Trotsky - The Revolution Betrayed.pdf - Mehring Books

210 What Is the USSR?
which, given a monopoly of production, would be nothing but
collectivism" (June 11,1936). Toward the peasants and small
proprietors in general, the fascist bureaucracy takes the
attitude of a threatening lord and master. Toward the
capitalist magnates, that of a first plenipotentiary. "The
corporative state," correctly writes the Italian Marxist,
Feroci, "is nothing but the sales clerk of monopoly capital....
Mussolini takes upon the state the whole risk of the
enterprises, leaving to the industrialists the profits of
exploitation." And Hitler in this respect follows in the steps
of Mussolini. The limits of the planning principle, as well as
its real content, are determined by the class dependence of
the fascist state. It is not a question of increasing the power
of man over nature in the interests of society, but of exploiting
society in the interests of the few. "If I desired," boasts
Mussolini, "to establish in Italy — which really has not
happened — state capitalism or state socialism, I would
possess today all the necessary and sufficient objective
conditions." All except one: the expropriation of the class of
capitalists. In order to realize this condition, fascism would
have to go over to the other side of the barricades — "which
really has not happened," to quote the hasty assurance of
Mussolini, and, of course, which will not happen. To
expropriate the capitalists would require other forces, other
cadres and other leaders.
The first concentration of the means of production in the
hands of the state to occur in history was achieved by the
proletariat with the method of social revolution, and not by
capitalists with the method of state trustification. Our brief
analysis is sufficient to show how absurd are the attempts to
identify capitalist state-ism with the Soviet system. The
former is reactionary, the latter progressive.
Is the Bureaucracy a Ruling Class?
Classes are characterized by their position in the social
system of economy, and primarily by their relation to the
means of production. In civilized societies, property relations
are validated by laws. The nationalization of the land, the
means of industrial production, transport and exchange,