic measures of re-centralisation. Draconic measures would have had to be applied against the speculators, black marketers and that layer of the bureaucracy which went too far in swindling, corruption and theft. These measures in themselves would have dealt a severe blow against the nascent capitalists. They would also have received a measure of popular support.

It is true that such measures would not have solved the fundamental problems of the system. Only the assumption of power by the working class could begin to solve the problems by instituting a regime of workers democracy. But the immediate bottlenecks caused by the dislocation of supply, the breakdown of central planning, the creation of artificial shortages through black marketeering, speculation and the holding back of products until prices rise, all these could have been removed, or at least ameliorated for a time.

The IS majority faction argue that had the coup succeeded, it could not have maintained itself for long. That is false. The regime could have maintained itself for a time on the basis of the combination of central planning and terror. The entire experience of coups indicates the hollowness of the arguments of the “majority”. Once a coup succeeds in holding power for a few days or weeks, it becomes extremely difficult to overthrow it. The initial mood of resistance among certain layers of the class becomes transformed into its opposite: passivity, apathy and a sense of indifference. We see this everywhere from Chile to Poland – despite the manifest preparedness of the workers to fight in the beginning.

It is entirely different where, as with the Kapp Putsch in Germany in 1920 or the Kornilov affair in Russia, the coup is defeated by a general strike or mass independent movement of the working class. Then the defeat of the coup lays the basis for a new period of working class struggle.

In reality, as the serious bourgeois understand perfectly well, the coup would have been able to maintain itself on the basis of the passive acceptance of wide layers of the population, the working class included.

If, as was entirely possible, the regime had been compelled to carry out a policy based on re-centralisation and a planned economy accompanied by terror, that also would have given a certain impetus to the productive forces for a period of time. Incidentally, that is precisely what happened in China after the Tienanmen massacre, which explains why, for a time, the Chinese regime has succeeded in maintaining itself.

Jarolzeski in Poland held out for seven years. There is no reason why such a regime in the USSR could not have lasted for five, seven or even ten years. This would have also depended upon the development of world capitalism, which also faces an uncertain future. A further boom would give renewed impetus to the pro-capitalist tendencies in Russia, China and Eastern Europe. A slump would have the opposite effect. In that case the possibility, not only of pro-Stalinist coups in Eastern Europe but also of the creation of new regimes of proletarian bonapartism in the Third World would once again be placed on the order of the day.

Again, the document hedges its bets on the question in the most laughable manner: “In the short term, these processes will tend to mitigate against the establishment of new proletarian Banapartist regimes. It would be a mistake to exclude their establishment in the medium or longer term, especially in the background of a major economic crisis. How stable such regimes may be is, of course, (of course!), another question.” (para 110).

What are we supposed to make of this? Will there be a new regime of proletarian bonapartism? Won’t there? Will they be stable? Won’t they? We are told that this is “another question.” What is the meaning of this sudden attack of coyness? Could it be that it is because the authors of the document have absolutely nothing concrete to say on this subject?

Thus, on Cuba, we are told that a) the cuts in Soviet subsidies will have a “devastating effect”, but that b) Cuba is “different to Eastern Europe” because of the “masses’ perception of the gains of the revolution”, but, on the other hand, c) “against the international background”, struggle against the regime (by whom? For what?) is a strong likelihood, but again, on the other hand d) “It is, however, not excluded that the Castro regime could attempt to make a stand and fight it out.” (paras 119-112) And that, believe it or not, is the perspective for Cuba of the IS majority faction. More correctly, it is four different perspectives, one of which will be triumphantly put forward after the event, to show “how correct we were”.

Defending ‘Democracy’

Para 26 states that: “The failure of the coup within just 56 hours, show that the conditions did not exist at that stage for the imposition of a new open military dictatorship. The working class of Russia and the republics are not sufficiently disillusioned with “democracy” to tolerate a return to the iron heel.” And the IS majority add that: “Events quickly confirmed that the old guard behind the coup lacked any social reserves or support.” (para 27).

The argument that the coup lacked “any social reserves of support” is entirely false and is contradicted, not only by numerous reports in the bourgeois press (already quotes), but also by the reports written by the comrades themselves. It is not necessary that this support should actively be manifested, it was sufficient that the great majority should remain passive. And this, despite the frantic, attempts of the comrades to prove the opposite, was precisely what occurred.

Now, in order to try to demonstrate something different, these comrades resort to a new argument, that the coup was allegedly doomed, because the Soviet workers were “not sufficiently disillusioned with ‘democracy’ (sic) to tolerate a return to the iron heel.”

And later we read: “For the majority of workers it raised the prospect of a return to the repressions of the Brezhnev era. It was to defend the fragile shoots of democratic rights, and not at all to defend Gorbachev that the workers fought.” (para 29).

First of all it should be noted that the majority of workers did not lift a finger to resist the coup. And for very good reasons. For the working class “democracy” is not an abstract question. If it does not serve to lead to increased living standards and social advancement, “democracy” becomes an empty legalistic concept for the mass of the population.

In the 1930s in Spain, the fascists had a very simple slogan which they used to great effect: “Que te da de comer la Republica?” (“What does the Republic give you to eat?”). Behind the “democratic” façade of the Republic, the landlords and capitalists continued to suck the blood of the workers and peasants, aided and abetted by an army of liberal “democratic” politicians and their willing servants in the Socialist and “Communist” parties.

Does that mean to say that Marxists were indifferent in the struggle to defend the democratic rights, far from it. Trotsky pointed out many times that the workers were obligated to defend democratic rights, even “fragile” ones, like the ones that exist in Russia, – but they must defend them with their own class methods, completely independent of the “democratic” Republican bourgeois.

Trotsky explained that the only way to preserve democratic rights was to fight for the transfer of power to the working class. To advocate any other line of action was to deceive the workers and lead them to a bloody defeat. The prior conditions for an independent class policy was an implacable criticism of the “democratic” bourgeois politicians and their reformist and Stalinist agents in the workers’ movement.

What was the reaction of the Republicans, reformists and Stalinists to this? To accuse the Trotskyists in Spain of advocating a policy of “passive neutrality”, which, objectively assisted the forces of fascist reaction. This is how, Trotsky answered this slander: “That we allegedly sabotage the loyalist movement. I believe that I have expressed it in many interviews and articles: the only way possible to assure victory in Spain is to say to the peasants: ‘The Spanish soil is your soil’; to say to the workers: ‘The Spanish factories are your factories’. That is the only possibility to assure victory. Stalin, in order not to frighten the French bourgeoisie, has become the guardian of private property in Spain. The Spanish peasant is not very interested in precise definitions. For him Franco and Caballero are is the same thing because the peasant is very realistic.” (The Spanish Revolution p. 251-2 – our emphasis)

In the same way, we say that the Soviet workers are very realistic when they see that with Yanayev or with Yeltsin “it is the same thing.” It is entirely false to say the working class are obliged to take sides “in defence of democratic rights”, for the simple reason that the victory of Yeltsin in no sense, shape or form represents a defence of those rights. Quite the contrary. From the very beginning Yeltsin has acted to restrict democratic rights and move towards government by decree.

Does that mean that we are indifferent to the defence of even “fragile” democratic rights? That we are advocating “passivity” and “neutrality”? Exactly the same accusation was made against Trotsky. In the Dewey commission, the Stalinist agent Beales attempted to trick Trotsky on this issue: “Beals: Then you don’t think that it is of great importance which side wins the war in Spain? It does not make a great deal of difference which side wins the war?”

And Trotsky answered this dirty provocation in the only way a Marxist could, by stressing the independent movement of the proletariat. “Trotsky: No, the workers must win the war, it is necessary the workers win. But I assure you that by the policy of the Comintern and Stalin you have the surest way of losing the resolution.” (Ibid p. 252)

In the Soviet Union, faced with the conflict between two rival wings of the bureaucracy, both standing for a return to capitalism, the Marxist would have no alternative, but to adopt a position analogous to the one taken by Trotsky ie a position of implacable class independence. Whoever interprets this as a position of “passivity” and “neutrality” shows only that they understand nothing of the most elementary ideas of Leninism.

In the USSR at the present time, it is 100 times more necessary to insist upon the idea of total class independence even than at the time when Trotsky was writing. The throwing back of consciousness after decade of Stalinist totalitarian rule has led to colossal confusion. The Soviet workers are struggling to develop an independent movement, independent both of the Stalinist bureaucracy and of the nascent bourgeoisie of the “reformist” and “democratic” movement. The slightest concessions in this sense would be disastrous for the movement, which is still at its early beginnings.

Tasks of Marxists

What is the basic task of the Trotskyists in the USSR at this stage? It is summed up in Lenin’s celebrated phrase: patiently explain, a phrase which no doubt would be considered by some comrades today as a dangerous display of “passivity” and “quietism”. Nevertheless, Lenin considered this to be the most appropriate slogan for the Bolsheviks, not in the early “circle phase”, but precisely in the early months of the Russian Revolution, after February.

In the months since the coup, and even before, the majority comrades have laid heavy stress on “intervening in the movement”. Active intervention is, of course, very necessary. But we have to maintain a sense of proportion, and clearly understand what kind of intervention is appropriate for each stage. That depends, partly on the objective situation, and partly on our own forces.

At present in the Soviet Union we have, unfortunately, only small forces. The figure given at the IEC in June was of six comrades, though there are probably more now. In stating this, we intend no criticism of those responsible for the work, which has taken place under difficult conditions. But it is necessary to consider the tactics of the Marxists in the light of our actual possibilities, not in the abstract. “You cannot shout louder than the strength of your own throat” whether in Britain, the Soviet Union, or anywhere else. Terrible mistakes follow from a tendency to exaggerate our forces in relation to the working class as a whole.

In the Soviet Union there are 150 million workers. That puts the forces we are presently working with in proportion. Given the scale of the movement, a certain amount of frustration and impatience is inevitable. But as we have observed in relation to the Scottish Turn and Walton, impatience and frustration are notoriously bad counsellors for revolutionaries.

The desire to see a revolutionary movement where none exists (as yet) can flow from the best motives in the world. Nevertheless, we must see the working class as it is, not as we would like it to be, if we are not to make fundamental errors, which can do untold damage to our work, both now and in the future.

We are repeatedly asked by supporters of the IS majority faction: Well, what would you have done? Would you have supported Yeltsin’s general strike? Would you have gone to the barricades? and so on and so forth.

By asking these questions, the intention is presumably to cause embarrassment, by allegedly showing what we would ask the Soviet workers to “do nothing”. All of which sounds very like the argument the Stalinists tried to use against the Trotskyists in Spain, China, or more recently, in Algeria, Vietnam, Palestine and so on. We had no problem answering those questions, nor do we in response to these. They cause us no embarrassment, unless it be the embarrassment at the thought that educated comrades could ask questions worthy of a nursery school child.

Firstly, let us understand that a group of six comrades in a situation such as this cannot aspire to lead the masses. As a matter of fact, it cannot even aspire to reach them. If you spent all your waking hours running from barricade to barricade (which we sincerely trust the comrades did not do), you would not succeed in making any imprint whatsoever on the movement, and would only succeed in exhausting our comrades. With small forces, we can only aspire to reach a minority of the best workers and youth. Our first duty is to educate them in the ideas, tactics and methods of Marxism.

To what extent has this been done? It is hard to give an answer to this, because the work of our comrades in the USSR has never been discussed seriously, at the level either of the IEC or even the IS.

From what is known, the comrades hold some positions which do not seem to be correct, for example, they are implacably opposed to the privatisation of small shops or businesses. Yet they now say that the big majority of the Soviet workers have illusions in the market “to some degree or other”. This needs to be looked at.

The comrades have done some sterling work, but when we were told last June that six comrades had produced 100,000 leaflets, this suggests that there is a danger that we are, indeed, “trying to shout louder than the strength of our own throats.” In the interests of successful work in the future, this also needs to be looked at, particularly when the first duty of a group of Marxists in a situation like last August was to get out quickly some kind of printed statement (no matter how primitive) explaining the need for an independent policy, which apparently we did not do.

Would we have supported action involving strikes and demonstrations? Of course, we would. But first we would try for mass meetings to debate the issues and elect a committee to direct the struggle. The Marxists would intervene in these mass meetings to the degree of our forces permitted and defend an independent class policy, attacking both Yanayev and Yeltsin, Popov and Sobchak. We would try to get our comrades elected to the committees and try influence them to take a genuinely revolutionary class policy. If, as is most likely, we were reduced to a tiny minority, we would continue to argue our case to those prepared to listen.

Ah, but would you have supported Yeltsin’s general strike call?” The repetition of this demand becomes positively tedious, particularly as the answer is so obvious. Yes, we Marxists would advocate participation in a general strike despite it being called by Yeltsin. The problem for the majority comrades, however, is not whether we, or they, supported Yeltsin’s general strike, but the simple fact that the masses did not support it. And this is for the very good reason that they did not trust Yeltsin any more than Yanayev or, for that matter, Gorbachev. And in that, the workers showed an absolutely correct class instinct.

Where would we work? The question is answered for us in advance, by the kind of forces we possess and the social sphere in which they were already active. In the factories, schools, offices and universities, in the barracks, and, yes, also on the barricades if we saw we could get an echo for our ideas there. But the prime condition would be the maintenance of implacable propaganda directed against Yeltsin, Sobchak and the other agents of capitalist reaction.

The comrades ask us hypothetical questions, which we have no difficulty in answering. In reply, we ask, not a hypothetical question, but a real one: “what propaganda was actually produced by the comrades during the coup? What were their slogans? How did they unmask and expose Yeltsin, Popov and Sobchak before the workers and youth – or at least those whom we could be reasonably expected to be reached?

It is strange that while for many months after the coup, our paper carries many “eyewitness accounts”, many of them clearly designed not so much as to inform as to counter the arguments of the Opposition, yet not a single leaflet, broadsheet or pamphlet produced by our comrades on the spot has been reprinted, not one slogan or programmatic demand reproduced for discussion. There is nothing but talk about the “heroic masses”, barricades and “potential” general strikes, which provide very inspiring reading, but tell us nothing of our actual intervention in events themselves.

Frankly, it is not a very satisfactory state of affairs when the Opposition is continually challenged to state, “what we would have done”, when not a word is said about what the tendency actually did! By this, we are not referring to the volume of activity. The comrades, as their past record shows, are extremely active. But what is decisive is the programme, tactics, ideas and slogans we defend. And this, to date, is still unclear.

Programme and Tactics

The first thing a Marxist tendency would have to hammer home is, no blocs, no agreement, and absolutely no trust in the Yeltsins, Sobchaks and Popovs. The workers should fight against the coup using only their own class methods, and trusting only their forces. The only way to defend democratic rights and prevent social and economic catastrophe is the transfer of power to the working people. This means an all-out struggle not only against the Yanayev wing, but also against the Yeltsin wing of the bureaucracy, which wants to drag society down the road, not only to capitalism, but to dictatorship as well.

Would this have been difficult for the workers to accept? The fact, well documented from many sources, that the bulk of workers were suspicious of both sides shows this is not the case. The best workers and youth would have listened to our arguments, and subsequent developments would have proved the correctness of our warnings about the “Democrats” and “Reformists”, preparing the way for a rapid growth of our tendency at a later stage. But unless we maintain an absolutely implacable firmness in defence of an independent class position (which has nothing in common with “passive neutrality”), our small forces will inevitably be ground between the two giant millstones of Stalinism and Capitalist counter revolution.

A mighty movement of the Soviet proletariat is being prepared on the basis of events. The school of capitalism will be a cruel one for millions of workers. The Yeltsins, Popovs and Sobchaks who yesterday appeared like giants on the stage of history will tomorrow be cast aside like so much rubbish in the paths of the working class. Then the workers remember those who showed foresight in explaining the facts of life in advance.

There can be absolutely no doubt, reading even the material of our paper, that those workers who tried to fight the coup in practice were supporting Yeltsin and Sobchak. The fact that Leningrad workers, leaders were prepared to allow their tactics to be dictated by Sobchak clearly underlines this point. This shows precisely how far consciousness has been thrown back. This will inevitably be overcome, on the basis of events, but it will take a little time, and in the meantime attempts to portray things in a more “acceptable” light will not help us to change the,. It will lead to one mistake after another.

In reality there is no difference between Yeltsin and Yanayev on the question of “democracy”. The difference is exclusively between two wings of the bureaucracy, one which wants to defend a centralised Soviet Union (linked to the defence of the privilege of the “military-industrial complex”), whilst the other is only concerned about the interests of the Russian bureaucracy, which bases itself on the most reactionary ideas of Great Russian chauvinism.

In this respect, it is a worrying symptom that the articles which appeared in the centre spread of our paper of 30/8/91 utilised entirely un-Marxist terminology: “Militiamen loyal to Russia and armed with light machine guns guarded the doors of the parliament.” And again: “One (rumour) told how the Moscow Omon (police) supporting Russia had surrounded the main Moscow prison…” (our emphasis).

One can accept that these are slips of the pen, caused by haste. But nevertheless, the impression is given that the comrades allowed themselves to get carried away, and come under the influence of ideas and tendencies, flowing from a section of the movement around Yeltsin, which coloured their judgement of events. These “slips” are merely the most striking instance of this fact.

The allegation that this was a “fight for democracy” is a false one. The idea that Yeltsin is any more “democratic” than Yanayev is a total falsehood, as events have already shown. There is nothing whatsoever to choose between them. That those workers (a small minority) who went to the Russian parliament believed in a confused way that they were fighting for democratic rights is undoubtedly true. But what is important, as Marx explains, is not what an individual believes and says about himself, but what interests he actually defends and by what he does. And the tiny minority of workers who did participate in this movement did so, irrespective of their intentions, under the banner of Sobchak and Yeltsin, the banner of open bourgeois counter-revolution.

The real attitude of the workers is shown by a quote in paragraph 62 which entirely gives the game away: a pro-Yeltsin MP is quoted after the coup as saying: “Workers are tired of everyone, of Gorbachev, of Yeltsin, and me, what they want is food.” (our emphasis).

Precisely, the desperate struggle for survival, for a loaf of bread, is what is concentrating the minds of the masses in the USSR. And after five or six years of perestroika and “glasnost” the workers ask themselves, “what does ‘glasnost’ give you to eat?” That explains the lack of mass worker participation in the movement against the coup. At the same time, it indicates that the “Democrats” will inevitably faced with big movements of the workers at a certain stage, possibly in the next few months.

Perspectives for Russia

The “perspectives” for the Soviet Union after the coup put forward by the IS majority are no better than their analysis of the coup. Once again the “majority”, like Mandel, specialise in facing in all directions at the same time. Where they do venture to make something that resembles a definite statement (which, in fairness, are a very rare occurrence), they immediately end up in a mess.

Thus, in paragraph 66 they assert that private investment “raises the prospect(?) of an economy dominated by foreign capital as unded Tzarism with only a small national capitalist class. Therefore, whilst a capitalist Russia would attempt to play an imperialist role in relation to the neighbours, its economic base would have many elements(?) of a semi-colonial country.”

What we have here are “many elements” of an attempt to avoid any kind of definite statement about the future of a capitalist Russia. But the implication is clear, that the authors consider that capitalism in Russia would necessarily be of a basically semi-colonial kind, though they do not dare to say so openly.

This analysis is fundamentally wrong. The future development of capitalism in Russia, were it to succeed, would not be merely a return to Tsarism. The past ’70 years have not passed in vain. Despite everything, the Soviet Union has built up a mighty industrial base of 150 million workers. That is nothing like the semi-colonial economy of Tsarist Russia. Many of these workers are skilled, and potentially able to achieve a similar, or higher productivity to the workers of the West. The fact that the Stalinist bureaucracy was not able to achieve this does not mean it is not impossible in the future, either on the basis of a healthy regime of workers’ democracy, or even on the basis of significant investment from the West on a capitalist basis.

As usual, these comrades have swallowed whole many of the lies of the capitalist propaganda (and that of pro-capitalist wing of the bureaucracy) concerning the alleged “total failure of the planned economy.” There is a conscious attempt, not only to liquidate the nationalised planned economy, but also to bury the memory of its successes. Anyone who does not set out from the historic successes of the planned economy, who merely repeats the propaganda of the bourgeois, will inevitably play a fatal role in disarming and confusing the workers in the USSR and everyone else. Unfortunately, the comrades of the majority faction have fallen into this trap.

It is entirely false to think that the USSR or any bloc that is formed around its central components, could go back to a semi-colonial dependence on the West. In the initial period, the nascent capitalist class could export raw materials, oils, gas and minerals, to finance the large scale importation of computers and other modern technology. This, in turn, would form the basis, in the medium and long term, for the modernisation of industry, making use of a vast pool of cheap skilled labour and scientific expertise.

The idea that the new Russian bourgeoisie would be content to be dependent upon the importation of manufactured goods is completely misguided, for social considerations as well as economic ones. Such relationships would mean a social catastrophe, with the bulk of the 150 million workforce, not just 50 million, unemployed. That would rapidly mean the social revolution.

Of course, it is by no means certain that the attempt of the bourgeois government of Russia to move towards capitalism will be successful. But if capitalism is restored, then it would signify the opening up of vast new resources of mineral wealth. Depending upon the relations between the different republics, it is not at all ruled out that Russian capitalism could make progress in the direction of creating a new and powerful imperialist state. This, in turn, would add new contradictions to the future of world capitalism.

Nor is it true that “Today world capitalism does not have the resources for such a massive injection of capital (as in the period of the Marshall plan) (para 69). The capitalists of the West undoubtedly do possess such resources. If they do not choose to invest them in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, that is because they have no confidence that the future development of a “market economy” will be as easy or as smooth as some people imagine.

Working Class Consciousness

For the IS majority, things stand no better with regard to the effect of the coup on the consciousness of the world working class. Yet, again, the document tries to wriggle and twist, until the usual trick of referring to a “contradictory effect” (para 117).

The authors are, it seems, dimly aware that “contradiction” has something to do with dialectics. However, there are dialectics and dialectics. There are Marxist dialectics, and there is also the dialectic of sophism. It is the latter, not the former, which is the main feature of this document, from the first time to the last.

In Marxist dialectic, contradictions form a necessary part in a given process, movement and life. The “contradictions” in this document are of another type altogether, they do not form part of a dynamic process, but are dragged in at the odd moment, like a rabbit pulled out of the conjurer’s hat, to conceal the fact that the authors have not the slightest idea what to say about the given phenomenon and therefore enter a string of statements which do, in fact, contradict one another. There is a word in the dictionary which correctly defines this. Not dialectics, but nonsense.

“The movement against the coup”, we are told, “had a contradictory effect on the consciousness of the workers internationally. Many, especially the broad mass of workers in the advanced capitalist countries see the outcome as a victory, another example of a mass movement bringing down a dictatorship and defending democratic rights(?). This can(?) raise the confidence and preparedness to fight of workers in the West.”

The fact that workers “see” something as a victory, does not make it so. How do we, the Marxists, see it? As a “victory” which immediately ushered in the pro-capitalist counter revolution? And when you say it “can” do something, do you mean that it will do so, or do you mean something else? Once again, we are back to the Humpty Dumpty school of semantics.

Immediately, however, the authors get the itch to “balance” things up with a new “contradiction”. And what is it an itch for, if not to give it a good scratch? “For many workers, at this stage, (just in case…), the planned economy is not seen as a viable alternative to the market. Unless important class battles cut across this (just in case…), in the short run (just in case…), the leadership of the workers’ organisations will probably (probably!) drift even further to the right.” (para 118)

So here we are. This great revolutionary “victory”, so it is seen by “many” workers, although “many” do not see it so, now will probably lead (all things being equal) to a movement to the right!

If you can make any sense whatever out of this you deserve a medal, or, better still, a ten years reprieve from reading the “theoretical” material of the IS majority.

In the next paragraph, however, the authors (who evidently have never heard that you can have too “much of a good thing”), drag in yet another profound contradiction, that “these developments “remove a major obstacle to the politicisation of US workers and greater readiness to accept socialist ideas.” (para 119)

One rubs one’s eyes in disbelief. The overthrow of Stalinism, in and of itself, does not in any way predispose US workers to accept the ideas of socialism. That depends on who does the overthrowing and for what purpose. This assertion about US workers, more than anything else, reveals the complete lack of understanding of the IS majority faction. Had the bureaucracy been really overthrown by a revolutionary movement of the working class, that would have had an extremely revolutionary effect on the psychology, not only of the workers of the USA, but everywhere.

But the fact that this task was accomplished by the forces of the bourgeois counter-revolution has precisely the opposite effect. And all the “contradictory” twisting and turning in the world will not alter this fact. How does the victory of Yeltsin and the pro capitalist gangsters “predispose the US workers to accept socialist ideas?” It will merely reinforce the propaganda of the bourgeois that “socialism is finished”, “nationalisation does not work” and the “market economy is the only possible economic system.”

It is particularly absurd to cite especially the US workers in this context, for the simple reason that the ideas of Stalinism never exercised the slightest attraction for the workers of the USA, in the first place. There is no doubt whatsoever that the US workers will come to the ideas of socialism, on the basis of their own experience of the class struggle, but the idea that the victory of capitalist counter-revolution in the USSR can have revolutionary effect on the workers of the USA, or anywhere else, is false to the core.

It is entirely different to the effect of the political revolution in Hungary in 1956. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of that situation cannot fail to see the unbridgeable gulf that separates the effects of revolution from those of counter revolution.

The Analysis of the Majority

The document of the IS majority faction makes a similar mistaken analysis of the movement in Eastern Europe, which we will deal with in future written material. For the present, we limit ourselves to commenting on their analysis of the coup in the USSR, on which we only have this to say. This “analysis” marks such a profound departure from the Marxist method, such a definitive break with the scientific methods of our tendency, that unless it is corrected, it will lead to the most serious errors for our tendency both in theory and practice. It is time to call halt! It is time to put an end to theoretical backending, empiricism, eclecticism and impressionism, and return to the methods of our tendency, the methods of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, developed and enriched by the experience of the last 40 years.

3 January, 1992