FAKERY
By Henri Valin
Michel Pablo, a former leader of the Fourth International, recently(1) sharply attacked an article I wrote last summer on the crisis in Yugoslavia. It appears that I was "sectarian" and displayed "bitter hatred" for the "historic events unfolding in Yugoslavia" when I noted the massive unemployment appearing there and attributed it to the institution of "workens seif-management" and not to- "bureaucratic deformations" due to’ some "perturbations" [sic] that have appeared in the Yugoslav economy and that I launched "confusionist attacks against self-management and against the necessary reforms of the Stalinist model of a centrally directed economy," etc., etc.
It should be: mentioned that our critic, generally so- clairvoyant, so wise, so “objective, such a master of theory, had just made a sizable:discovery on the subject of this same Yugoslavia, a discovery, however, which he suddenly: dropped -- this country, if we 35. (5) believe him, last summer underwent a’ "political revolution," neither more nor less.
If Marxist categories are not to be dissolved in arbitrary subjectivism, a "political revolution".can be understood only as the passing of political power from one social layer to another, without an overturn in the existing mode of production, while a "social revolution" signifies a shift of political power from one-social class to another, with a simultaneous overturn in the existing mode of production.
In a bureaucratically degenerated or deformed workers state, a "political revolution" then can only signify-a shift in the exercise of political power from the bureaucracy to the proletariat; that is, the reestablishment of Soviet democracy.
But Pablo tells us that the "political revolution" which just took place in Yugoslavia is a “revolution from above." A revolution from above is a revolution conducted by the people in power. But the social layer in power in Yugoslavia was the bureaucracy; otherwise, a political revolution would never have been called for there.. A "political revolution from above" is consequently the abolition of the bureaucracy's: political power...by the bureaucracy itself; i.e., something completely meaningless whether from the point of view of sociology or the facts. It is clear that Pablo mixes up the victory of a certain group in the bureaucracy -- even if it be the more "liberal" group -- with the loss of political power by the bureaucracy as a whole.(3) This is the logical outcome of his revision of a fundamental concept of Trotskyism which holds that the “liberalization" undertaken by the bureaucracy is an act of self-defense (and henée the preservation of bureaucratic power) and not the self-abolition of the bureaucracy.
It is outright humbug to discover a "political revolution" in a workers state where there are no proletarian organs of political power of the Soviet type, no freedom of the press for everyone or even for a few tendencies in the workers movement, no right to strike, no independence of the trade unions, no possibility whatever for any group of workers to have their political or social opinions gain ascendancy over the ruling wing of the bureaucracy, no internal democracy even in the Communist League of Yugoslavia. |
"Foreign policy is everywhere .and always | a continuation of domestic policy.. Trotsky wrote in The Revolution Betrayed (Pioneer Publishers edition, 1957, p. 186). "He
added that in the event of a political revolution, "foreign policy will return to the traditions of revolutionary internationalism." (p. 290) A strange "political revolution" in which the foreign policy of the country, far from taking even timid steps in the direction of revolutionary internationalism, stands to the right of that of Colonel
(iy In Sous le Drapeau. du Socialisme, No. 33-34: "L'expérience yougoslave et ses détracteurs." Pablo took exception to an article of mine that was published in the
July 29 issue of World Outlook. (2) Sous _ le Drapeau du Socialisme, No. 31-32: "Révolution politique en Yougoslavie."
(3) He is not the only one who calls himself a "Trotskyist" to conceive the absurd idea of a "political revolution from above" in a bureaucratically deformed workers state. The tiny group headed by Posadas.speaks in the same way of a "political revolution conducted by Mao Tse-tung" which is presumably unfolding in China. Despite the fact that their ideological paths have diverged, Posadas remains, from the point of view of method, a spiritual son -- if an illegitimate one -- of Pablo.
Boumedienne, even to the right of the bourgeois imperialist de Gaulle!(4) The fathering of such a "political revolution, we leave freely and willingly to our. eminent "revolutionary Marxist" critic.(5)
Pablo, who long ago lost any critical attitude whatsoever toward his own writings, and who excels in the art of affirming, always in the same smug authoritative tone, the opposite of what he said the day before, without offering the slightest explanation for the change,(6) does not seem to have noticed that in suddenly discovering a "political revolution" in Yugoslavia, he runs into new contradictions. For years he denied the necessity for such a revolution. He asserted that the situation in Yugoslavia was qualitatively different from that in the USSR and the other bureaucratically deformed or degenerated workers states. Didn't the democratic reforms succeed in Yugoslavia? Didn't they extend the "social domain of self-management" more and more? Wasn't the ruling wing of the Communist League of Yugoslavia the liberal wing to be counted on in these reforms, even taking the initiative in stimulating and propelling them forward? Clearly, no revolution was necessary to break the "resistance of the bureaucratic elements"; no revolution was necessary since these elements were in power and so deeply entrenched there that no reform could dislodge them! . ;
But then in this country marked by the "continuous development of selfmanagement," it was discovered that for years the political power rested in large part in the hands of the...secret police, the very existence of which Pablo so prudently refrained from mentioning in the numerous laudatory studies which he devoted to Yugoslavia before July 1966! But instead of carrying out a self-criticism; of admitting that self-management, limited solely to the plant level and combined with a system of. political power exercised by the bureaucracy, made possible the consolidation of this bureaucratic power, in its worst form, moreover, arbitrary police power, for a long period —-
(4) See the September 16, 1966, Le Monde on the Yugoslav positions, "a little too favorable to the Americans," which the French Minister Couve de.Murville encountered in Belgrade. See an Associated Press dispatch of October 12, 1966, on the cooling off between Tito and Boumedienne when the latter at the end of his visit in Belgrade wanted to include in a joint communiqué that the National Liberation Front is the only legitimate representative of the people of south Vietnam and Tito refused. ,
(5) Pablo accuses us of something else: We reproduce "unreservedly" the criticisms of the Cubans with regard to the Yugoslavs, although there is no essential difference between a "number of Yugoslavia's foreign policy positions" and those of the USSR and the Communist parties. The enormity of this assertion can be judged from the fact that the Cuban criticisms are directed in particular at the Yugoslav positions on the Tricontinental Conference and the war in Vietnam. Pablo, who began by unreservedly approving the Soviet position at the Tricontinental, which paid lip service to the insurrectional line adopted by that gathering, today equates that line with the explicit Yugoslav condemnation of it as a threat to world peace. .. ; . ae
(6) Among others, here is a striking example: In the March 1965 issue of Sous le Drapeau du. Socialisme, under the title, "Vietnam: La. Legon de la Crise," we find the following: "The Chinese, who deeply resented Kosygin's trip to Vietnam and Korea, reacted sharply to the American bombings and did not hesitate to threaten them with a new 'Korean-type defeat.' With regard to this. language, the Soviets preferred to combine the effect of their presence in Hanoi and the shipment of the necessary arms for an effective [sic] defense of North Vietnam with moderate language and search for a diplomatic solution permitting the Americans to 'save face.' Is this a less 'revolutionary' attitude than that of the Chinese? The question must be posed with regard to the danger, real or ‘otherwise, represented by an atomic [sic] war and its effects..." Eighteen months later, Pablo advanced an opposite conclusion. The danger of a nuclear war had disappeared or had become a negligible factor. Now it had become a genuine betrayal if the USSR did © not intervene massively on the side of North Vietnam: "To boast of the unequaled power of Soviet rockets, planes, submarines, etc., and yet to permit the Vietnamese airspace to be violated day after day, week after week, month after month, by an increasing number of American air attacks which savagely consume cities and towns and the living substance of the Vietnamese people is equivalent in practice to the worst hypocrisy and betrayal." (Sous _le Drapeau du Socialisme, No. 33-34). It turns out that this "worst hypocrisy and betrayal" had appeared quite reasonable and even desirable to Pablo eighteen months earlier. It turns out also that the United Secretariat of the Fourth International had called attention since March 1965 to the danger of an increas-— ingly brazen escalation by imperialism if the USSR did not engage in countermeasures from the beginning. But everyone knows that in contrast to Pablo, Eternity's great "revolutionary Marxist," the people of the United Secretariat are only "confusionists" foundering in “the most vulgar eclecticism"...
fifteen years! ~- instead of drawing these obvious conclusions from the events of July 1966, Pablo attempted to get out of it by slipping forward and calling the purge of the police carried out by the ruling group of the bureaucracy...a political revolution!
That there was "factional resistance" on the part of the Rankovié group to the domestic and economic policies of the Tito group can certainly be assumed. That the resistance was in general of a conservative nature and that the police elements upon which this group was based were in general the most detestable, can also be taken for granted.
But how can anyone seriously try to cover up the fact that Tito-Kardelj were the real rulers of the country, not only since July 1966 but: since the establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? If this was really so, it is obvious that the power of the secret police could not be built and maintained except with the complicity of Tito and his collaborators.(7) Under these circumstances, it is politically dishonest to accept as good coin the selection of Rankovié as the scapegoat or chief culprit in the crimes committed by the police. It is a fraud equal to the one perpetrated when Beria, the "imperialist spy," was held to be the only one or the main one responsible for Stalin's crimes, when the whole ruling group of the Soviet bureaucracy shared responsibility for these crimes.
Pablo is above all an egregious simplifier. He settles the thorniest questions with the most simple alternatives: either you are "for self-management," -in which case to criticize the economic policy of the Yugoslav government puts you in the category of a "defamer of the Yugoslav experiment," a "confusionist," "sectarian," and "full of hatred"; or you contend that your criticisms are well founded, in which case you automatically become an "adversary of self-management," even "partisans of the Stalinist [!] methods of centralized management of the economy." (In this alternative, Leninist methods are not posed.)
It is obviously a pure and simple slander, which Pablo continues to circulate, when he insinuates that we are "adversaries of self-management" and "partisans of Stalinist-type centralization." Let us repeat for the n'th time that we consider workers self-management to be an indispensable element of a democratic social and state structure in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, an indispensable element in Soviet democracy. But we differ with Pablo on two precise points.
First of all, we distinguish in. the sharpest way between workers self-management and mere plant autonomy. Experience has demonstrated in the USSR as well as the "people's democracies" what theory had indicated; namely, that "self-management" can be either bureaucratic or workers self-management, that a growth in the autonomy of plants without workers councils is perfectly possible, in this case being achieved through an increase in the power of the so-called "economic" or "technocratic" bureaucracy and at the expense of the central authorities and the workers (plant managers can, for example, exercise the right to lay off workers, a right they do not enjoy in the system of "centralized" management).
Next, we define workers self-management as a necessary element but insufficient in itself to assure socialist democracy, the democratization of society in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism. If this element is not combined with centralized democratic planning and with workers democracy on the political level, workers self-management can to a large degree lose all its substance; and the power of the bureaucracy can be consolidated and even reinforced. The Yugoslav experiment has just confirmed this, as its leaders themselves confess.
Todorovié, the new secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist League of Yugoslavia, was not afraid to admit openly that the CLY is "a nondemocratic organization in its structure." (Le Monde, September 17, 1966.) On the eve of this declaration, Pablo was lost in admiration over the congress of the Socialist Alliance, in which the delegates were "seated in alphabetical order" and even portraits of Tito were missing... As for the absence of democracy, he didn't notice it!(8) After having been more Ben-
(7) A particularly scabrous detail: As late as May 12, 1964, at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the security service, Tito decorated 3,078 members of the UDB (Uprava Drzavne Bezbednosti -- Administration of State Security] "for special merit in the organization and consolidation of the people's power..."
(8) A deplorable sign of the absence of democracy that has not yet been repaired: The October 1966 plenum of the Central Committee of the CLY expelled Rankovié and company for "factional activities." No one either heard the explanations of the defendants or learned what they might be. No one knew what ideas they advocated or was informed on
bellist ‘than the Benbellists, Pablo is now more Titoist than the Titoists. |
It is a genuine hoax to speak of the need for the economy to be reoriented "in accordance with social needs," yet to leave out the social inequalities and the social differentiation that reflects these "needs." In quoting Kardelj on this subject without a word of criticism or even reservation,(9) Pablo descends to the level of a vulgar apologist. of the Yugoslav reality. The truth is that the "Social needs" revealed by- the market do not conform to the social réality and to the proletarian socialist priorities any more than the "social needs" arbitrarily determined by an all-powerful Politbureauor general secretary. In both cases, the elementary réquirements of socialist democracy and the interests of the proletariat are trampled underfoot. = se
. fo waste a part. of the consumption funds to build plants out of all proportion in ostentation is obviously abominable from the standpoint of the proletariat. But to seek to impose the gauge.of "profitability" in social security or’ the construction of homes for the people, to reorient investments in order to satisfy the need for luxury and comfort among those.with high incomes while the most elementary needs remain un— satisfied, is just as abominable from this standpoint. This means that it is the needs’ of..the bureaucracy and not the needs of the workers that determine the course of the economy. And that is what is actually happening in Yugoslavia. ~
In his spare time, when he occupies himself with “pure theory," Pablo vaguely recalls that there is an "antagonism" between "the law of value" (the "laws of the market") and the principle of planning according to needs. He recalls. this particularly in dealing with Preobrazhensky's book. {The New Economics.] But when it comes to concretely examining the evolution of the Yugoslav economy, these elementary truths are forgotten, and Pablo reverts to his simplistic point of departure: either...or. He thus becomes in practice a defender of the ceaselessly growing social inequalities in Yugoslavia. " ; ; , :
_ It is rather scandalous that a journalist, who stili calls himself a "Trotskyist," deals. with the."economic reforms of: 1965" in Yugoslavia and says nothing at’ all about the fact that they entailed layoffs’ for hundreds of thousands of* workers!
Pablo. is obviously incapable of refuting a single one of our concrete statements concerning the negative effects of these reforms (unemployment, lowering of real wages, growth of inequality between nationalities, etc.). He takes refuge in an abstract assertion of ‘the "necessity for retaining market categories in the transitional period."
No sensible person has ever disputed this necessity. Nor have we ever disputed that planning can utilize the market mechanisms. But what needs to be discussed is the: constant and excessive amplification of recourse to these mechanisms in the concrete case of. Yugoslavia. To reply. to concrete statements on this subject with general phrases about the "necessities" of the market, is in fact to repeat what the Stalins and the Bukharins did when Trotsky and the Left Opposition analyzed the concrete contradictions which the market had introduced into the Soviet economy at the time of the New Economic Policy. But, no doubt, in doing what they did, Trotsky and the Left Opposition gave proof of congenital "confusionism" if not "paving the way for Stalinism. "(10)
The final bit of humbug to which attention should be called is to repeat without criticism Kardelj's theses on the "new relations of production" presumably being born
the real aims of these "intriguers." We repeat once more. As an individual, Rankovié is no more interesting than was a Molotov in the USSR. But there is no democracy in a party where a leader, no matter who he is, can be liquidated in the dark without the members knowing his views or hearing his defense, (9) Sous le Drapeau du Socialisme, No. 29, p. 18. —
“ae (10) When he was still a Trotskyist, Pablo himself wrote: "The Yugoslavs thought they could get around the difficulties faced by the bureaticratic regime by instituting ‘workers councils' and by an assumed so-called ‘direct democracy' thanks’ to self-government in the plants and communes. But the paternalism of this concept and practice was apparent to any observer at all familiar with Marxism and Yugoslav practice. What it amounted to was attempts from above to grant certain rights of self-administration to the workers and the population at the level of the-plants and localities; national policy, which in the final analysis decides everything, remained the prerogative of a very restricted group of men, the Yugoslav. political leadership under the circumstances." (Dictature du prolétariat, démocratie, socialisme, pp. 8-9, written in August 1957.) Without doubt, at that time, Pablo, too, was a "defamer of the Yugoslav experiment" and a “confusionist" of the worst kind. . a
"within self-management." Pablo imprudently goes so far as to claim that there are no longer any wage-workers under "self-management. "And some Yugoslav theoreticians even claim that there is no longer a proletariat in the country but a new class of "producer-entrepreneurs. *
There are ‘no "wage-workers" any longer; the workers have become "a kind of entrepreneurs." But these "nonsalaried entrepreneurs," subjected not only to their own "selfmanagement" but to the autonomous mechanisms of the market economy, find themselves suddenly thrown onto the streets without a cent in their pockets, whether in the form of. "profit" or in the form of "wages." One must admit that to deprive workers of their wages is a quite special way of proving that they have ceased to be wage-workers! |
The evidence itself shows that a system of "workers self-management" in which the workers collectives lay off their fellow workers in mass, thus shattering the internal cohesion of the working class in an even worse way than did Stakhanovism in Stalin's time, is a system that has begun to disintegrate. It is also quite evident that a system of "socialist planning" that permits plants producing raw materials to export them,» thereby diverting. them from the key plants of the national economy -- thereby leading to the underemployment of equipment of ‘these plants! -- is a system that has begun to disintegrate. That Pablo, so quick to shout "betrayal," even to pillory his former conrades, has not yet seen this, obviously reflects his own ideological disintegration.