Date: 24 Aug 96 04:58:40 EDT
Subject: Re: Stalin and explanations


Do bureaucracies always end up as tyrannies over the people?
Looking in detail about how Stalin's bureaucracy took power is one of the best
ways of sorting this one out.
	The first thing is that it is fundamental to see the dynamic and the
process. If bureaucracies are automatically organisations of power over and
against the people, then the bolshevik bureaucracy would not have "degenerated"
into a tyranny, it would have been equally tyrannical from day one, which no
serious historian maintains. Something made it change
	One of the wonderful things about being a Trotskyist in France is that
Trotsky's complete works from 1928 to 1940 have been translated and published
(mostly from the archives of Trotsky in the USA, only opened in 1980). (27
volumes!)
	Now in volume One (yes, I've only got that far), Trotsky is writing in
1928 when the fight is still going onbetween the leadership of the  bureaucracy
who want to abandon the international revolution andinstead organize an
industrial revolution in the Soviet Unionon the backs of the workers and
thepeasants, and those bolsheviks who stand by the ideals of 1917. Trotsky
analyzes ingreat detail what is going on. What is particularly interesting is
that he hardly mentions Stalin. Stalinis the ninentity who happened to represent
a set of real classinterests. Trotsky interprets the rise of Stalinism (putting
the bureaucracy's comfort before the international revolution, abolishing
democratic debate which had always been a fine tradition of bolshevism,
replacing marxist analysis of orher countries with shortsighted swings lookign
for short term gains in stability for the Societ Union...  ) as being the reslut
of the changes in class forces, absolutely not of the nature of complex
organisations of society and still less of psychological characteristics of
Stalin, Bukharin and their cronies. 
	Trotsky saw the classpressures as being the demoralization of the Russian
working class after the defeat of the German revolution, and the increased
confidence of rich peasants and small private capitalists within Russia, as well
as the processof the bureaucracy defining their interests (wontrol and access to
relative comfort) as "the interests of the revolution".
	He was right all the way along the line so far. He didn't foresee that
the result would notbe the retaking of power by private capital, but would be
the constitution of the bureuacracy as a ruling class (most bureaucracies are
absolutely not a ruling class) , running the industrial revolution, the
exploitationof the workers and the accumulationof capital as a collective thing
rather than, as the French and British capitalists had done, a few thousand
private things.
	I recommend the 27 volumes ($120 the lot! La Breche, rue de Tunis 75020
Paris)
john Mullen
Socialisme International
France
	



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