Trotsky - The Revolution Betrayed.pdf - Mehring Books

54 Socialism and the State
tional has nothing left but to declare that socialism is
bureaucratic power plus one-third of the capitalist electrification.
Such a definition would be photographically accurate,
but for socialism it is not quite enough!
In a speech to the Stakhanovists in November 1935, Stalin,
obedient to the empirical aims of the conference, unexpectedly
announced: "Why can and should and necessarily will
socialism conquer the capitalist system of economy? Because
it can give ... a higher productivity of labor." Incidentally
rejecting the resolution of the Communist International
adopted three months before upon the same question, and
also his own oft-repeated announcements, Stalin here speaks
of the "triumph" of socialism in the future tense. Socialism
will conquer the capitalist system, he says, when it surpasses
it in the productivity of labor. Not only the tenses of the verbs
but the social criteria change, as we see, from moment to
moment. It is certainly not easy for the Soviet citizen to keep
up with the "general line."
Finally, on March 1, 1936, in a Conversation with Roy
Howard, Stalin offered a new definition of the Soviet regime:
That social organization which we have created may be
called a Soviet socialist organization, still not wholly completed,
but at root a socialist organization of society." In this
purposely vague definition there are almost as many
contradictions as there are words. The social organization is
called "Soviet socialist," but the Soviets are a form of state,
and socialism is a social regime. These designations are not
only not identical but, from the point of view of our interest,
antagonistic. Insofar as the social organization has become
socialistic, the Soviets ought to drop away like the scaffolding
after a building is finished. Stalin introduces a correction:
Socialism is "still not wholly completed." What does "not
wholly" mean? By five percent, or by seventy-five percent?
This they do not tell us, just as they do not tell us what they
mean by an organization of society that is "socialistic at
root." Do they mean forms of property or technique? The
very haziness of the definition, however, implies a retreat
from the immeasurably more categorical formulas of 1931
and 1935. A further step along the same road would be to
acknowledge that the "root" of every social organization is