The Stalin school of falsification - Marxists Internet Archive

Stalin School of Falsification -- Chapter 9
saying now? You are making a fetish of the worker's state, and are seeking to sanctify the given state as a
special sort of state "by divine dispensation." And who is the most accomplished theoretician of such
sanctification? It is Molotov. That is his contribution. I shall again read you what he said. You have
suppressed my criticism of Molotov, while Pravda has distorted it. But here is what Molotov said against
Kamenev at the Fourteenth Party Conference of the Moscow district:
"Our state is a workers' state. . . . But we are being offered a formula according to which it would be
more correct to say that the working class must be drawn still closer to our state. . . . What is this? We
must set ourselves the task of drawing the workers closer to our state, but what is our state -- whose is it?
Is it not that of the workers themselves? Is it not the state of the proletariat? How is it possible then to
draw closer to the state, i.e., to draw the workers them selves closer to the working class which is in
power and which is controlling the state?" (Pravda, Dec. 18, 1925.) These are Molotov's words. This,
comrades, is the most dull witted criticism of the Leninist concept of a given workers' state which can
become genuinely and completely a workers' state only with the accomplishment of a colossal work of
criticism, correction and improvement. But according to Molotov, the given state is something absolute
which it is no longer possible to draw closer to the masses. It is to this bureaucratic fetishism that my
refutation, or rather my ex position of the Leninist analysis of the Soviet state, applies. [Shouts.]
You say here, "What must be done?" If you really are of the opinion that there is nothing to be done
against the phenomena I have indicated, then it means that you concede the revolution is bound to perish.
Because, on the present path, it must perish. It means that you are the real pessimists, even if you are
smug. Yet it is entirely possible to remedy the situation with a change of policy. But before we can
decide what to do, we must say what is; we must specify the direction in which the processes are
moving. If you were to consider such an acute problem as the housing question, you would discover that
two processes are occur ring here, reflected in statistics that you can easily verify: The proletariat is
undergoing a shrinkage in living quarters while the other classes are expanding. I am not even referring
to the village, where construction is proceeding apace. Of course it is not the poor peasants who are
building, but the tops, the kulak and the strong middle peasant. But what have we in the cities? The
so-called "kastari" [handicraft workers], i.e., the petty bourgeoisie, the small business men the traders
and the specialists-all of them occupy this year more cubic feet per person. But there is less space per
worker this year than last year. Before there is any talk of what to do, we must honestly state the facts.
Just as in the housing question, so in every-day life, in literature, in the theater and in politics-the
non-proletarian classes are expanding, getting elbow room, while the proletariat is being squeezed and is
shrinking. I repeat: Just as the bourgeois classes are expanding in the material sphere -- you can observe
this on the streets, in the stores, in the trolleys and in the apartments -- just so in politics; the proletariat
as a whole is being shrunk, while oor party regime strengthens this class shrinkage of the proletariat.
This is the fundamental fact. The blow threatens from the Right-from the side of the non-proletarian
classes. Our criticism must be aimed to rouse the proletariat to take cognizance of the impending danger,
and not to permit the proletariat to think that power has been conquered irrevocably and for all time,
regardless of the conditions; and that the Soviet state is presumably an absolute which remains a workers'
state always and under all conditions. It is important that the proletariat should understand that in a
certain historical period, especially with a false policy of the leadership, the Soviet state may become an
apparatus through which power may be shifted from the proletarian base and drawn to the bourgeoisie,
which would subsequently discard completely the Soviet covering and transform its power into a
Bonapartist rule. With a false political line such a danger is quite real.
Without an international revolution, socialism cannot be built. Without correct policies, calculated on the
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