[1] The analysis of this question has occupied a central place in the work of Socialisme ou Barbarie. We can only summarize our conclusions here. See “Socialism or Barbarism,” “The Relations of Production in Russia,” “ On the Content of Socialism I,” etc.
[2] Attempts have been made for a long time to reduce the factors that brought about the degeneration of the Russian revolution to the international isolation of the revolution and to the backward state of Russia. This “explanation” explains nothing: International isolation and the backwardness of the country could just as well have led (purely and simply) to the defeat of the revolution and to the restoration of capitalism. Such considerations do not in any way explain how the revolution both “succeeded” and degenerated at the same time. To place the emphasis on these factors is both to conceal the particular historical nature of developments in Russia and to ignore its most fruitful lessons for revolutionary practice. Isolation and backwardness favored this development and gave it its concrete form. But they did not determine its real signification. One cannot make the process of bureaucratization into an accident; likewise, there is no basis for the claim that a widespread revolution in Germany, for example, “could not have degenerated.” What developed out of the Russian Revolution has clearly shown that the problem of bureaucracy is one the whole of the international working class has to face and, moreover, that it cannot be solved except in terms of a real experience of the bureaucracy as a social reality.
[3] See S. ou B., No. 20 (December 1956), which is devoted almost entirely to the Hungarian Revolution, and the texts written by Hungarian revolutionaries, published in Nos. 21 and 23 (January and July 1958).
[4] This confusion constitutes the main basis for James Burnham’s pseudo-analyzes of the bureaucracy. See the first chapters of The Managerial Revolution.
[5] Actual wage levels are determined in the majority of cases much less by official wage rates, collective bargaining, and trade-union agreements, and much more by what happens inside the production process; the regulation of piece rates, the division of workers’ time between different types of work, and especially work norms play a decisive role on this score, and all these factors are the object of a fierce and permanent struggle between workers and management.
[6] Bourgeois industrial sociologists like Elton Mayo have long realized this. Most of the time, present-day “Marxists” are fanatical defenders of hierarchy. However little one understands the condition of the modern firm, one can immediately see the stupidity of any kind of “socialism” that limits itself to making changes outside the firm and does not start by completely overthrowing the day-to-day system of production.
[7] Advance or regression is not measured solely by the relative militancy of the working class, but also through its attitude toward problems it comes up against that cannot be reduced to political problems. The French “Left” takes delight in thinking the French working class is more “advanced” than the American or British working class because a majority of French workers support an organization like the CP whereas in England or the United States the workers vote for reformist or bourgeois parties. They have never given any attention to the fact that these American and English workers, whom they consider to be so politically “backward,” are much more militant and unyielding in disputes at the point of production than the French workers; they don’t even understand what these words mean.
[8] Obviously it has other aspects too, for on the one hand it also expresses the self-perpetuating interests of the whole system of exploitation in general. And on the other hand, it must allow the bureaucratic organizations to maintain some hold over the working class, for without this hold they would be nothing. But these aspects are secondary in relation to the problem being discussed in the text.
[9] These are Kautsky’s formulations, which Lenin endorsed in What Is to Be Done? as “profoundly true and significant.”
[10] That the reformists used the idea of a scientific prediction of the evolution of the capitalist economy to condemn the idea of revolution and to “prove” that we should rely on the workings of economic laws to achieve socialism, changes nothing.
[11] The expression is Kautsky’s and appears in his introduction to Capital that, published separately under the title “General Introduction to Marxism,” served as theoretical fodder for whole generations of militants.
[12] Nowhere does the contradiction appear more clearly than in Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary who underlined most emphatically the importance of the masses’ own experience and autonomous action and yet who devoted a major theoretical work to an attempt — a vain attempt, it must be said — to show that the process of accumulation would lead inevitably to the downfall of capitalism.
[13] It is hardly necessary to repeat that this process has been a contradictory one, or rather that the reality of these organizations has been contradictory from the very beginning and for most of their history. If these organizations — the trade-unions and parties of the Second and Third Internationals — had been “just” bureaucracies, they would have been nothing at all, and could not have achieved what they achieved or have played the role that they played. Before they degenerate completely, there is in the practice of these organizations the equivalent of what has been said above about Marxist theory itself: a double reality. It can be seen again in the example — which is historically without doubt the most important of all — of Lenin’s positions on the relationship between the Party and the masses. The idea of the Party as the custodian of socialist consciousness and of the proletariat as being incapable on its own of achieving anything more than trade-unionist consciousness, plays a rather episodic role in What Is to Be Done? and Trotsky assures us in his Stalin that Lenin would have abandoned it eventually. Yet it is taken up again with vigor in An Infantile Disorder (1920), where Lenin opposes the leftists with ideas on the relationship between the Party and the masses that are equivalent to those of What Is to Be Done? But in the meantime he had written State and Revolution (1917), in which the Party is completely absent. These contradictions can be found even more sharply drawn in Lenin’s line of action, sometimes putting all the emphasis on building the Party, and, after 1917, trying to solve every problem by means of it, sometimes being inspired by what was most original and most profound in what the movement of the masses was creating, appealing to them against the Party, and, in the last years, observing with anxiety the gap that was appearing between them and it. On this, it should be pointed out for the benefit of certain professional critics of bolshevism that the bureaucratic side of Leninism existed just as much — though in a more hypocritical way — among the Social Democrats; these critics never speak of the bureaucratic side of social democracy, and one would search there in vain for the equivalent of its revolutionary side.
[14] As Lenin did as regards reformist bureaucracy, and Trotsky, as regards Stalinist bureaucracy, whose bases, they believed, would be destroyed by the “objective crisis” of capitalism. This kind of argument boils down in the end to the idea of the “inevitable downfall” of capitalism.
[15] Trans.: Guy Mollet (1905–75) and Maurice Thorez (1900–64) were the secretaries-general of the SFIO and the PCF, respectively, at this time.
[16] See issues 13 and 20 (January 1954 and December 1956) of this review and the texts reprinted in La Société bureaucratique, 2: La Révolution contre la bureaucratie (10/18, 1973).
[17] See the texts on the French strikes of 1953 and 1955 and on the strikes in England and the United States in Nos. 13, 18, 19, and 26 (January 1954, January and July 1956, and November 1958) of S. ou B. (reprinted in L’Expérience du mouvement ouvrier, 1: Comment lutter (10/18, 1974) [Trans.: some of which have been translated and appear in the present volume]). On the meaning of the French population’s attitude toward Gaullism, see the text entitled “Bilan” [Trans.: not included in the present series; reprinted in L’Expérience du mouvement ouvrier, 2: Prolétariat et organization (10/18, 1974), pp. 89–116].
[18] Trans.: Bougnoule is a racially derogatory term applied especially to people of North African descent.
[19] Whatever the severity of the crisis — the events in Poland have demonstrated this again recently — an exploitative society can only be overthrown if the masses are not merely stirred into action but raise this action up to the level needed for a new social organization to take the place of the old one. If this does not happen, social life will continue and it will continue following the old model, though perhaps superficially changed to a greater or lesser degree. Now, no theory can “prove” that the masses will inevitably reach this requisite level of activity; such a “proof” would be a contradiction in terms.
[1] The analysis of this question has occupied a central place in the work of Socialisme ou Barbarie. We can only summarize our conclusions here. See “Socialism or Barbarism,” “The Relations of Production in Russia,” “ On the Content of Socialism I,” etc.
[2] Attempts have been made for a long time to reduce the factors that brought about the degeneration of the Russian revolution to the international isolation of the revolution and to the backward state of Russia. This “explanation” explains nothing: International isolation and the backwardness of the country could just as well have led (purely and simply) to the defeat of the revolution and to the restoration of capitalism. Such considerations do not in any way explain how the revolution both “succeeded” and degenerated at the same time. To place the emphasis on these factors is both to conceal the particular historical nature of developments in Russia and to ignore its most fruitful lessons for revolutionary practice. Isolation and backwardness favored this development and gave it its concrete form. But they did not determine its real signification. One cannot make the process of bureaucratization into an accident; likewise, there is no basis for the claim that a widespread revolution in Germany, for example, “could not have degenerated.” What developed out of the Russian Revolution has clearly shown that the problem of bureaucracy is one the whole of the international working class has to face and, moreover, that it cannot be solved except in terms of a real experience of the bureaucracy as a social reality.
[3] See S. ou B., No. 20 (December 1956), which is devoted almost entirely to the Hungarian Revolution, and the texts written by Hungarian revolutionaries, published in Nos. 21 and 23 (January and July 1958).
[4] This confusion constitutes the main basis for James Burnham’s pseudo-analyzes of the bureaucracy. See the first chapters of The Managerial Revolution.
[5] Actual wage levels are determined in the majority of cases much less by official wage rates, collective bargaining, and trade-union agreements, and much more by what happens inside the production process; the regulation of piece rates, the division of workers’ time between different types of work, and especially work norms play a decisive role on this score, and all these factors are the object of a fierce and permanent struggle between workers and management.
[6] Bourgeois industrial sociologists like Elton Mayo have long realized this. Most of the time, present-day “Marxists” are fanatical defenders of hierarchy. However little one understands the condition of the modern firm, one can immediately see the stupidity of any kind of “socialism” that limits itself to making changes outside the firm and does not start by completely overthrowing the day-to-day system of production.
[7] Advance or regression is not measured solely by the relative militancy of the working class, but also through its attitude toward problems it comes up against that cannot be reduced to political problems. The French “Left” takes delight in thinking the French working class is more “advanced” than the American or British working class because a majority of French workers support an organization like the CP whereas in England or the United States the workers vote for reformist or bourgeois parties. They have never given any attention to the fact that these American and English workers, whom they consider to be so politically “backward,” are much more militant and unyielding in disputes at the point of production than the French workers; they don’t even understand what these words mean.
[8] Obviously it has other aspects too, for on the one hand it also expresses the self-perpetuating interests of the whole system of exploitation in general. And on the other hand, it must allow the bureaucratic organizations to maintain some hold over the working class, for without this hold they would be nothing. But these aspects are secondary in relation to the problem being discussed in the text.
[9] These are Kautsky’s formulations, which Lenin endorsed in What Is to Be Done? as “profoundly true and significant.”
[10] That the reformists used the idea of a scientific prediction of the evolution of the capitalist economy to condemn the idea of revolution and to “prove” that we should rely on the workings of economic laws to achieve socialism, changes nothing.
[11] The expression is Kautsky’s and appears in his introduction to Capital that, published separately under the title “General Introduction to Marxism,” served as theoretical fodder for whole generations of militants.
[12] Nowhere does the contradiction appear more clearly than in Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary who underlined most emphatically the importance of the masses’ own experience and autonomous action and yet who devoted a major theoretical work to an attempt — a vain attempt, it must be said — to show that the process of accumulation would lead inevitably to the downfall of capitalism.
[13] It is hardly necessary to repeat that this process has been a contradictory one, or rather that the reality of these organizations has been contradictory from the very beginning and for most of their history. If these organizations — the trade-unions and parties of the Second and Third Internationals — had been “just” bureaucracies, they would have been nothing at all, and could not have achieved what they achieved or have played the role that they played. Before they degenerate completely, there is in the practice of these organizations the equivalent of what has been said above about Marxist theory itself: a double reality. It can be seen again in the example — which is historically without doubt the most important of all — of Lenin’s positions on the relationship between the Party and the masses. The idea of the Party as the custodian of socialist consciousness and of the proletariat as being incapable on its own of achieving anything more than trade-unionist consciousness, plays a rather episodic role in What Is to Be Done? and Trotsky assures us in his Stalin that Lenin would have abandoned it eventually. Yet it is taken up again with vigor in An Infantile Disorder (1920), where Lenin opposes the leftists with ideas on the relationship between the Party and the masses that are equivalent to those of What Is to Be Done? But in the meantime he had written State and Revolution (1917), in which the Party is completely absent. These contradictions can be found even more sharply drawn in Lenin’s line of action, sometimes putting all the emphasis on building the Party, and, after 1917, trying to solve every problem by means of it, sometimes being inspired by what was most original and most profound in what the movement of the masses was creating, appealing to them against the Party, and, in the last years, observing with anxiety the gap that was appearing between them and it. On this, it should be pointed out for the benefit of certain professional critics of bolshevism that the bureaucratic side of Leninism existed just as much — though in a more hypocritical way — among the Social Democrats; these critics never speak of the bureaucratic side of social democracy, and one would search there in vain for the equivalent of its revolutionary side.
[14] As Lenin did as regards reformist bureaucracy, and Trotsky, as regards Stalinist bureaucracy, whose bases, they believed, would be destroyed by the “objective crisis” of capitalism. This kind of argument boils down in the end to the idea of the “inevitable downfall” of capitalism.
[15] Trans.: Guy Mollet (1905–75) and Maurice Thorez (1900–64) were the secretaries-general of the SFIO and the PCF, respectively, at this time.
[16] See issues 13 and 20 (January 1954 and December 1956) of this review and the texts reprinted in La Société bureaucratique, 2: La Révolution contre la bureaucratie (10/18, 1973).
[17] See the texts on the French strikes of 1953 and 1955 and on the strikes in England and the United States in Nos. 13, 18, 19, and 26 (January 1954, January and July 1956, and November 1958) of S. ou B. (reprinted in L’Expérience du mouvement ouvrier, 1: Comment lutter (10/18, 1974) [Trans.: some of which have been translated and appear in the present volume]). On the meaning of the French population’s attitude toward Gaullism, see the text entitled “Bilan” [Trans.: not included in the present series; reprinted in L’Expérience du mouvement ouvrier, 2: Prolétariat et organization (10/18, 1974), pp. 89–116].
[18] Trans.: Bougnoule is a racially derogatory term applied especially to people of North African descent.
[19] Whatever the severity of the crisis — the events in Poland have demonstrated this again recently — an exploitative society can only be overthrown if the masses are not merely stirred into action but raise this action up to the level needed for a new social organization to take the place of the old one. If this does not happen, social life will continue and it will continue following the old model, though perhaps superficially changed to a greater or lesser degree. Now, no theory can “prove” that the masses will inevitably reach this requisite level of activity; such a “proof” would be a contradiction in terms.
[20] See “On the Content of Socialism, II.”
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