Trotskyist Bulletin No. 8
AFGHANISTAN & THE LEFT
Document 2b.6
Bending the Stick Too Far
On the Slogan
Hail Red Army
Reprinted from 1917 No. 5,
Winter 1988-89
Since the formation of our political tendency, six years ago, our
polemics with other leftists on Afghanistan have revolved around the
fundamental question of which way to point the gunsat the
imperialist-backed mujahedin or at the Soviet army. The slogan
Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!, which we carried over from the
Spartacist League, left no room for confusion on that question. But the
impending Soviet betrayal in Afghanistan has demonstrated that this slogan was
flawed. To continue to hail the Soviet army as it cuts and runs is
absurd on its face; but any of Gorbachevs Stalinist predecessors could
just as easily have carried out the same betrayal. Thus we have to conclude
that more careful attention to the Trotskyist criteria for evaluating the
military actions of the Soviet bureaucracy would have prevented us from
adopting this mistaken formulation in the first place, and hence spared us the
necessity of having to withdraw it along with the retreating Soviet army.
Trotskyists have always been careful to distinguish between
military and political support to the Stalinist bureaucracy. The
Stalinist ruling caste in the Soviet Union, for all of its
counter-revolutionary betrayals, still exercises power within the framework of
collectivized property established by the October Revolution. The Soviet Union
is thus the object of implacable imperialist hostility. In the face of
capitalist aggression, the Stalinist bureaucracy cannot defend itself without
simultaneously defending, and in certain cases extending geographically, the
socialized property forms upon which its rule is based. Trotskyists, who
consider these property forms a historic gain for the working class, place
themselves unambiguously on the same side of the barricades as the Stalinist
bureaucracy in any military confrontation with imperialism.
But military support to the Soviet Union no more implies
confidence in the bureaucracy or its methods than, for example, support for the
PATCO strike in 1981 implied endorsing Lane Kirkland and the AFL-CIO
officialdom who sold out the strike. Just as we point out that unions can best
be defended by replacing the present labor traitors with a revolutionary
leadership, so we argue that only through the ouster of the Stalinist
bureaucrats can the social advances embodied in the degenerated/ deformed
workers states be consistently defended. To the national insularity, treachery
and contempt for the masses of the Stalinists, we counterpose our own program
of workers democracy and revolutionary proletarian internationalism. Thus
military support to the Stalinists against imperialism does not imply one iota
of political support for them or their methods.
The trouble with the slogan Hail Red Army in
Afghanistan! is that it failed to distinguish between political and
military support. The Soviet army (which has not officially been called the
Red Army since 1946) is the military arm of the Kremlin
bureaucracy. The armys policies are those of the bureaucracy. Its role is
therefore a contradictory one, like that of the bureaucracy itself. Insofar as
the Russian army defends the Soviet Union against imperialism (and this was
indeed its purpose in going into Afghanistan), we are on its side militarily.
If it sweeps away oppressive social structures and replaces them with
collectivized property in the areas under its control (and this was undoubtedly
one possibility of the Russian intervention), we will support such
measures. But to support the Soviet army uncritically (i.e., to
hail it) would put us in the position of having to apologize for
the Stalinists when they accommodate themselves to the social status quo
or undertake a cowardly retreat. And, not surprisingly, this is exactly
what they have done in Afghanistan.
Some SL supporters argue that Hail Red Army! was
simply an emphatic way of lending military support to Soviet forces, against
the cold-war hysteria which escalated immediately after the intervention. In
fairness, it should be pointed out that the Spartacist League did warn of the
possibility of a Soviet betrayal at the time it first advanced the slogan.
While the supposed Moscow-loyalists of the Communist Party were wincing and
looking for places to hide, the SL advanced this deliberately angular
formulation in the face of a wave of anti-Sovietism which was sweeping America.
Commendable as this impulse may have been, there is no getting around the fact
that taken literally and by itself, the slogan amounts to a blanket political
endorsement of the Soviet role in Afghanistan.
As Trotsky wrote, In order that these two varieties of
defense of the USSR [the Stalinists and the Fourth
Internationals] do not become confused in the consciousness of the masses
it is necessary to know clearly and precisely how to formulate slogans which
correspond to the concrete situation (In Defense of Marxism). The
call for Military Victory to the Soviet Army corresponded to the
concrete situation in Afghanistan because it placed us squarely on the Soviet
side of the battle lines without assuming any responsibility for Stalinist
betrayals.
Political Bandits and Soviet Defensism
The Bolshevik Tendency, many of whose members were driven out of
the Spartacist League (SL) for the sin of thinking for themselves, has traced
the SLs degeneration from a genuine democratic-centralist organization
into the leader cult that it is today. In the Spartacist League, where
democratic centralism has long been a dead letter, the political line is
decreed from the top and even the mildest internal dissent is often taken as
evidence of disloyalty to the regime of James Robertson, SL National Chairman
and Peerless Leader. To deflect all criticism of his despotic internal regime,
Robertson routinely asserts that his critics are secretly animated by sinister
motives, the desire to abandon the defense of the Soviet Union not least among
them. It was therefore perfectly predictable that the SL would seize upon our
criticism of Hail Red Army as evidence that we were
nothing but rotten anti-Soviet renegades from the beginning.
No sooner did we raise our criticisms of this slogan at a
Trotskyist League of Canada (Canadian Robertsonites) forum in Toronto, than the
SL rushed into print with an article entitled BT Says Dont Hail Red
Army in Afghanistan (Workers Vanguard [WV, 25 March). This article
claims that our rejection of Hail Red Army is proof positive that
we are about to abandon Soviet defensism in favor of Shachtmanism. WV
attempts to support its claim that the BT is preparing to set up its
tent in the Third Camp with a hodge-podge of assertions so fragmentary
and disingenuous that attempting to refute them is like trying to pin down a
glob of mercury. We are nevertheless obliged to try.
The article is predicated on a false dichotomy: either we
accept the formulation, Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! or we
deny the contradictory nature of the Soviet bureaucracy and imply that it is
counterrevolutionary through and through:
What the BT disappears is the
contradictory character of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The line of
Stalinism is counterrevolutionary through and through and to the core,
a more concise and eloquent expression of the BT position, first
appeared as a one-sided formulation during the Socialist Workers Partys
1952-53 internal struggle against the pro-Stalinist Cochran-Clarke
liquidators.... [The BT] prefer the image of soul-destroying, monolithic
Stalinist totalitarianism.
This is known as argument by bald assertion. There is simply no
basis for such a conclusion in anything we have said. It is rather the
Hail Red Army! slogan itself that obliterates the
contradictory possibilities inherent in Soviet Afghan policy from the outset.
The 25 March Workers Vanguard admits that, unlike World War II in which
the Soviet Union was determined to crush the Nazi invaders:
... the Soviet bureaucracy never really tried to
win in Afghanistan because it refused to implement a social revolution. One
bourgeois commentator recently recognized that The Soviet Army has never
committed itself fully in Afghanistan
In this context, Hail Red Army! roughly translates as
Hurrah for the Army that is Not Smashing Islamic Reaction! or
Hurrah for the Army that Does NOT INTEND to Smash Islamic
Reaction! Evocative perhaps, but what does it evoke?
The Contradictions of Stalinism
The Spartacist claim that our objection to Hail Red
Army! amounts to a denial of Stalinisms contradictory character
only makes sense on the basis of a very peculiar notion of those
contradictions. Is the SL implying that the Soviet military somehow embodies
the progressive side of the Stalinist bureaucracy as opposed to the
civilian apparatus of the Communist Party, which represents its conservative
side? On this premise alone can the slogan Hail Red Army! be seen
as an attempt to exploit the contradictions of the Soviet ruling
casteby setting the bureaucracys left wing (the military) against
its right wing (the Politburo).
The Soviet officer corps and the CPSU Politburo are both integral
parts of the Stalinist ruling caste, with the former subordinate to the latter.
Within both groups, moreover, there are various political differences,
including the perennial tensions between moderates and
hardliners so dearly beloved of Western Kremlinologists. But the
differences between these groupings are merely tactical and transient. At
another political juncture, those holding out for more favorable terms in
Afghanistan could become the most vocal advocates of surrender and vice
versa. Trotskyists do not hand out blank checks of support to any wing of
the bureaucracy.
The Soviet bureaucracy is not monolithic in any simple
sense. There are within it all kinds of factions and shadings of opinion, as
there are in any political formation. Individuals committed to genuine
Bolshevism (such as Ignace Reiss) may occasionally surface from its ranks.
Further, the bureaucracy is a brittle and unstable caste, and entire sections
of it could go over to the side of the working class in the course of a
political revolution in the degenerated/ deformed workers states. This happened
in Hungary in 1956. But as a whole, and in the absence of a proletarian
upsurge, the bureaucracy remains committed to the maintenance of its political
power. The contradictions of Soviet society are obliquely reflected in the
infighting among various factions of the bureaucracy, but such struggles occur
within the framework of how best to preserve bureaucratic rule.
The fundamental contradiction of the deformed and degenerated
workers states is between the social base of the collectivized economies and
the Stalinists paralyzing monopoly of political decision-making which
introduces all kinds of distortions and irrationalities into the planning
process, and thus constitutes a fetter on economic and social development. This
contradiction cannot be resolved by the triumph of one bureaucratic faction
over another, but only through the overthrow of the entire parasitic
Stalinist caste by a workers political revolution.
The Spartacist League of course professes to agree with this and
to uphold the Trotskyist program of political revolution in the degenerated/
deformed workers states. However the logic of its polemic against us points in
another direction. Could the implication of a left/ right differentiation
between the Soviet military and the rest of the ruling stratum suggest that the
SL is giving up hope in the Soviet workers and banking on some bureaucratic
faction to redeem the USSR instead? The SL leadership has not yet fully
answered this question, perhaps not even for itself. But, to paraphrase a
recent WV polemic, maybe a few of its cards have unintentionally been
laid on the table.
Whither Jimstown?
The degeneration of a revolutionary organization does not take
place overnight. It is only under the pressure of events and in sparring with
other political tendencies that revisionist appetites gradually emerge. At the
outset of Reagans anti-Soviet crusade, the Spartacist League correctly
adopted a hard Soviet-defensist stance. But by this time the degeneration of
the SLs internal regime was already at an advanced stage. It was only a
matter of time before the SL, having lost confidence in its ability to lead the
working class, began to look around for other forces to accomplish this task.
As the politically stagnant 1980s wore on, the SL began to
show signs of sliding over from Soviet defensism into a certain affinity for
Stalinist regimes. On the internal side this slippage did not take the form of
clearcut political pronouncements, but was unmistakable nonetheless.
Photographs of Wojciech Jaruzelski, Polands military strongman, began to
appear on the walls of the groups New York headquarters. This mood
simultaneously found external political expression when the New York contingent
in the SLs 1982 anti-Klan demonstration in Washington chose to call
itself the Yuri Andropov Brigade, after the Stalinist butcher of
the Hungarian Revolution. When the SL mounted a series of international
emergency demonstrations in 1983, calling for seating
Kampucheas Stalinist rulers at the United Nations, it carried signs
hailing the pro-Vietnamese wing of the Kampuchea Stalinists as Real
Khymer Communists. On this occasion, the SL also carried placards
hailing the Stalinists reconstruction of the economy. Yet the
Trotskyist call for political revolution to oust the Stalinist regimes in
Kampuchea and Vietnam was deliberately omitted.
But incipient Stalinophilia is only one manifestation of the
SLs political decline. There is also a growing fear of offending the U.
S. bourgeoisie, especially at those critical moments when American lives are on
the line. Hence the SLs extreme solicitude for the Reaganaut Star
Warriors who took their last ride aboard the ill-fated Challenger, and its call
to bring U. S. Marines home alive from Lebanon during the
imperialist intervention in that country in 1983. In 1984, the SL offered in
the pages of its public press to defend the Democratic National
Convention against a hallucinated right-wing threat and went so far as to call
on the labor movement to do likewise.
These curtsies in the direction of the American bourgeoisie might
seem at first glance incompatible with the SLs recent admiration for
Stalinist leaders. But, as the experience of the U. S. Communist Party attests,
following the Stalinist lead abroad is by no means incompatible with class
collaboration at home. Pessimism about the ability of the proletariat and its
vanguard to transform the world is the common denominator. If an organization
no longer believes in its own revolutionary capacities, why not play it safe
domestically and entrust Marxisms revolutionary mission to someone else
far awaylike the Red Army in Afghanistan.
Although the Robertsonites future trajectory is not
completely clear, they are now in a political bind. They have been unable to
construct a convincing rebuttal to the Bolshevik Tendencys critique of
their external political flip-flops. As for our extensive documentation of the
degeneration of the SLs internal life, they remain silent, because our
allegations are true and verifiable. The SL is therefore working overtime to
find a political club to hit us with, and wishfully thinks it has found one in
Afghanistan.
In this connection the SL has published a new document on the BT,
which features extracts from the debate over hailing the Soviet
army in Afghanistan and also includes selections from our polemical exchanges
on a variety of questions, from the U. S. Marines in Lebanon to the destruction
of Challenger. Those who are seriously interested in these debates should not
be content with the portions selected by the SL. In Trotskyist Bulletins
No. 1 and 2, we published the complete
texts of our debates on the Yuri Andropov Brigade and saving the Marines in
Lebanon. We also have copies available of the complete text of our polemics on
the Hail Red Army! slogan.
While the Spartacist League apparently finds it necessary to
invest considerable time and energy in a continuing series of polemics against
our positions, their leadership has consistently refused to face us in open,
public debate over any of the disputed issues. In our 8 April letter to WV
we proposed to the SL:
In view of your apparent interest in the
implications of the correction in our formulation of Soviet defensism in
Afghanistan, and your insistence that those who refuse to hail the
Stalinists are headed for the Third Camp, we propose a public debate on the
questionin either New York or Torontoat the earliest mutually
convenient date.
We reiterated this offer in a 21 June letter. So far, the
Robertsonites, well aware that discretion is the better part of valor, have
declined. In the Spartacist League today, theory and program have become the
handmaidens of a leader whose chief preoccupation is the maintenance his own
personal supremacy. The fact is that the SL leaders are afraid to engage in
public political debate with us because they know they cannot defend
hailing the Soviet military, except by contradicting the
theoretical and programmatic underpinnings of Trotskyism upon which their
organization is supposedly based. |