Ernest Mandel’s important pamphlet On Bureaucracy is in many ways a model of revolutionary propaganda. Although based on a series of lectures to a Paris student audience, this pamphlet will be equally invaluable to vanguard workers – especially today, when the new rise of working-class struggles is coming more and more into conflict with the bureaucratic leaderships.
On Bureaucracy is articulated at three different levels. First, Mandel discusses the roots and nature of working-class bureaucracy, insisting on the need to distinguish between two quite different phenomena: 1. the tendency towards bureaucratization which is an inevitable feature of all workers organizations under capitalism (a consequence of their proletarian status); 2. complete bureaucratization, as found in reformist and Stalinist parties and in the deformed workers states, which is dependent on the relation of forces between the proletariat and its class enemies (for example, it was the failure of the revolution in Germany, coupled with the extremely difficult economic conditions under which the socialist transformation had to be undertaken, which determined in the last instance the bureaucratic usurpation of power in the Soviet Union).
Having discussed the roots of bureaucratic deformations inside workers organizations, Mandel goes on to discuss the extreme forms which this deformation can take, particularly after the working class has seized power. This he does in the context of a discussion of the general problematic of transitional societies, seeking to distinguish between what was unavoidable and what was due to the failure of the subjective factor. His historical and theoretical narrative is closely interwoven with an account of the growing awareness of this problem among revolutionary Marxists and their attempt to solve it both in theory and in practice. Mandel criticizes those (like Socialisme ou Barbarie or Solidarity) who do not understand the material roots of this problem, as well as those (like Deutscher) who are fatalistic about it.
Mandel’s account takes issue with many common mistakes regarding the relationship between the working class and its bureaucracy. The most common mistake, mostly due to ignorance, is to believe that degeneration like that of the Stalinist era would be impossible in an advanced capitalist country. This is to forget that only a combination of favourable economic conditions, international spread of revolution and a principled revolutionary leadership can effectively check the spread of bureaucratization and encourage the growth of workers’ democracy. It is absurd to believe that the ‘objective conditions’ of an advanced capitalist state will themselves take care of workers democracy, just as it is absurd to believe that the Bolshevik Party should have been able to solve all the problems of the first workers state purely by correct use of the strength of the ‘subjective factor’.
The problem of the bureaucracy, thrust so rudely upon the proletariat by the degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals, continues to be the acid test of revolutionary Marxism. Those, like the SLL. or the IS in Britain, who fail to perceive the dual nature of the bureaucracy (its defence of the gains of the revolution, its fear of the world revolution) end up with an effectively abstentionist position in the international class struggle (the case of Korea with the IS, Cuba with the SLL.). Already in the Transitional Programme it was found necessary to devote a whole chapter to this trend (‘Against Sectarianism’).
To be a revolutionary Marxist today means to understand that the degree of political expropriation of the proletariat in the existing workers’ states was by no means inevitable; in other words, to understand what the Left Opposition represented in the history of the world revolution. This is possible only if one understands the nature of the mistakes committed by the Bolsheviks.
Potentially the most interesting section of the whole pamphlet-because it clearly relates the Leninist theory of the party to the nature of proletarian democracy in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat- this section is unfortunately the least developed. Mandel does not here draw together clearly and explicitly the elements of his own analysis. After an extremely abbreviated discussion of the Leninist theory of the party (pp. 10-11), he simply lists the *institutional’ errors committed by the Bolsheviks (the banning of factions; the introduction of one-man management; the espousal of the single-party principle) -errors which necessarily aided the political expropriation of the proletariat (p. 28). But he does not fully bring out or give adequate emphasis to the relationship between proletarian democracy and the nature of the vanguard party of the proletariat. It is, therefore, to a great extent left to the reader to put together some of the key lessons of On Bureaucracy.
The Leninist theory of the party is based on a double principle: the need for a party of professional revolutionaries that necessarily organizes only a minority of the proletariat, and the need for the party to be rooted in the masses. The problem posed here cannot be solved just by the ‘rota system, as implied at one point. Rather, it is a dialectical problem involving many elements. A crucial one is the ultimate control over their party by the masses, which is possible if and only if the proletariat maintains its political autonomy through institutions representing the class as a whole. This means that the period of the dictatorship is necessarily a period of maximum political freedom of the proletariat, limited only by the need to maintain that dictatorship. In other words, it is a period of co-existence of the Leninist party with other parties representing different political trends inside the proletariat. Mandel clearly spells this out: ‘Nothing in Lenin’s writings suggests that the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat allows for only one party. Nor is such a principle to be found in the Soviet constitution.
The intimate link between proletarian democracy and political freedom is borne out repeatedly by the development of opposition movements inside the existing workers’ states. Those who rush in with support for the bureaucracy against oppositional tendencies of a right-wing nature forget that it is the bureaucracy itself which makes it possible for such tendencies to develop. A necessary premise of the political revolution in these countries is the right to freedom of speech and assembly, which necessarily leads, however tentatively at first, to the development of various parties.
Proletarian democracy is soviet democracy, i.e. its primary organizational form is the creation of soviets: before the revolution as organs of dual power, after the revolution as organs of workers democracy. This is not a question of ‘fetishizing’ soviets, which Mandel at one point warns against; it is a central lesson drawn from his own analysis. The Transitional Programme, with respect to workers’ states, is clear on this point: ‘The struggle for the freedom of trade unions and factory committees, for the right of assembly and freedom and press, will unfold in the struggle for the regeneration and development of Soviet democracy. The bureaucracy replaced the soviets as class organs with the fiction of universal electoral rights-in the style of Hitler-Goebbels. It is necessary to return to the soviets not only their free democratic form but also their class content. Democratization of the soviets is impossible without legalization of soviet parties. Moreover, the political power of the proletariat must be paralleled by its control over the economic life of the country. As Mandel points out, one of the decisive institutional errors of the Bolsheviks was the introduction of one-man management of the economy. The struggle for workers’ democracy is also a struggle against any radical separation of the working class from control over the economic life of the country.
While Lenin never conceived the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a one-party system, he also did not believe that this dictatorship could be maintained without the Bolshevik Party. The role of the Bolshevik Party is absolutely crucial to the building of socialism. What distinguishes this party from other forms of workers organization is not just that it is a party of professional revolutionaries, but also that it is a party built on the principle of democratic centralism. As Trotsky says in The Revolution Betrayed, the party takes ‘watchful care not only that its boundaries should always be strictly de- fined, but also that all those who enter these boundaries should enjoy the actual right to define the direction of the party policy. Freedom of criticism and intellectual struggle… is… an irrevocable content of the party democracy… In reality the history of Bolshevism is a history of the struggle of factions. The disappearance of democratic centralism inside the Bolshevik Party and the banning of factions was an important factor contributing to its degeneration.
Working-class bureaucracy, Stalinism, the nature of soviet democracy, the self- activity of the masses before and after the revolution, the meaning of democratic centralism, workers’ control and self-management- all these, far from being problems of the past or problems particular to one sector of the world, are problems integral to the world revolution in all its aspects. It is no wonder, therefore, that they have been and remain the subject of the most vigorous debates both on the left in general and within the Fourth International in particular, as the burning issues of today and tomorrow.