Max Shachtman
Articles from The New International
Reflections on a Decade Past On the Tenth Anniversary of Our Movement
Source: The New International: A Monthly Organ of Revolutionary Marxism Vol 16,
No. 3, May-June, 1950. Pg. 131-144.
Editor: Max Shachtman
Man, the political animal, does not start with theory but with action. It is
only after a variety of actions have accumulated that he feels the need of
drawing conclusions and acquires the possibility of theory which is only a
generalization from experience past to guide him in experience to come. Human
progress is made only to the extent that this need is felt and the possibility
utilized. If the known goal of that progress is true human dignity, the process
of reaching it can be described as the growth of man's consciousness of his
power over nature, including his own nature. And if this process is not
straightforward or uninterrupted or as rapid as it might be, it is due in large
measure to the fact that the mind, while the most remarkable organ we know, is
also one of the most conservative: each idea which finally lodges in it after
long and suspicious scrutiny offers resistance to every new idea or new theory.
All this holds true for man associated in political movements, including in
different degrees the most iconoclastic or revolutionary. The greater his
consciousness and his capacity for thinking, the more he strives to make his
thoughts comprehensive, to bring order and system into them. But beyond a
certain point, this striving, which is utterly indispensable for logical
thinking and fruitful action, runs the risk of sterilizing the movement and its
action by freezing thought into dogma. This risk is run especially by the
revolutionary movement, precisely because of the importance it attaches to
theory. The consequences of this risk are not unavoidable. They cannot be
conjured away, however, simply by repeating after Engels that our theory is not
a dogma but a guide to action. To understand why it is not a dogma and cannot
be, is much more important.
In a world where everything but change itself is continuously changing, and
where action (or inaction) contributes to change, theory, which is a guide to
action applied to given conditions, cannot possibly apply in exactly the same
way or to exactly the same extent under altered conditions. If theory is to
remain revolutionary and valid, it must of necessity always be open to the
criticism of experience, reaffirmed where practice confirms its validity,
modified where that is dictated by a modification of conditions; and discarded
where it proves to be ambiguous, outlived or false.
This constant re-examination and readiness to revise itself is provided for by
Marxism itself which, because it is revolutionary and scientific, is critical
and therefore also self-critical. It is its only safeguard against shriveling
into a dogma. It is only by resorting to this safeguard that Lenin was able to
overcome the conservatism of the mind (the mind of the revolutionist has a
conservatism of its own) and achieve the rearmament of Marxism without which no
Bolshevik revolution would have been possible. By misapplying this safeguard, or
ignoring it altogether, the Marxian movement of our time has contributed to its
own enfeeblement. In this sense, it is not Marxism that has failed, as many
gloomy critics find it so popular to say nowadays; it is the Marxian dogmatists
who have failed.
These considerations have increasingly influenced the life of our movement in
the ten years during which it has existed as an independent organization, first
as the Workers Party and now as the Independent Socialist League. The impact of
the war, which the working classes were entirely unprepared to cope with and
whose outcome they did not determine, left most of the small international
Marxian movement (the Trotskyist movement and those akin to it) with little more
than theory-turned-dogma. It jolted us into a realization that the theory and
politics of Marxism demanded a development or re-development without which it
would lose all the massive force it once possessed. The unfolding of the war
itself, the conditions under which it was concluded, and all the big events of
the dubious peace that followed it, only enhanced this realization.
To enter the second half of the century with nothing more than the political
equipment the movement had at the beginning of the war is not so much criminal
as it is preposterous. Those whose greatest boast is an impressive capacity for
boasting may claim as their proudest virtue a "finished program," as the
auto-certified Trotskyists do; they are only announcing that their program is as
good as finished and they with it. As for ourselves, we lay no more claim to
having a "finished program" (what a stupid phrase! Just when was it finished?
Just what finished it?) than Marxists have ever claimed since the days of the
Program of the Communist Party which Marx and Engels presented. We have a
program that is more than adequate for the times. We seek constantly to clarify,
renovate and strengthen it in harmony with the real developments and the needs
of the struggle. Since it is a program for struggle, and not a hone for elderly
radicals, we cannot say just when it will be "finished." The question is of
little interest to us.
THE PRINCIPAL NEW PROBLEM faced by Marxian theory, and therewith Marxian
practice, is the problem of Stalinism. What once appeared to many to be either
an academic or "foreign" problem is now, it should at last be obvious, a
decisive problem for all classes in all countries. If it is understood as a
purely Russian phenomenon or as a problem "in itself," it is of course not
understood at all. It exists as a problem only in connection with the dying out
of capitalist society, on the one hand, and the struggle to replace it by
socialism, on the other. It is only in this connection that we can begin to
understand it.
If our movement had done nothing more, in the past ten years, than to make its
contribution to the understanding of Stalinism, that alone would justify its
existence. It is our unique contribution, and all our views are closely
connected with it. We consider it decisive for the future of capitalism, in so
far as it has one, and for the future of socialism.
An understanding of Stalinism is too much to expect from the bourgeoisie. The
modest theoretical capacities at its disposal are still further restricted by
class interests which blind it in the investigation of serious social problems,
especially when it is so exclusively preoccupied with frenzied but futile
efforts to patch together a social order that is falling apart at every joint.
To the extent that its thinkers and statesmen try to explain Stalinism in more
or less coherent terms, they inform us that collectivism necessarily leads to
tyranny -- a homily usually prefaced by the well-worn banality from Lord Acton
about how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The explanation
does not explain much, least of all how it happens that the tyranny of
collectivism is supplanting the freedom of capitalism. But nothing more can be
asked from a theory which was intellectually developed and popularized by the
savants in the abattoirs of American yellow journalism. Most of the time, the
bourgeoisie does not transcend demonology. It explains Stalinism in the simple
terms of evil spirits, witchcraft, black magic, conjurations and other unnatural
forces, which can be exorcised by adequate police measures or by stocking more
atomic bombs than the demonic forces. Actually, Stalinism remains for the
bourgeoisie what Winston Churchill, not its most obtuse representative,
described as an enigma and a riddle and a mystery. The military mind of Mr.
Churchill -- which is only a species of the common police mind -- hears no
special call to undo the enigmas, ravel the riddles and pierce the mysteries of
society. Explain Stalinism? It is enough to blow it up by an atomic bomb, even
if it does not belong to him but to his more affluent cousin across the sea.
The international Social Democracy has little more to offer. Theory in general
and Marxian theory in particular ceased long ago to hold its interest. In part
this explains why it alternates between joining with the Stalinists against the
bourgeoisie (in the East) and joining with the bourgeoisie against the
Stalinists (in the West). About a quarter of a century ago, long before their
recent division into pro-Stalinists and American patriots, the Russian Menshevik
leaders who retained some respect for theoretical generalization described
Stalinism as "state capitalism" or as "one of its forms." In more recent times,
the same theory has regained a pallid existence, or a multiplicity of
existences, among smaller groups in and around the Trotskyist movement:
Stalinism is Red Fascism, or bureaucratic Fascism, or caste-ruled state
capitalism, or bureaucratic state ...
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