Socialist carried an article by ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI on the left's attitude to the USSR. This OLIVER MACDONALD, editor of Focus on Europe, replies to some of the issues Kowalewski raised.
THERE some fairly flabby formulations in my article on the left and the Soviet Union, but I can't go along with Kowalewski's efforts completely break the back of the argument in it. We have basically different lines for the left's policy towards the USSR.
two tasks: oppose NATO's economic and military pressure on the USSR, wage ideological agalnst ine aulnorilarian burcaucranic political regime there. I see these two Tasksas essence a snager course of action for aiding the workfor their political rights the curope. Thus, we don't NATO in spite of our support for the rights of people in Eastern Europe: we do so because of our support for them.
At first it seems that Kowalewski agrees with LONN but simply disagrees mantic thinks restore A thinks pressure is the secondary task of the Western Left. I would agree if it was for socialists in Europe: combat the enemy at home at hand, weighing on the backs of the working people there But the same reason of fighting the enemy at home it is NATO that is our main larger wore revel renneustine our ideological struggle against Stalinist regime.
But comrade Kowalewski doesn't simply disagree with my order riorities; he violently opposes then saying I go over to the with an action programme whose only use "is to invite people to join yet another USSR Friendship society'.
Now if we strip this vivid phrase of its polemical innuendo — that I want to turn peopie into Kremlin like the cockatoos in the actually existing Soviet Friendship Societies Kowalewski's charge has a good deal of truth in it. After all, if you call for Us troops to leave Europe and for the unilateral dissolution of NATO are giving the USSR a huge militar dvantag in Europe. And I am call ing for these things so that make rather I would say very to the USSR's security interests. in that sense Kowalewski is right: I'm more or less — let's say more — in the Soviet camp.
But which Soviet camp? That of Ine people or that Stalinist regime? He doesn't ustinguis berween tne two credible, but true. He falls for oldest trick in the Kremlin's White ideology.
So then does Kowalewski verbally support the task comDallilig Western against the USSR? The answer is that this combat will have a LIVED valuable ideological impact West, albeit rather an obscure namely. will weaken the minism' theory which.caus to une rejecaon or une teory (sic) of the last stage of capitalism'.
Action stress much fighting capitalist is to defend his week capitalism'!!
Eastern But will NATO's militarism against ine Eastern Europe? Well, the Bast-West undoubtedly, to late 1960s, to in Poland.
Soviet leadership Western pagandists)
struggle Stand this dialectic at united ing the hands of the Soul al unt Eastern oppose Eternal development. comrade these two Hold on.
over could still paradise in one Wasn't it Uncle Jo?
Eastern Kowalewski theoretical error -here, for pressure the Stalinist the on of you basıcally back it oviet cam idea?
bureaucracy Kowalewski SCO every and of the patrols Germany?
friendly So, of the even its inthe of both the House's Comrade to remove pressure The exist. struggle!
in the aball. l 'exterand I quote INP of the than that of Japan alone.
No wonder Kowalewski doesn't the moortalice of UL COUld the USSR if all that this fights will achieve own suspect 'theory of the last stage of the weakening strengthen the opportunities for popular movements regimes reduction tensions Hungary and Poland (1956), did again in Czechoslovakia in the middle played an enormously important role in the maturing of conditions for Solidarity's rise We also have ample proof that the fears the internal nac or serene rney were worre sick about it during the high noon of early 1970s. And the mainstream strategists of the US (as opposed to the proalso agree about this.
Yet Kowalewski doesn't unders: all. For him easing pressure on the USSR equals freeKremlin to lash and the USes stern Europe it's niu lis crror over bolcyis come pounded with an error of analysis. He doesn't think that external pressure is of any great importance to Soviet inHe says 'the Soviet Union was a beseiged fortress' beseiged, wasn't it? And who was it who said this isolation didn't matter:
build socialist isolated country?
makes the same from a very different political standpoint, of course He discounts external says the determinant is the internal force bureaucracy itself. deed, he seems to fear that any stress external pressures somehow lets the Soviet bureaucracy off the hook. Unless you blame it for everything is that the The real point is that this Stalinist feeds off this external pressure like a starving wolf. Can't Jaruzelski guzzling tion morsel of Reaganite pressure CDU leaders' calls for another look at the 1937 frontiers of deepen. must layer How nice if that pressure didn't exist. My lop prorily lask was to nigh Kowalewski takes an casier road. ne simply says ll aoesn l Hey presto: no need for any Some facts: 1977G of the US , France and Britain com ined equalled 3712 billion dollar USSR was 645 ICS.
Look at productivity, technological total military budgets of the USSR and the main capitalist allies — the USSR is much weaker all along О ЗАТРРО РІОНАЛО ВІТ АТ ОТІ cording to re in route ta cording to the Institute of studies; everywhere else it is heavily against the USSR. Look at the ring of US Riphery of the USSR. No pressure?
But this leads on to a more basic difference still with Kowalewski. He can discount all this Western muscle simply by failing to see any reason why the capitalist states should want to flex it against the Soviet Union. He can't see this because he can't much difference between the USSR capitalism some. like full emi not mt and nationalisation not much: inese al c COLICS. residues: there's no different organising principle of economic life. After all, in his view atop the nationalised industry can do ferocious exploitation of the workers. He sees no sharp and pressing conflict between the social basis of the state and the Stalinist regime. He thinks the workers have no more social weight in the USSR than in the West (perhaps Jane ne ever tunk ABC that the workers can gain nothing socially unless they conquer power.
In my article there was a clear view of the source of this conflict: it lay not in the ITT or General Motors or GEC of the dictatorial methods of the Stalinist regime, but in their loathing of the USSR's principle of social organisation: property and the planned economy.
There are people on the Marxis. left who recognise all this but say that such nationalisation can be profoundly hostile to working class interests. Shachtman, the American Trotskyist for example, took this view at the end of the 1930s. saying that nationalisation had in the Soviet case fitted well with a ferociously oppressive and exploitative 11cW bureaucratic which turned the Soviet workers into little better than slaves.
The strength of Shachtman's analysis, from a theoretical point view, was that he laid down - in his early development of the theory very clear criteria for testing his posiHe said that it was based on two empirical tests: first, that the trend away from social egalitarianism evident in the 1930s would continue to that the terroristic method of rule by the Stalir gang would continue and deepen On the other side, I think Trotskyists who hold that the USSR is bureaucratically degenerated workers' state must argue that the characterisation workers' state means something the position of the working class in necessarily about the shape of the In particular, System. argue and seek to prove that the social rights of the workers must and that the terroristic violence against the working must decline. All of this is another way of saying that the bureaucratic increasingly tends to lose Caracly bully and oppress workers and is increasingly enfeebled in the face of the domestic working unless developments 1n capitalist world give the bureaucracy some historical breathing space I think the balance sheet of the last 40 years since Shachtmann wrote proves him wrong and orthodox Trotskyists right on the basic issue. The terroristic regime Stalin dismantled replaced by authoritarian bureaucratic dictatorship which seeks to hold on to powe the see have those of Stalin. with different inequalities of the Stalin period were put Brezhnev period, though not insurmountable in some international conditions — social bar riers arising against any possibility of bureaucracy capitalist market: culturally the increasingly powerful urban working class coming to insis as of right on the employment, massive keep its essential available at largely stable prices food, rents, transport. gas and elec • UNCLE grammes, tunities and so on.
even calls it ridiculous. He doesn't consider there is any basically positive organising principle in Soviet society, he sees the 'totalitarian regime' as fitting very snugly rover. suce e lolnks is erocious ly exploiting the workers. He thinks it is even ABC to insist that the Sovie thạt working strengthened in any way economically or socially for the, to him, elementary reason that it hasn't power. In short, no change between the bourgeois demagogv of showing much less need to work to fill their stomachs as this proved anything. And he ends up by seeming in 1913 under the Tsar favourkers under the with their lot in 1960: otherwise what does this ludicrous piece of Hoover Institute nonsense about wage levels signify for him? the T:= Minterin the following:
Polish workers exerted no pressure on the regime to improve their lot in the early 1970s? What about 1976? Was it all pointless because they didn't seize the rise of Solidarnosc had nothing to was do with the increased cultural level, economic and social strength achiev decades?
methods Secondly, the growing into reverse in the Krushcher- forces, with massive fierce re-introducing the numerically security of full subsidies goods and services les, wide educational oppro educational opporKowalewski rejects all this — he Thatcher onto nationalised cannot have been taken political He even gets himself ensnarled in American workers anything about favourably had TErE does he really bellere ice Tiy weak and, what I said Polish workers get their ideas from concerning their right to frozen prices rationing than Conomy? Where did they glaned planned egalitarianism against social privileges from if not from the plann ed economy? Or does he think they came from the inequalities in Poland being so much greater than those bet ween the big bourgeoisie and worker in the West — the Polish bureaucrats were piffling little third rate capitalist landowners the somehow the workers here don't seem strongly as the Polish And how come the 'ferocious op pressor and exploiter' Gierek couldn't ash into the August strikes the way Clashes into 6 months of miners' strikes? Was it because the Polish workers had stronger unions in August than the British miners, depen ent party like the Labour Par.
couldn't have anything with the principle of social organis ion and its ideological reflectio Poland, you don't think? And does Kowalewski really see Mr. Chernenko as some kind of Stalin figure, herding ten million off to Siberia?
It is a great joy for me to be atle t my comrade Kowalewski because think we share so much in commor and because it has been so very dif ficult to find a common framewor leaders of the Polish towards the USSR Furthers remarks »ETe , as we say euphemisticalh here 'bad formulations' But or she I consider to be the key issue of pots - the Western left's objectives i3 a Cold Warag in he USER NATO's economic militar and I think Zeigne needs to spell out an alternaive paz? on this question and not tr to bout 3 aside as secondary
Socialist Action 21 September 1984
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and and meet tit he west,
workers. Has this nothing to do with Wordodity fetishism in the capitalist