Talk:Bureaucratic collectivism

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[edit] Could/would

I've re-read The USSR In War and it still seems to me to say that there will be a proletarian revolution; a bureaucracy has developed and will tend to develop towards a state of bureaucratic collectivism; but this is unstable and so isn't a useful description. Do you agree? If so, we could explain Trotsky's view more clearly. Warofdreams talk 02:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• No, Trotsky's hypothesis was not bureacratic collectivism was the most likely alternative to political revolution. Generally, Trotsky's writings suggest that the idea that a 'new exploiting class' [to take his term] could emerge would remove the idea of socialist as a strategy for this epoch. He emphasises that Stalinism is episodic, and that the alternatives are either workers' power or capitalist counter-revolution. His forms of words in The USSR in War are very conditional, as is common in his work: froms like 'even if were to accept this, the implication would be that' does not indicate acceptance of 'that', let alone 'this'. For example, in The USSR in War Trotsky says that if both the proletariat and the capitalists decay while the bureaucracy rises then this could lead to a new exploiting society: but this is not his prognosis. He was fully against notions of new class theories because, in so far as a new class society could supercede the workers state, it suggested a further stage laid between capitalism and socialism. --DuncanBCS 09:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• • Perhaps I'm not being clear - I don't disagree with that summary at all. Clearly Trotsky did not believe that the position of both the proletariat and the capitalists would remain sufficiently weak that the bureaucracy could achieve a new exploiting society as described by bureaucratic collectivism. But were this to happen - which as you say, he did not believe in any way likely - he seems to say bureaucratic collectivism is the logical conclusion. It could be argued that the position at the end of WWII represented this and brought it about, although of course those proposing the theory held that it was already an accurate description, and other Trotskyists found other explanations for the impasse. Warofdreams talk 02:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• An analogy: lawyers argue in 'nested cases': in the first case the window is not broken; in the second case my client did not break it; in the third case it was an accident. So, Trotsky's argument is: in the first case the will be political revolution; in the second case there will be counter-revolution. He examines an alternative third case: that Stalinism defeats both the working- and capitalist-classes and stabilises while the other two decay, thus proving the bureaucracy to be a new exploiting class. He firstly argues against the possibility of this case, an secondly concludes that it would show that Imperialism was not the final stage and that socialism would be off the agenda for generations: which he also did not believe would be the case. Trotsky talked of a possible 'new exploiting' class, not of bureaucratic collectivism, as the potential outcome. I have seen comrades, for example around the Workers Libery current, suggest that Trotsky said that is Stalinism survived the war then we would have to say that it had become a new class society: this is not a correct representation of his opinion. Indeed, Trotsky anticipated the expansion of the USSR into the buffer states. With hindsight, the economic decelleration of the USSR and the development of capitalism there over the last decade could seem to validate Trotsky's idea that Stalinism was a cul-de-sac, rather than a new class society. --DuncanBCS 10:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• Clearly it's a matter of interpretation - I don't see why a new class society should be any more stable than capitalism, and other than perhaps Rizzi, I don't believe any proponent of the theory argued that it represented an advance on capitalism, rather that it was a cul-de-sac, which would ultimately fall to either socialism or capitalism. It certainly survived longer than Trotsky predicted. Where Trotsky anticipated the expansion of the USSR into the buffer states, did he see this as prolonging its degenerated form significantly? I'll see if I can find an agreeable form of words to clarify the current text. Warofdreams talk 01:22, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

• Good points. I suppose stability isn't the issue: it's whether the Stalinist system as a necessary route to take forward economic development, or whether Stalinism could solidify into a society where the bureacracy assumed the role and benefits of a ruling class. Some clearly do think that, in 1917 or 1948, the working class could not have taken power that that a bureacratic elite was the only way to develop the economy [assuming that imperialist would under-develop it]. For example, this view underpins Grant's use of 'proletarian Bonapartism', Cliff's idea of 'deflected Permanent Revolution' and a those around the Shachtman tradition who have argued that the 1917 revolution could not have survived (Burham's book perhaps is the best example of this; I also see some hotly-disputed comments like this on the Workers' Liberty site, for example. For Trotsky, the expansion of the USSR and the overturn of the bureaucracy were linked: his writing on Finland suggest that the USSR would emerge larger and stronger from the war. I think the simplest thing to change is the suggestion that Trotsky thought that, if the bureaucracy was not overturned, then it would move towards bureaucratic collectivism.