The following first appeared in the Notes from Underground Blog
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Another exciting installment in an ongoing series.
The current issue of the Spartacist League (U.S.)’s newspaper Workers Vanguard has a series of letters about the class character of Laos.
Seems that very recently the International Communist League, the SL’s international organization, decided that they had been wrong about Laos. It turned out that instead of a grubby backward barely capitalist, brutal dictatorship, the fact that the state owns much of the meagre means of production means that it is in fact a deformed workers state (see below for terminology) This change in policy was announced without any fanfare in an article in Australia Spartacist a little while back, thus prompting letters from rather puzzled readers.
Now, for those not familiar with Trot-speak, the Russian Revolution was a healthy workers revolution, but by the time Stalin rolled around, it was deemed by many to have degenerated. Now with the expansion of Stalinism after the Second World War, orthodox Trotskyists, i.e., those dwindling bands of Trotsky’s followers who still saw something progressive in the Soviet Union were faced with the problem of a whole number of societies more or less identical to the soviet Union, but which were established by the so-called Red Army rather than by any genuine workers uprisings. Hmm, the circle was squared and these states were proclaimed to be deformed workers states.
The British Militant group’s historical leader Ted Grant once suggested that whenever Soviet Army boots touched the ground, the state magically transformed into a workers state. OK, he didn’t put it quite like that, but I’m not exaggerating by much. In any event, Militant bestowed the hallowed, but somewhat tatty title of workers state on Burma at one point.
In the case of Laos, here’s what the SL has to say:
Laos is based on a collectivized economy but ruled by a nationalist bureaucratic caste under the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. While in recent years the Stalinist regime has enacted a series of “market reforms” following the examples of China and Vietnam, the class character of the state remains the same.
The idea that China or Vietnam constitute any sort of gain for the working class might strike many as a bit odd given the super-exploitation that exists in these societies, but apparently it doesn’t bother the SL.
Although the article is about Laos, less that half of it deals with Laos. The rest focuses on Cambodia, which the SL uses to characterize as a really deformed workers state. Until 1998 or so, then they began to argue that Cambodia’s insane Khmer Rouge regime was intent on destroying the means of production and therefore could not be classified as a workers state (oh well, that’s a relief.) Now, it’s characterized as a bourgeois state with a monarchy.
What motivated this change of line on Laos, retroactive to the mid-70s is unclear.
I always wonder though about those Catholics who did time in purgatory or wherever those sinners went for eating meat on Friday before Vatican Two OK’d it. Is there some sort of Trotsky hell dimension where people end up for these sort of sins of haivng a line too early? (Insert name of organization most closely resembling Trotskyist hell dimension here)
So good news Laotian working class, you have the honour of being part of a select group of deformed workers states which gets you exactly what again? The SL will surely defend you against imperialist attack, although their dubious Maoist “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” ideology would have allowed that anyway (“Libyan workers stop fighting for or against Gaddafi - fight the imperialists instead to militarily defend Gaddafi” …huh?) But in real terms, it doesn’t seem to amount to very much.
On the other hand, the issue was dated April 1, and although the Spartacists are not usually known for their sense of humour, you never know…
Fischer
Fischer, you do not seem to understand the concept of “deformed” or “degenerated” workers state. You take the most simplistic and concrete view of this. I doubt you are really interested, but it is a nuance way to understand the contradiction that occurs when the property forms are progressive, but the leadership is not. Just like Napoleon’s armies destroyed ancienne regimes and spread republican, bourgeois government, so did the Red Army destroy the old capitalist regimes and replace them with worker’s states, albeit those that were “deformed” being led by Stalinist bureaucrats. Just as bourgeois states can oppress sections of the bourgeoisie, so too can workers’ states oppress sections of the working class. The world bourgeoisie knows this — hence the cold war, etc. You should know this too.
Lev
My post strove for a light tone, mocking the Spartacist League’s discovery that after 35 years, Laos was a progressive society. It struck me as comic, that the SL had developed this line, more or less out of the blue. how do you stand on the re-casting of Laos?
It seems like that we have a fundementally different understanding of the societies Eastern Europe and Asia, however, I do understand the concept behind the theory of deformed and degenerated workers states. I just don’t think they exist - they were and are simply capitalist states.
I’m not certain which Trotskyist tendency you identify with, so my comments here might not entirely apply to your politics; however, I’d take issue with three points in your comment.
First, I don’t agree that there is anything necessarily progressive in the statified ecomonies that characterize the former Soviet Union and those establshed after World War 2. “Proletarian property forms” (and we may disagree over what that constitutes), it seems to me, can only have value if they are actually under the control of the working class. With the exception of Russia immediately after the 1917 revolution, the working class never had any control in these societies. “Their” state was rather a weapon of violence against them.
Second, the notion that progressive societies can be established without the full participation of the working class is something no socialist should be able to accept. Initially, the leadership of the Fourth International saw the Eastern European states as capitalist (Mandel famously spoke of a buffer zone). But faced with the fact that these societies were identical to those in the Soviet Union, the FI developed a new idea, the deformed workers state. The Castro regime in Cuba initially posed a bit of a problem, leading to further re-organizations with the international Trotskyist milieu, but this concept was eventually extended there too. To compare this to Napoleon bringing the bourgois revolution through his army seems a poor analogy, given the difference in nature between capitalism and what we would like to see. I may be remembering badly, but Trotsky too had doubts about revolution on the point of bayonets.
Third, your argument that the cold war was a result of the west’s recognition of the difference of the east makes little sense, and falls at the first hurdle. Capitalist states, even radically different ones, can and do quarrell. Politics by other means as Clauswitz hput it. The notion of inter-imperialist rivalry and war is all about differences. Moreover, if as you argue, the “workers state oppress sections of the working class,” why would the west be unhappy about that? The suppression of the working class is a crucial aspect of continued capitalist rule.
Some of the early issues of Internationalist Perspective deal in greater detail with state caitalism. These articles are unfortunately not on-line, but photocopies could be provided.
Fischer.