Workers' Liberty

I am very surprised that you did not include in your list of examples of Bonapartism, and of those developed by Trotsky, the USSR, particularly as Trotsky’s analysis of Soviet Bonapartism is far more significant than his analysis of Mexico. Moreover, the importance of Trotsky’s analysis of Soviet Bonapartism, and his associated class analysis of the Soviet State in his pamphlet - “The Class Nature of the Soviet State” – is highlighted by Trotsky himself towards the end of that pamphlet where he writes, “Every political tendency that waves its hand hopelessly at the Soviet Union, under the pretext of its ‘non-proletarian’ character, runs the risk of becoming the passive instrument of imperialism”, a judgement that proved correct in respect of every tendency that adopted a state-capitalist or new class theory of the USSR.

A few quotes from the above pamphlet, and from “The Workers State & the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism” demonstrate Trotsky’s analysis.

“Anticipating our subsequent arguments, our opponents will hasten to rebut: although the bourgeoisie, as an exploiting minority, can also preserve its hegemony by means of a fascist dictatorship, the proletariat building a socialist society must manage its government itself, directly drawing ever-wider masses of the people into the task of government. In its general form, this argument is undebatable, but in the given case it merely means that the present Soviet dictatorship is a sick dictatorship. The frightful difficulties of socialist construction in an isolated and backward country coupled with the false policies of the leadership——which, in the last analysis, also reflects the pressure of backwardness and isolation——have led to the result that the bureaucracy has expropriated the proletariat politically in order to guard its social conquests with its own methods. The anatomy of society is determined by its economic relations. So long as the forms of property that have been created by the October Revolution are not overthrown, the proletariat remains the ruling class.” (p7-8 New Park ed. 1973.)

And although the workers as ruling class despised the Stalinist bureaucracy their own weakness due to the backwardness and lack of development of the material conditions meant that they shied away from overthrowing them for fear of letting in their class enemies.

“However, it is not simply due to repression that this dissatisfaction does not assume violent mass forms; the workers fear that they will clear the field for the class enemy if they overthrow the bureaucracy. The interrelations between the bureaucracy and the class are really much more complex than they appear to be to the frothy "democrats." The Soviet workers would have settled accounts with the despotism of the apparatus had other perspectives opened before them, had the Western horizon flamed not with the brown color of fascism but with the red of revolution. So long as this does not happen, the proletariat with clenched teeth bears ("tolerates") the bureaucracy and, in this sense, recognizes it as the bearer of the proletarian dictatorship. In a heart to heart conversation, no Soviet worker would be sparing of strong words addressed to the Stalinist bureaucracy. But not a single one of them would admit that the counterrevolution has already taken place. The proletariat is the spine of the Soviet state. But insofar as the function of governing is concentrated in the hands of an irresponsible bureaucracy, we have before us an obviously sick state.” (ibid p8)
In the early 1920’s Trotsky and the Left Opposition refused to accept that Thermidor (the Bonapartist coup in France of Louis Bonaparte) had occurred. Trotsky’s opponents who argued that the USSR was not a Workers State (either had never been one, or had been one for some period which differed depending upon which group’s analysis you were dealing with) used the definition of Bonapartism to bolster their argument that what existed in the USSR was some form of state capitalism, because Bonapartism was a feature of capitalism. Later, particularly in the second article referred to above which I shall quote from later, Trotsky accepted that the LO’s reluctance to use the term Thermidor was wrong, but in line with his approach that the truth is always concrete he defined the term in its concrete reality as it applied to the USSR, a reality which permitted the idea of Thermidor, of the bureaucracy usurping power from the workers, but retained the materialist class definition of the Soviet State as a workers state, albeit a very sick one.
“If Urbahns wants to extend the concept of Bonapartism to include also the present Soviet regime, then we are ready to accept such a widened interpretation -- under one condition: if the social content of the Soviet "Bonapartism" will be defined with the requisite clarity. It is absolutely correct that the self-rule of the Soviet bureaucracy was built upon the soil of veering between class forces both internal as well as international. Insofar as the bureaucratic veering has been crowned by the personal plebiscitary regime of Stalin, it is possible to speak of Soviet Bonapartism. But while the Bonapartism of both Bonapartes as well as their present pitiful followers has developed and is developing on the basis of a bourgeois regime, the Bonapartism of Soviet bureaucracy has under it the soil of a Soviet regime. Terminological innovations or historical analogies can serve as conveniences in one manner or another for analysis, but they cannot change the social nature of the Soviet state.” (ibid p11)

“The existence of a bureaucracy, in all its variety of forms and differences in specific weight, characterizes every class regime. Its power is of a reflected character. The bureaucracy is indissolubly bound up with a ruling economic class, feeding itself upon the social roots of the latter, maintaining itself and falling together with it.” (ibid p16)

“Laurat will say that he "does not object" to the bureaucracy being paid for its labor insofar as it fulfills the necessary political, economic and cultural functions; but what is involved is its uncontrolled appropriation of an absolutely disproportionate part of the national income; precisely in this sense does it appear as the "exploiting class." This argument, based on indubitable facts, does not, however, change the social physiognomy of the bureaucracy.
Always and in every regime, the bureaucracy devours no small portion of surplus value. It might not be uninteresting, for example, to compute what portion of the national income is devoured by the fascist locusts in Italy or Germany! But this fact, of no small importance by itself, is entirely insufficient to transform the fascist bureaucracy into an independent ruling class. It is the hireling of the bourgeoisie. True, this hireling straddles the boss's neck, tears from his mouth at times the juiciest pieces, and spits on his bald spot besides. Say what you will, a most inconvenient hireling! But, nevertheless, only a hireling. The bourgeoisie abides him because without him, it and its regime would absolutely go to the dogs.

Mutatis mutandis [changing what should be changed], what has been said above can be applied to the Stalinist bureaucracy as well. It devours, wastes and embezzles a considerable portion of the national income. Its management costs the proletariat very dearly. In the Soviet society, it occupies an extremely privileged position not only in the sense of having political and administrative prerogatives but also in the sense of possessing enormous material advantages. Still, the biggest apartments, the juiciest steaks and even Rolls Royces are not enough to transform the bureaucracy into an independent ruling class.

Inequality, moreover such crying inequality, would, of course, be absolutely impossible in a socialist society. But contrary to official and semiofficial lies, the present Soviet regime is not socialist but transitional. It still bears within it the monstrous heritage of capitalism, social inequality in particular, not only between the bureaucracy and the proletariat but also within the bureaucracy itself and within the proletariat. At the given stage, inequality still remains, within certain limits, the bourgeois instrument of socialist progress; differential wages, bonuses, etc., are used as stimuli for emulation.” (ibid p16-17)

“Nevertheless, the privileges of the bureaucracy by themselves do not change the bases of the Soviet society, because the bureaucracy derives its privileges not from any special property relations peculiar to it as a "class," but from those property relations that have been created by the October Revolution and that are fundamentally adequate for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
To put it plainly, insofar as the bureaucracy robs the people (and this is done in various ways by every bureaucracy), we have to deal not with class exploitation, in the scientific sense of the word, but with social parasitism, although on a very large scale. During the Middle Ages, the clergy constituted a class or an estate, insofar as its rule depended upon a specific system of land property and forced labor. The present- day church constitutes not an exploiting class but a parasitic corporation. It would be silly to actually speak of the American clergy as a special ruling class; yet, it is indubitable that the priests of the different colors and denominations devour in the United States a big portion of the surplus value. In its traits of parasitism, the bureaucracy, as well as the clergy, is similar to the lumpen proletariat, which likewise does not represent, as is well known, an independent "class."” (ibid p18)

“The bureaucracy is not a ruling class. But the further development of the bureaucratic regime can lead to the inception of a new ruling class: not organically, through degeneration, but through counterrevolution. We call the Stalinist apparatus centrist precisely because it fulfills a dual role; today, when there is no longer a Marxist leadership, and none forthcoming as yet, it defends the proletarian dictatorship with its own methods; but these methods are such as facilitate the victory of the enemy tomorrow. Whoever fails to understand this dual role of Stalinism in the USSR has understood nothing.” (ibid p19)
The full text can be found here.

Class Nature of USSR

In the second article Trotsky concretises his analysis of the Soviet degeneration and the process of Thermidor in the USSR correcting the earlier mistakes of analysis of the left Opposition.

“The Left Opposition argued that although the elements of dual power had indubitably begun to sprout within the country, the transition from these elements to the hegemony of the bourgeoisie could not occur otherwise than by means of a counterrevolutionary overturn. The bureaucracy was already linked to the Nepman and the kulak, but its main roots still extend into the working class. In its struggle against the Left Opposition, the bureaucracy undoubtedly was dragging behind it a heavy tail in the shape of Nepmen and kulaks. But on the morrow this tail would strike a blow at the head, that is, at the ruling bureaucracy. New splits within the bureaucratic ranks were inevitable. Face to face with the direct danger of a counterrevolutionary overturn, the basic core of the centrist bureaucracy would lean upon the workers for support against the growing rural bourgeoisie. The outcome of the conflict was still far from having been decided. The burial of the October Revolution was premature. The crushing of the Left Opposition facilitated the work of “Thermidor.” But “Thermidor” had not yet occurred.” (The Workers’ State, Thermidor and Bonapartism New Park ed. p30)

“As early as 1927, the kulaks struck a blow at the bureaucracy, by refusing to supply it with bread, which they had managed to concentrate in their hands. In 1928, an open split took place in the bureaucracy. The Right was for further concessions to the kulak. The centrists, arming themselves with the ideas of the Left Opposition whom they had smashed conjointly with the Rights, found their support among the workers, routed the Rights and took to the road of industrialization and, subsequently, collectivization. The basic social conquests of the October Revolution were saved in the end at the cost of countless unnecessary sacrifices.

The prognosis of the Bolshevik-Leninists (more correctly, the “optimum variant” of their prognosis) was confirmed completely. Today there can be no controversy on this point. Development of the productive forces proceeded not by way of restoration of private property but on the basis of socialization, by way of planned management. The world-historical significance of this fact can remain hidden only to the politically blind.” (ibid p30-31)

“There is no doubt that the USSR today bears very little resemblance to that type of Soviet republic that Lenin depicted in 1917 (no permanent bureaucracy or permanent army, the right of recalling all elected officials at any time and the active control over them by the masses “regardless of who the individual may be,” etc.). The domination of the bureaucracy over the country, as well as Stalin’s domination over the bureaucracy, have well-nigh attained their absolute consummation. But what conclusions would follow from this? There are some who say that since the actual state that has emerged from the proletarian revolution does not correspond to ideal a priori norms, therefore they turn their backs on it. This is political snobbery, common to pacifist-democratic, libertarian, anarcho-syndicalist and, generally, ultraleft circles of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.” (ibid p32)

“let us check once again if these distortions have extended to the economic foundations of the state, that is to say, if the basic social conquests of the proletarian revolution have been preserved; if these have been preserved, then let us find in what direction they are changing; and let us discover if there obtain in the USSR and on the world arena such factors as may facilitate and hasten the preponderance of progressive trends of development over those of reaction.” (ibid p32-3)

“In a number of previous writings, we established the fact that despite its economic successes, which were determined by the nationalization of the means of production, Soviet society completely preserves a contradictory transitional character, and, measured by the inequality of living conditions and the privileges of the bureaucracy, it still stands much closer to the regime of capitalism than to future communism.

At the same time, we established the fact that despite monstrous bureaucratic degeneration, the Soviet state still remains the historical instrument of the working class insofar as it assures the development of economy and culture on the basis of nationalized means of production and, by virtue of this, prepares the conditions for a genuine emancipation of the toilers through the liquidation of the bureaucracy and of social inequality.

Whoever has not seriously pondered and accepted these two fundamental propositions, whoever in general has not studied the literature of the Bolshevik-Leninists on the question of the USSR from 1923 on runs the risk of losing the leading thread with every new event and of forsaking Marxist analysis for abject lamentations.” (ibid p33-4)

“We shall here limit ourselves solely to the question whether the factual dictatorship of the bureaucracy may be called the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The terminological difficulty here arises from the fact that the term dictatorship is used sometimes in a restricted, political sense and, at other times, in a more profound, sociological sense. We speak of the “dictatorship of Mussolini” and, at the same time, declare that fascism is only the instrument of finance capital. Which is correct? Both are correct, but on different planes. It is incontestable that the entire executive power is concentrated in Mussolini’s hands. But it is no less true that the entire actual content of the state activity is dictated by the interests of finance capital. The social domination of a class (its dictatorship) may find extremely diverse political forms. This is attested by the entire history of the bourgeoisie, from the Middle Ages to the present day.

The experience of the Soviet Union is already adequate for the extension of this very same sociological law—with all the necessary changes—to the dictatorship of the proletariat as well. In the interim between the conquest of power and the dissolution of the workers’ state within the socialist society, the forms and methods of proletarian rule may change sharply, depending upon the course of the class struggle, internally and externally.

Thus, the present-day domination of Stalin in no way resembles the Soviet rule during the initial years of the revolution. The substitution of one regime for the other occurred not at a single stroke but through a series of measures, by means of a number of minor civil wars waged by the bureaucracy against the proletarian vanguard. In the last historical analysis, Soviet democracy was blown up by the pressure of social contradictions. Exploiting the latter, the bureaucracy wrested the power from the hands of mass organizations. In this sense we may speak about the dictatorship of the bureaucracy and even about the personal dictatorship of Stalin. But this usurpation was made possible and can maintain itself only because the social content of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy is determined by those productive relations that were created by the proletarian revolution . In this sense we may say with complete justification that the dictatorship of the proletariat found its distorted but indubitable expression in the dictatorship of the bureaucracy.” (ibid p35-6)

“The overturn of the Ninth Thermidor did not liquidate the basic conquests of the bourgeois revolution, but it did transfer the power into the hands of the more moderate and conservative Jacobins, the better-to-do elements of bourgeois society. Today it is impossible to overlook that in the Soviet revolution also a shift to the right took place a long time ago, a shift entirely analogous to Thermidor, although much slower in tempo and more masked in form. The conspiracy of the Soviet bureaucracy against the left wing could conserve its comparatively “dry” character during the initial stages only because the conspiracy itself was executed much more systematically and thoroughly than the improvisation of the Ninth Thermidor.

Socially the proletariat is more homogeneous than the bourgeoisie, but it contains within itself an entire series of strata that become manifest with exceptional clarity following the conquest of power, during the period when the bureaucracy and a workers’ aristocracy connected with it begin to take form. The smashing of the Left Opposition implied in the most direct and immediate sense the transfer of power from the hands of the revolutionary vanguard into the hands of the more conservative elements among the bureaucracy and the upper crust of the working class. The year 1924—that was the beginning of the Soviet Thermidor.” (ibid p37)

“In both cases the bureaucracy raised itself upon the backs of plebeian democracy that had assured the victory for the new regime. The Jacobin clubs were strangled gradually. The revolutionists of 1793 died on the battlefields; they became diplomats and generals; they fell under the blows of repression ... or went underground. Subsequently, other Jacobins successfully transformed themselves into Napoleon’s prefects. Their ranks were swelled in ever-increasing numbers by turncoats from old parties, by former aristocrats and by crass careerists. And in Russia? The very same picture of degeneration, but on a much more gigantic arena and a much more mature background, is reproduced some 130 to 140 years later by the gradual transition from Soviets and party clubs seething with life to the commandeering of secretaries who depend solely upon the “passionately beloved leader.”

In France, the prolonged stabilization of the Thermidorean-Bonapartist regime was made possible only thanks to the development of the productive forces that had been freed from the fetters of feudalism. The lucky ones, the plunderers, the relatives and the allies of the bureaucracy enriched themselves. The disillusioned masses fell into prostration.

The upsurge of the nationalized productive forces, which began in 1923 and which came unexpectedly to the Soviet bureaucracy itself, created the necessary economic prerequisites for the stabilization of the latter. The upbuilding of the economic life provided an outlet for the energies of active and capable organizers, administrators and technicians. Their material and moral position improved rapidly. A broad, privileged stratum was created, closely linked to the ruling upper crust. The toiling masses lived on hopes or fell into apathy.

It would be banal pedantry to attempt to fit the different stages of the Russian Revolution to analogous events in France that occurred towards the close of the eighteenth century. But one is literally hit between the eyes by the resemblance between the present Soviet political regime and the regime of the First Consul, particularly at the end of the Consulate when the period of the Empire was nigh. While Stalin lacks the luster of victories, at any rate, he surpasses Bonaparte the First in the regime of organized cringing. Such power could be obtained only by strangling the party, the Soviets, the working class as a whole. The bureaucracy upon which Stalin leans is materially bound up with the results of the consummated national revolution, but it has no point of contact with the developing international revolution. In their manner of living, their interests and psychology, the present-day Soviet functionaries differ no less from the revolutionary Bolsheviks than the generals and prefects of Napoleon differed from the revolutionary Jacobins.” (ibid p37-8)

“The Jacobins have been pushed out by the Thermidoreans and Bonapartists; Bolsheviks have been supplanted by Stalinists.” (ibid p41)

“After the profound democratic revolution, which liberates the peasants from serfdom and gives them land, the feudal counterrevolution is generally impossible. The overthrown monarchy may reestablish itself in power and surround itself with medieval phantoms. But it is already powerless to reestablish the economy of feudalism. Once liberated from the fetters of feudalism, bourgeois relations develop automatically. They can be checked by no external force; they must themselves dig their own grave, having previously created their own gravedigger.

It is altogether otherwise with the development of socialist relations. The proletarian revolution not only frees the productive forces from the fetters of private ownership but also transfers them to the direct disposal of the state that it itself creates. While the bourgeois state, after the revolution, confines itself to a police role, leaving the market to its own laws, the workers’ state assumes the direct role of economist and organizer. The replacement of one political regime by another exerts only an indirect and superficial influence upon market economy. On the contrary, the replacement of a workers’ government by a bourgeois or petty-bourgeois government would inevitably lead to the liquidation of the planned beginnings and, subsequently, to the restoration of private property. In contradistinction to capitalism, socialism is built not automatically but consciously. Progress towards socialism is inseparable from that state power that is desirous of socialism or that is constrained to desire it. Socialism can acquire an immutable character only at a very high stage of its development, when its productive forces have far transcended those of capitalism, when the human wants of each and all can obtain bounteous satisfaction and when the state will have completely withered away, dissolving in society. But all this is still in the distant future. At the given stage of development, the socialist construction stands and falls with the workers’ state. Only after thoroughly pondering the difference between the laws of the formation of bourgeois ("anarchistic") and socialist ("planned") economy is it possible to understand those limits beyond which the analogy with the Great French Revolution cannot pass.” (ibid p42-3)

“The Soviet bureaucracy—"Bolshevist” in its traditions but in reality having long since renounced its traditions, petty bourgeois in its composition and spirit—was summoned to regulate the antagonism between the proletariat and the peasantry, between the workers’ state and world imperialism; such is the social base of bureaucratic centrism , of its zigzags, its power, its weakness and its influence on the world proletarian movement that has been so fatal. 2 As the bureaucracy becomes more independent, as more and more power is concentrated in the hands of a single person, the more does bureaucratic centrism turn into Bonapartism.” (ibid p44)

“The present-day Kremlin Bonapartism we juxtapose, of course, to the Bonapartism of bourgeois rise and not decay: with the Consulate and the First Empire and not with Napoleon III and, all the more so, not with Schleicher or Doumergue. For the purposes of such an analogy, there is no need to ascribe to Stalin the traits of Napoleon I; whenever the social conditions demand it, Bonapartism can consolidate itself around axes of the most diverse caliber.” (ibid p44)

“Stalin guards the conquests of the October Revolution not only against the feudal-bourgeois counterrevolution but also against the claims of the toilers, their impatience and their dissatisfaction; he crushes the left wing that expresses the ordered historical and progressive tendencies of the unprivileged working masses; he creates a new aristocracy by means of an extreme differentiation in wages, privileges, ranks, etc. Leaning for support upon the topmost layer of the new social hierarchy against the lowest—sometimes vice versa—Stalin has attained the complete concentration of power in his own hands. What else should this regime be called if not Soviet Bonapartism?

Bonapartism, by its very essence, cannot long maintain itself; a sphere balanced on the point of a pyramid must invariably roll down on one side or the other. But it is precisely at this point, as we have already seen, that the historical analogy runs up against its limits. Napoleon’s downfall did not, of course, leave untouched the relations between the classes; but in its essence the social pyramid of France retained its bourgeois character. The inevitable collapse of Stalinist Bonapartism would immediately call into question the character of the USSR as a workers’ state. A socialist economy cannot be constructed without a socialist power. The fate of the USSR as a socialist state depends upon that political regime that will arise to replace Stalinist Bonapartism. Only the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat can regenerate the Soviet system, if it is again able to mobilize around itself the toilers of the city and the village.” (ibid p45)

Full text here.

Soviet Bonapartism

Arthur Bough