Groucho Marxism

To most people, ‘Stalinism’ refers to the totalitarian, state-driven methods of rule and ideology implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953. However, socialists tend to use the term ‘Stalinism’ in a broader sense. For most socialists, ‘Stalinism’ refers to the prevailing ideology of the Soviet Union from 1929 up until its collapse in 1989, and by extension, to the prevailing ideology in countries aligned with the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and elsewhere across the world. Thus, what most people call socialism, socialists call Stalinism. It is necessary that we clearly separate the two as the method of rule implemented by the Soviet Union and its allies represented a gross perversion of socialist ideas.

It is no accident that Stalinism has become conflated with socialism. This conflation was encouraged by the ruling classes in capitalist countries, particularly when the Soviet Union went into decline in the 1970s, as a way to brainwash the people living in these countries into believing that ‘socialism doesn’t work’. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 this process reached its apogee, with the American political scientist Frances Fukiyama famously declaring the ‘end of history’. It is easy to poke fun at Fukiyama’s claim. But his central point was that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies was largely at an end, with socialism defeated and the world settling on liberal democracy. At that time there were few who disagreed.

In today’s unstable world, capitalist triumphalism has been replaced by pessimism. The turning point was undoubtedly the 2008 global financial crisis. Prior to that, we were constantly told what a brilliant system capitalism is and how it had led to a period of unprecedented peace and stability. This lie became impossible to maintain after 2008. The message now is: capitalism might not be perfect, in fact in many ways it’s rubbish; but it’s the best system we can come up with so you have to stop complaining and just get on with it. Of course, this is also a lie. Contrary to what many people seem to think, it would not be difficult to come up with a better socioeconomic system than capitalism, as pretty much any socioeconomic system would be better than capitalism.

There are also socioeconomic systems that are (arguably) worse than capitalism – one of which is Stalinism. It is important to point out that Stalinism had nothing in common with the workers’ democracy that was being built after the Bolsheviks’ victory in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Sadly, in the absence of successful socialist revolutions taking place elsewhere in more economically developed countries, the nascent Russian workers’ state was left isolated and the nation was plunged into a civil war which stretched the economy to its limits. This led to the development of a centralized bureaucracy, which over time began to exert more and more control over the populace. Anyone suspected of providing even the mildest opposition was brutally suppressed.

Still, many Marxists predicted that the working class would eventually push aside the parasitic bureaucrats. Indeed, the revolt that shook the foundations of the Stalinist regimes in 1989 began with demands for democratic reform, not capitalist restoration. However, largely thanks to Stalin’s purges, those that could have provided the necessary revolutionary leadership had been wiped out. By the late 1980s, bureaucratic misrule had brought economic growth in Stalinist states to a complete standstill. It wasn’t always this way: up until the 1960s, despite bureaucratic mismanagement, the advantages of a planned economy meant that the Soviet Union experience economic growth that easily outpaced growth in capitalist states. But there was also huge wastage and massive environmental degradation.

Genuine socialist planning requires genuine democracy. Such democracy never really existed in the Soviet Union, and certainly not under Stalin. This is was ultimately what led to the collapse of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For the working class of Russia, what followed was not the improvements they had hoped for but economic collapse. The working class internationally also paid a heavy price as the demise of the planned economies of Eastern Europe dealt a blow to the idea that society could be organized in a different way. This led to the wholesale collapse of workers’ organizations. Leaders of trade unions sought to accommodate capitalism, to the detriment of their members.

The demise of Stalinism in no way resolved any of the inherent contradictions of global capitalism. Unfortunately the absence of mass workers’ parties has made it much harder for working class consciousness to develop. This highlights why it’s so important that we rebuild workers’ organizations across the world.