Bruno Rizzi

The 
Bureaucratisation 
of the World

First Published: in April 1939;

Translated: from the French for Marxists.org by Adam Buick;
Proofread: by Chris Clayton 2006.

Preface
In this first part we make a Marxist analysis of Soviet society, with some mention of the
Fascist and Nazi regimes which are in the process of rapid bureaucratisation and which
have already acquired an anti-capitalist character. even though Capital there has not
been radically suppressed as in the USSR.
Recent political events will awaken even the dullest of minds: the black, brown and red
dictators are recognising, perhaps even officially, that the social character of their
countries is the same.
The world is on the eve of a tremendous historical turning point.
We believe that Stalin will remember having been a revolutionary before having
become a dictator and will understand the terrible responsibility which links him to the
international proletariat. We will judge solely on the facts and we advise workers to do
the same.
Europe and the world must either become fascist or socialist. There is no longer any
possibility of life for capitalism. The USSR has become the pivot of world politics and
will either be the bastion of the proletarian revolution or a trap for the world proletariat.
If it wants Revolution it will carry the revolutionary centre into the midst of the English-
French-American working masses; if it does not do so then it will help the fascisation of
Europe and the World.
The bourgeoisie is a dead social force and, politically, can no longer take the offensive:
it resists, but surrenders day after day! Manchuria, China, Abyssinia, Austria,
Sudetenland, Bohemia, Spain, Albania and so on already amount to a political synthesis.
In reality the forces in play in present-day Society, which is a single whole, are not
called France, England, Germany, Italy, USSR, Japan, etc., but are called Capitalism,

1
Bureaucratic Collectivism and Socialism. These are not empty words, nor social
abstractions, nor politico-administrative fictions: they have their social bases.
Capitalism is based on the class of those to whom belong the means of production of the
whole world. These are linked together by connections of business and interest and by a
political solidarity which revealed itself immediately after the First World War with the
collective strangling of the Revolution, and which has been continued by the events of
Munich. This International has always functioned; it is now creating a capitalist bloc to
oppose the invasion of Bureaucratic Collectivism. In this bloc they seek to suppress
proletarian forces as much as possible in order to maintain the old privileges.
Bureaucratic Collectivism too has its social base in dominant classes which have
established their headquarters in the States in Russia, Italy. Germany, Japan and the
smaller States weak from the capitalist point of view which come within the radius of
action of the big totalitarian States.
This new social form is degenerate, but nevertheless active, and is more and more
imposing itself on a capitalism which is dead as a dynamic system and in a state of
physical disintegration. This bloc has also formed its International in the Anti-
Comintern, in which the USSR will soon appear, in order to swallow up by threats or
deeds the areas dominated by the old capitalist World.
Socialism has its social base in the working masses of the whole world. They are the
real living force of the new Society which must replace Capitalism, but they continue to
be tricked by their ignorant or treacherous leaders who do not give them a political line
of their own and who have lined them up behind the patriotic backs of the bourgeois and
the fascists.
Socialism sings the “Internationale” but does not apply it in practice, as do its two
rivals; in reality it is the butcher’s meat in the struggle between them. It is the object of
their exploitation: the good and peaceful ox which drags the cart and even goes to the
slaughterhouse. The lesson of 1914-18 was not enough. At that time the various
imperialisms thought they would solve the capitalist crisis by a victory which would
give hegemony to some of them, but, twenty years later at Munich, they have signed
their defeat by confirming the senselessness of the past carnage carried on under the
banner of Peace, of the true Civilisation, of Progress, of the War to end Wars, of the
fight against barbarians, etc., etc.
The social forces in play are three in number, there are three political movements and
three classes which correspond to them. And it is precisely that class which has the
greatest social and historical rights which is suppressed, partly by a world which is
dying and partly by a new monstrous world which is being born and so badly that it has
revived slavery after two thousands years of history.
It is not a question of an “indivisible Peace” but of an indivisible Struggle. It is not on
the basis of Nations that the proletarians must recognise their friends and their enemies.
As Marx said, it is from classes, from the struggle between classes, from the dialectic
and the class struggle that Socialism must derive its politics, even in this period of
decaying capitalism. Workers, think about this.
We will soon be publishing the second part of La bureaucratisation du monde which
will deal with the totalitarian State and with Fascism in particular (analysis of decaying
capitalism).
Wars have always been carried on for the benefit of the dominant classes. The only
workers’ war is the Revolution.
The workers must struggle against Capitalism and against Fascism and must extricate
themselves from their grasp; they must have their own independent policy. In flattering
ourselves on having found this, we only ask to be refuted, corrected or helped by all

2
comrades, workers and those who wish to live in honour and freedom and want to spare
the world the insu1t of a new slavery.
The Author
Paris, 15 July 1939.

I. The nature of the Soviet State
It was in 1917 towards the end of October (Russian calendar) that there occurred a
political event of great importance whose date is engraved in indelible characters in the
book of history. The proletariat of St. Petersburg and Moscow, led by the Bolshevik
party, seized power. Two leaders arose in this great historical event as giants: Lenin, the
incomparable master of the revolutionary movement, and Trotsky, the soul and genius
of the proletarian insurrection.
The raging world stopped its savage work of destruction for a moment and cast an
unbelieving and astonished glance at the endless plains of Russia. Over the snow
unfurled a red flag, adorned with a hammer and sickle. But, once this moment of
perplexity was over, people again looked straight ahead, as if to say “we will see later,”
and recommenced their annihilating struggle.
Meanwhile a sigh of hope passed through the impoverished and decimated masses. In
the midst of all this obscurantism, of all this madness, a light had flashed very brightly;
it did really have some significance for all these poor blighters: “It is from the East that
a light will come”; here was the new Word. For the second time in history the
downtrodden apathetic masses raised their heads from their toil and scanned the
horizon, scenting the air like animals of prey emerging from their den. It seemed to
them to be good and that the opportune moment had arrived. A hundred and forty years
previously, these masses had been aroused by the gunfire of Valmy and even the men of
the mountains, armed with pikes and axes, had descended from their remote valleys. But
on arriving at the opening of the valleys, they saw rising on the plain in the distance
some small white clouds; then a shower of fire came down on their ranks: it was the
guns of the Third Estate welcoming them. The good highlanders had been tricked, they
turned round and regained their valley which they had left with an age-long hope that
had suddenly ripened. The highlanders behaved wisely, they understood that their time
had not yet come and they again enclosed themselves in their mountains for a new, long
wait.
This time the men of the mountains no longer stopped where the valleys opened out
onto the plaint; they no longer met fire from the artillery barrage of the bourgeoisie, but
overran the fields of the lords as masters. The workers’ and peasants’ State was
proclaimed; from the Kremlin towers, the signal of the revolution spread in waves and
the red guards camped in the courts in the palace of Ivan the Terrible.
The people, the poorest strata, awakened from their age-long torpor, left their hovels,
displayed their rags in the main streets of the big towns and brought to them the mental
state appropriate to the eve of a revolution.
For three of four years this mounting tide nearly breached the powerful dikes of
capitalism; then the waters receded, gurgling. From time to time the water had, as it
were, some jumps; these were waves which came from afar like those produced by the
passing of a steamship, but they did not come from the deep movements of the sea. So,
either the potential force of this mounting revolutionary tide had been badly employed
or it had not been brought into play. Indeed, the technicians of the revolution, where
they had been able to transform this potential force into energy later found it dry,
isolated and powerless since the waters had receded all around. The opportunism of the
proletarian parties of October isolated the Russian revolution like an oasis in the desert,

3
so that there was no longer any question of socialism, i.e. of an international proletarian
economy. However capitalism must not even be mentioned as the nature of the State
called Soviet. So what is it? That is the question.
The Russian Revolution is over twenty years old and it is strange that nobody has got
down to studying the social outcome of this great event. The USSR provides subjects
for discussions, commentaries, reports; its supporters and opponents speak of it only
from the political aspect and always neglect the social aspect. However, we do not think
that after twenty years the Russian Revolution can still be considered as being in a
period of transition or transformation. By now it must surely have had some positive
outcome, acquired for the future and fixed in a social crystallisation.
Some have seen in the Russian revolution “The Empire of Forced Labour” or “The
Revolution Betrayed,” others have described it as “The Triumph of Fascism,” others as
“The Land of the Great Lie.” Some sigh when lamenting “The Destiny of the
Revolution”; there are others also who have made “An Assessment of the Revolution.”
Writers of all political shades, from communists to fascists passing by the centre parties,
have written works of great merit, either as regards arguments or as regards information.
Researchers have interested themselves in the subject and have gone to make their
observations directly on the spot. French, German and American workers rushed
enthusiastically to the country where their social hopes were to be realised. They
returned from it their hearts overflowing with sadness, their souls poisoned, and have
left us objective, practical and very interesting information on life, work and liberty in
the land of the Soviets.
This enormous mass of publications does not deal at all with the social crystallisation of
the USSR and even less offers us any conclusion. Certainly here and there a few passing
references stand out; these are more of a natural fruit, occasioned by polemic, than the
systematic result of a sociological study. Trotsky himself, who we consider to have the
deepest knowledge of the present conditions and evolution of the Soviet State, admits to
having taken nine paragraphs in an attempt to give a definition of this State. What has
been lacking up till now, is a panoramic view of the whole, a synthesis, a crystallised
representation of what the USSR is from a social point of view.
We ourselves did not succeed in giving an answer two years ago in our modest work
Where is the USSR going? The question mark was there precisely to ask what we were
asking; but while we did not succeed in giving an answer at least we posed the question.
In 1938 our mind ceased to be tormented, for we had no further doubts. What was
happening in the social field in other countries confirmed what we had ended up by
considering as established in the social sphere of the Soviet State.
Since the world is from now on reduced to a single form of civilisation, the capitalist, it
follows that the social transformation of any State has a great interest for the rest of the
planet, since it is in a premature and localised transformation that the world can see
reflected the image of its own future social form.
All sorts of things have artificially obscured the problem instead of making it clearer.
The paid press and hired speakers have artificially obscured the problem instead of
making it clear. The greatest stupidities have been uttered and, also, the greatest
cowardice has been shown.
The social phenomenon is in fact very difficult to understand, especially for all those
journalists who visit Russia knowing very little or nothing about Marx, Lenin and their
theories. In addition the social phenomenon in formation started off in the beginning in
a communist direction; then the cessation of the proletarian revolution in the world
produced a degeneration whose social forms have in recent years become fixed. Today
the social edifice of the Soviet State has clear, almost completed lines. We at least

4
recognise these lines as such even if the specialists on the problem insist on a different
theory. These specialists, reduced to a small number, must be sought in the groups of
revolutionaries who have abandoned the Third International, holding that it has long
since become completely and definitively opportunist. Also, these specialists have come
to the question of the nature of the Soviet State solely as a result of internal diatribes in
their political factions about the tactics and strategy of the proletarian revolution. They
do not even suspect that there could be the possibility of a social crystallisation situated
between capitalism and socialism; but in the fire of their polemics the problem of this
crystallisation is categorically posed and maintains those doctrinal differences which are
the basis of the political impotence of these specialists.
What is the USSR today? To begin with we will be expressly imprecise in our diagnosis
of this society; we will move on later to the details. First of all we want to establish only
what is unanimously accepted. It is certainly not a democratic, but clearly an
authoritarian State. Its economy is not capitalist; it is not based on private property but
on the collective ownership of the means of production. From Citrine to Trotsky and
from Roosevelt to Mussolini, it is admitted that, generically, the Soviet economy is not
socialist. Only Stalin’s opinion is different for obvious reasons; consequently we will
not pay much attention to it. Dozens of writers have made him eat his socialism and his
“most democratic Constitution in the world.” Stalin does not flinch and naturally bans
these publications in the land of the “happy life” and the most “democratic in the
world.” There is no doubt about another feature documented by Trotsky, Citrine, Victor
Serge, Ciliga and by a host of writers of the most different nationalities and political
theories: in no capitalist or fascist country is the proletariat in such bad conditions as in
Soviet Russia. There is no freedom of speech, of meeting or of the press. Informing is
widespread and the State very much a police State. All these writers are agreed on this:
the exploitation of man still exists in the country of the “happy life,” being embodied in
the famous surplus value which Messieurs the Capitalists extract from the workers. (The
divergences appear only when it comes to identifying who monopolises it.) Another
characteristic which must not be ignored is that the State demonstrations are only a
grandiose theatrical advertisement, as in the totalitarian States of the West; likewise, the
veneration, real or pretended, for the almost deified Leader is equal and perhaps even
greater. Hierarchy enjoys great prestige there and servility is pushed to the extreme
limit. The population lives in an atmosphere of fear as if the walls could hear and speak;
they have a face for the public different from that as a private individual.
The political and social physiognomy of the Soviet State comes out well defined from
these generally admitted facts supplemented by our distinctions and it is this
physiognomy that we now propose to explain to the reader.
The principal aim of the October revolution was to serve as a lever for the revolution in
the West. But measures for a socialist economic policy were taken at the same time.
Basically private ownership of the land and large industrial enterprises was abolished.
The economic control of this property passed from the hands of the defeated bourgeois
class into that of the triumphant proletariat.
The economic conditions for a social transformation in the USSR were certainly not
very good; the country was composed essentially of agricultural labourers and
illiterates, its industry was very inferior to the needs of an advanced economy.
The Bolsheviks, as soon as they had seized power, straightway used the radio to incite
the various proletariats to follow their example because they understood the necessity of
grafting on to the Russian revolution the Western nations with their developed
technology and their immense and cultured proletarian class. If this did not occur, then

5
this Revolution was fatally destined to failure in the economic-social field even if its
arms succeeded in heroically resisting the assaults of the old world.
The German proletariat was the natural ally of the Bolshevik revolution. Its bourgeoisie,
emerging from the war defeated and broken, offered them power almost without striking
a blow. But, except for the Spartacist riots and the sacrifice of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg, the German proletariat went without honour from defeat to defeat. In 1923
power was once again offered them, but this proletariat deserted the camp and
abandoned it without a struggle even to the Hitlerite bands. Was this the fault of the
leaders? Of the Third International? No, it was the fault of everybody together,
including the German proletariat who were too cold, too attached to order and of a not
very revolutionary nature. Fifty years previously, after the collapse of the French
bourgeoisie in 1870, the workers of Paris proclaimed the Commune and 100,000 of
them, who had fought with only a slight hope of victory and in premature economic
circumstances, let themselves stoically be beaten on the ramparts of Paris. Messieurs the
Marxists, who deal solely with economics and who make politics only with statistics,
may well get angry, but we state that the weak revolutionary spirit of the German
proletariat had a lot to do with the defeat of the European and world working class.
Similarly the strong revolutionary spirit of the Russian proletariat had a lot to do with
the October victory. The German people have never made a revolution; in their political
evolution they have always followed the other nations and then at least a century later.
France, on the other hand, has always spilled its blood for the world.
Economic conditions are certainly the conditions sine qua non on which depends the
possibility of transforming society. But once these conditions exist and have ripened, the
success of the Revolution is a question only of revolutionary spirit as far as those who
have to do the fighting are concerned, and of revolutionary ability as far as the leaders
are concerned. Let Messieurs the Marxists explain, if they can, the defeat of the
European proletariat according to historical materialism as it is understood by the
orthodox! Was not the German economy over-ripe for the change?
To conclude and to repeat what has been said in a thousand ways, we state that,
following the defeat of the German and European proletarian revolution, the
dictatorship of the Russian proletariat found itself isolated in a hostile capitalist world.
There was a general ebbing of the revolutionary wave that had frightened the
bourgeoisie immediately after the war. It followed for any observer with common sense
that the perspective of revolution had been postponed indefinitely. Capitalism in the
meantime regained its breath and until 1929 increased production, particularly as a
result of repair work in the zones ravaged by the war and of the reconstitution of stocks.
The Russian revolution faced the alternative of either living sparsely while waiting for
the proletarian revolution in Western Europe or of coming to terms with the external
world and consequently changing its internal policy. It was the second solution which
was chosen; Stalin was first the inspirer of this and then its pitiless executor. This
radical change of policy had naturally to be disguised, at least on the surface, both from
the Russian proletariat and from the proletariat of all nations. This was not very difficult
since for nearly a century workers have been systematically tricked by the “reds” of all
the parties, and of all shades, who have appeared on the political scene. The Russian
proletariat and the proletariat of other nations have suffered this enormous mystification
and have given only too few signs of anger against their leaders, the real traitors. It
could be said that these proletariats have become accustomed to, and indeed have
become hardened to mystification.
With Lenin dead a successor was needed; the most worthy figure just as much from the
moral as from the intellectual point of view was Trotsky. His revolutionary integrity and

6
his genius would certainly have very well defended the first and only proletarian State
in the world. But Trotsky was cast aside and unanimously ostracised and boycotted by
the epigones of the revolution. Those who know a little about socialist and communist
parties will not be at all surprised at a phenomenon like this.
In Lenin’s entourage Trotsky rose lie a giant, so they undertook to neutralise him in
order to remove a great obstacle which would have hindered their national and
international brainwashing campaign. The reality is still this: the real dictatorship was
that of the Bolshevik party, a dictatorship centred on the Party cells not the soviets. Thus
was how the Bolshevik party not of the proletariat, the only one not to have betrayed the
workers before the revolution, betrayed them as soon as it achieved victory, i.e. when it
believed that there were no longer any dangers.
The theorists of the dictatorship over the proletariat who envisaged the Bolshevik party
as, so to speak, a guide within the democratic soviet regime in effect envisaged it as
having a monopoly of proletarian social control. These theorists provided an opening
for the bureaucratic degeneration which a combination of circumstances much
facilitated.
The proletariat was dispossessed by men who enjoyed their confidence, by those who
had led them in the assault and to victory, and above all by those who made up the great
mass of parvenus.
A political party with a far-reaching social programme which calls for participation and
control by all the workers should not aim to set itself up as dictator. The only guarantee
is the proletarian class with all power to the soviets. Various writers have recounted in a
general way all that has happened since the death of Lenin, but what is of interest for us
in this book is to determine the outcome. The officials of the State and Bolshevik party,
in socialising the land an in industrialising the country, more and more undermined the
power of the workers and ended up having a monopoly of the State. To do this they had
to ally themselves with the technical specialists who were indispensable to them; thus
occurred the first great welding in the process of the formation of the new ruling class in
Russia. The Stakhanovite campaign is an expression of this and at the same time a new
method of spurring on the mass of workers to greater productivity. Other weldings were
to follow with the regime’s sycophants through the purchase of high posts in the army
and semi-State bureaucracy.
We have thus now reached a point where economic and political control is monopolised
by the bureaucracy and has been authorised by the new Constitution. Within this
bureaucracy there is simply a division of labour which, taken as a whole, has the aim of
maintaining political domination and economic privileges. The bureaucrats with their
families form a mass of about 15 million people. There are enough of them to form a
class and, since Trotsky assures us that 40 per cent of production is grabbed by the
bureaucracy, we can say that this class is privileged too!
This class is all-powerful for it controls the economic levers, which an expressly trained
police State protects. It determines wages and selling prices to the public as it thinks fit,
with mark-ups over the cost price such that the “bloodsucking” capitalists of long ago
appear to us as “honest traders.” The few facts we have allow us to state that the mark-
ups on the cost price of primary necessities are two or three times greater than the mark-
ups employed in the reviled capitalist countries.
Citrine provides us with unchallengeable information. Sometimes the bureaucrats buy
corn from the peasants at a very low price and then re-sell it to the workers at a price ten
times higher. The economic plan is of course the province of the bureaucracy and
investments naturally go to the projects which most benefit the interests of the new
class. The Soviet press itself documents the miserable housing conditions of the workers

7
to whom on average 5 square metres of accommodation is allocated. Well, instead of
building new houses for the workers, they plan to build for instance a “House of the
Soviets,” 360 metres high, since in reality this is not the House of the Soviets but the
House of the bureaucracy. If called upon to justify this misadministration of public
money the bureaucrat always replies that the workers did not object, as they could have
done since the workers of the USSR are allowed to give their opinion and even to
oppose the wishes of their masters. There is a solidarity among the bureaucrats
(officials, technical specialists, policemen, officers, journalists, writers, trade union
bigwigs and finally the whole communist party) so that mistakes are blamed on the
workers, who are tied like slaves to the economic machine of the State, which the
bureaucrats describe with crowning derision as an organ of the proletarian class.
The officials govern and the technical specialists are also their industrial representatives.
The police have the task of protecting the new property and of keeping the citizens’
conduct on the political line decided by the top hierarchs. Journalists and writers have
the task of “scientifically” tricking the general public. The trade union bosses have
become veritable officials, placed right in the midst of the workers in order to sound out
their mood and to trick them, as has been and still is done in all workers’ organisations,
yellow or red, in all capitalist countries. There is not much difference between the
Soviet and American trade union bureaucracies as far as aims are concerned. But there
is an essential difference since, whereas the trade union bureaucracy in the capitalist
countries serves the bourgeoisie, in the Soviet State they serve the State bureaucracy
and thereby themselves.
The Russian communist party has become a victim to the bureaucrats and the workers
are virtually no longer present in its midst. This party is nothing else but the dog which
keeps the sheep in order; Stalin, following behind with his crook on his shoulder and his
bag slung across his back, is the “great shepherd.” If some sheep leaves the ranks, the
dog barks and Stalin hits it. The flock takes heed, stands afraid of the dog and addresses
its plaintive bleatings to the “great shepherd.”
The proletariat has the right only to work in the enterprises whose ownership is still
mockingly attributed to them even though they do not have the least controlling
function. Theirs is only to sweat blood and water since they are spurred on by systems
which not only are not socialist, but which are also worse than those in fashion in the
never-so-reviled capitalist countries.
This sketch is not our invention, but is only the conclusion drawn from the treatment of
this question by the “specialists” whose views we will later be discussing. It can be seen
clearly from this sketch that this society has nothing to do with socialism. Everybody is
agreed on this point, except of course Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy.
The ownership of the means of production has been socialised and the economy is
planned — this is the big argument of Trotsky and company and all shades of anti-Third
International revolutionary sects.
According to Trotsky, despite everything else the Soviet State remains working class
and the dictatorship of the proletariat is still in force! We will deal with this question
later, now we merely wish to work out with the aid of common sense the nature of the
Soviet State; we will then go on to examine the arguments which are said to be
“scientific.”
In our opinion, another ruling class, the bureaucracy, has emerged from the October
revolution and its receding, while the bourgeoisie has been dispensed with and,
consequently, has no possibility of returning.
The possession of the State gives the bureaucracy possession of all movable and
immovable goods which, although socialised, do not less belong in toto to this new

8
ruling class. It goes without saying that the new class takes good care not to officially
declare that it enjoys this possession, but it in fact controls all the economic levers and
has its property guarded by the GPU and the bayonets of the “purged” army. Each
enterprise has its GPU corps which mounts guard, but in the large enterprises there is
even a soldier of the regular army who mounts guard, bayonet on his gun. He checks
those who go in, examines documents and follows the visitor step by step, even if he is
an important person with whom care should be taken like the trade unionist Walter
Citrine.
The Soviet State is becoming bureaucratic rather than socialist; indeed, instead of
gradually disappearing into a classless society, it is inflated beyond measure. Fifteen
million individuals are already stuck to the trunk of the State and are sucking its sap.
The proletarian class is exploited en bloc in accord with the transformation of property.
The bureaucratic class exploit’s the proletariat and, through fixing wages and the selling
prices of commodities in the State shops, determines the standard at which this class
shall live. The new dominant class has bought the proletariat en bloc. The workers no
longer even have the freedom to offer their “labour power” to different enterprises: it is
the monopolising bureaucracy which has perfected this system of exploitation. The
Russian proletarians have fallen out of the frying pan into the fire.
Socially this new form of society resolves the untenable contradiction which has made
capitalist society incapable of any progress. In capitalist society the form of production
has long since been collective, for everybody participates directly or indirectly in the
production of no matter what commodity. But the ownership of commodities is
individual precisely as a consequence of the maintenance of private property. Through
the socialisation of property and in its being effectively placed under the control of a
class which acts as a harmonious whole, the contradiction existing in the capitalist
system of production is made to disappear and is replaced by a new system. In the
beginning this system exploits the workers ferociously just as capitalism did at one
time. To the extent that the system strengthens and perfects itself production increases
and the ruling class will then be in a position to distribute a bigger ration to those it
exploits. In a normal international environment production on a collective basis should
with certainty grow even though directed by the bureaucracy, since today’s enormous
expenditure on armaments would be eliminated or at least much reduced. Armaments
always do well and States are changed into thoroughly militarist organisms. This
enormous waste of labour can neutralise, and even negate, the impulse which
production incontestably receives following the collectivisation of property and
organisation of the economy according to a pre-established plan.
This new social system arises in the evolution of human history as a parasitic
phenomenon. Power should logically have passed from the bourgeoisie to the
proletariat, but this has not occurred clearly because of the political immaturity of the
proletariat. In fact, it has passed to a social control which is neither bourgeois nor
proletarian. The person of the bourgeois capitalist has become superfluous in large-scale
production and he is automatically pushed aside. The former official, the pen-pusher for
the bourgeoisie, by allying himself with the trade union bureaucracy and that of the
totalitarian State, acquires a status: a new class rises on the horizon. Only the near future
can tell if this new class, which is springing up all over the world, will be able to first
smooth out all the difficulties left over from imperialism and then to increase the
volume of production by employing the new method of economic and political
organisation. It will also be seen if this class is able to improve the living conditions of
the masses; it is here that it will give the proof of its “virtuosity.”

9
The political symptoms tally with the nascent bureaucratisation of the world. Munich
was only a first coagulation of the bureaucratic consciousness. The capitalists and the
representatives of the new regimes, after having reciprocally pushed each other to the
edge of the abyss, suddenly came to an agreement; they were certainly spurred on by a
premonition of the coming evolution of society. The old imperialisms, French, English
and American, realise that it is useless and impossible to maintain their hegemony over
a world which, if it wants to survive, can remain imperialist no longer and which is
visibly changing in a bureaucratic direction.
The old democracies play out the role of an anti-fascist policy so as not to awake
sleeping dogs. The proletarians have to be kept quiet while the transformation of society
in the meantime surreptitiously takes place in their countries. At the same time, and at
every moment, the old democracies feed their workers on anti-fascism. It is the doing of
these democracies, in order to appease the revolutionary ardour of the workers and to
sell the products of their heavy industry, that Spain has meanwhile become a veritable
slaughterhouse for proletarians of all nations. In China the workers are urged on to an
anti-Japanese policy precisely under the leadership of the notorious Chiang Kai-Chek,
he who still has hands sullied with the blood of the flower of the Chinese proletariat. It
goes without saying that this time too the workers swallow all this and go single file,
without knowing anything, almost resigned. The workers of France, England and
America will gradually lose their status of citizens and will become simply the
“subjects” of a bureaucratic regime which will nationalise property and take many other
measures with a “socialist” imprint. The regime will not call itself fascism or national-
socialism, it will certainly have another name, but its basis will still be the same, i.e.:
property collectivised in the hands of the State, with a bureaucracy as the ruling class;
collective and planned organisation of production; finally, the exploitation of the worker
will pass from the sphere of the individual to that of the class.
At this point the Marxist Trotsky will cry at the top of his voice that, contrary to what he
tells us about Russia, not only are the conditions of distribution not socialist but neither
are the conditions of production; then he will go further and carry on revolutionary
propaganda against the bureaucracy of the whole world!
The consolidation of this bureaucracy is, according to him, “a historic possibility and
not an already accomplished fact.” [1] Thus we must wait until the fact is accomplished
to give Trotsky the material for his analysis! Then the proletariat, already under the
tutelage of bureaucratic governments, will have to be called upon to act; imagine the
result!
Trotsky’s study may well be scientific and 100 per cent Marxist, but this will come too
late when there is no longer any possibility of doing anything! He may even be able to
convince the bureaucratic leaders who, in reply, will call him a fascist; I don’t care.
The accomplished fact exists in Russia and it must be examined more deeply. This fact
is visibly in the course of being accomplished in Italy and Germany. And the first signs
of this fact are sprouting up everywhere, even in the big democracies.
There remains one card for precisely Trotsky to play, but we are convinced that he has
no desire at all to use it. His great figure is slowly declining in a grey sky, while at the
same time the memory of a sunny day is fading, blotted out by the rising twilight.
Before committing suicide, Joffre wrote Trotsky a letter in which he recommended him
not to be afraid of isolation as long as he maintained the Leninist line intact. It seems to
us that Trotsky has followed this advice to the letter, but that he certainly has not
followed Lenin’s way. When the Russian Social Democratic party split, when
Plekhanov was thrown out of the window, Lenin many times begged Trotsky to stay
with him. He did not succeed, but when in 1917 Leon Trotsky returned to St. Petersburg

10
and recognised that he had been wrong, then Lenin welcomed him into the ranks of the
Bolsheviks since he understood that a political mistake was not a betrayal. Trotsky, on
the other hand, has broken off relations with those who do not think like him. He has
trained in his school young people who follow “the line” according to his system. The
Danton of the October revolution does not even suspect that he could be wrong. He is
too sure of himself. This is alright up to a certain point, but it is a real calamity when the
reasoning is based on doubtful polemical methods. This means that one does not have
enough confidence in the strength of one’s case. If this is so, it should prompt the taking
into consideration of the other person’s reasons and the recognition of one’s own faults
without fear since any other solution will lead to much worse results.
In our opinion, the USSR is a new type of society, ruled by a new social class: that is
our conclusion. Property has been collectivised and belongs effectively to this class
which has set up a new — and superior — system of production. Exploitation passes
from the sphere of the individual to that of the class.
The political struggles which have taken place in the USSR since 1923 were all battles
in which the new class in formation fought the proletariat; it is not important that in the
beginning these struggles did not have a clearly-defined aim. The massacre of the
Leninist Old Guard, and of all those who might offend the bureaucracy, which has been
the delight of the Soviet Union since the death of Kirov is only the civil war needed by
the new class to consolidate its power. It is not a sign of weakness, but a demonstration
of the strength of this class.
The USSR has long since abandoned all revolutionary tendencies and has fallen at the
feet of the Franco-English bourgeoisie. The capitalists are fully convinced that there
exists in Russia today the appearance only, intended for simpletons, of revolution and
socialism; that is why they have invited and accepted the Soviet Union into their
Geneva sanctuary. At home the capitalists protest against the revolutionary
manoeuvrings of the Comintern but only to trick the proletarians. What is important are
the facts which tell us that from now on and for many years the USSR has been coupled
to the bourgeois train of capitalism. In fact Paris, London and New York have clearly
recognised in the so-called Soviet Republic a State which exploits and oppresses the
workers.
Despite the real political and social situation in Stalin’s land, Leon Trotsky and his
disciples claim that the USSR is still a Workers’ State with a regime of proletarian
dictatorship. They, and those who follow the current of ideas which rejects the policy of
the Third International, are the only ones who in their discussions are interested in the
nature of the Soviet State, even if only indirectly. We go on to polemic with Trotsky and
his disciples because we have now definitively formed our judgement on the present
social nature of the Soviet Republic.

II. In the Camp of Agramant
Discord among the fugitives and exiles from the Third International is as great as that
which reigned in the camp of Agramant. Trotsky no longer even replies to his ultra-left
opponents since, he says, “they replace scientific analysis by noisy shouting.”[2] Splits,
expulsions, fins de non recevoir, orders to maintain the discussion on the pre-established
line, all these have not however been able to stifle the question. It barely appears but it
does appear all the time, even though the circle of members is narrowing, and acts like
an axe which from time to time comes down on the trunk of the Fourth International
before it has gained strength.
Trotsky replies to comrades B and C — not better identified — in an article entitled “A
non-proletarian and non-bourgeois State?”

11
This is the reply, superfluous for a Marxist who follows the Master’s thought to the
letter: “The bourgeois State must be swept away by the proletarian revolution and
replaced by the workers’ State. There is no middle way for history” [3].
It is true that Marx always said this, just as he said other things which have not come
about since. We don’t hold this against him; on the contrary we believe that his greatest
merit was to have taught the study of social facts and to have provided the researcher
with a wonderful means for interpreting history. It seems to us that the Marxists should
study the facts which exist in the light of the Marxist method and that they should not
confine themselves to checking to see if these facts correspond to one of the catalogue
headings of the forecasts of the greater thinker or his greatest disciples. Such a method
is hopeless and the Marxists, in adopting it, change themselves into Jesuits, who when
they run short of arguments inundate you with quotes from some saint or other in order
to oppose your view. If you dare to reply that even these blessed ones could be wrong,
the Jesuit loses his temper and simply tells you that you doubt the divinations of the
saints so that it is quite pointless to prolong the discussion. You are not a Catholic, you
are among the damned, just as your spirit is damned since it is deprived of grace!
Marx has in a sense been sanctified, and if by your reasoning you happen to come to
conclusions different from the forecasts of the Jew of Trier, your place is among the
damned, even if in your study of today’s social facts you made use of the Marxist
method of research.
Comrades B and C state that the USSR has ceased to be a Workers’ State “in the
traditional sense given to this expression by Marxism.” They deny that it is either a
bourgeois State or a proletarian State — we wonder, in passing, what kind of State it in
fact is. Then these comrades admit that the rule of the proletariat “ can . . . be expressed
in a considerable number of government forms” and go on to proclaim later that “the
conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat is in the first place not economic, but
above all a political category . . . All forms, organs, institutions of the class rule of the
proletariat are today destroyed; but this means that the class rule of the proletariat is
destroyed” [4].
There is also much confusion in the ideas of B and C, reflecting a state of mind where
ideas are in the process of formation.
Trotsky concedes fully that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a completely political
category and declares that politics is only concentrated economics and so the “regime
that defends expropriated and nationalised property against imperialism is, independent
of the political forms, a dictatorship of the proletariat.” That’s it except, we would add,
the bureaucracy would not have to be a class which found expropriated and nationalised
property to be in its interest.
Can the nature of a State be judged without taking into account its political forms? Are
the forms of property and relations of production already completely changed when a
State consolidates itself by overthrowing another? Is not this, on the contrary, the task of
the new ruling class? Did the government of the Third Estate in France not support itself
for a few years on a feudal economy? During such periods concentrated economics
clearly cannot be politics; politics is rather concentrated potentially in the social class
which has its hands on the levers of control and in the programme which it is putting
into practice.
Trotsky even admits that “during the first few months of the Soviet regime the
proletariat administered a bourgeois economy.” This admission was certainly not made
to support our theory, but with the aim of illustrating a case of class contradiction
between the political form and the economic reality in order to conclude that:

12
“the concentration of power in the hands of the bureaucracy and even the encroachment
upon the development of the productive forces does not of itself alter the class nature of
the society and of its State.”
But, in our view, the main point is to see with what end in view the expropriated and
nationalised property in Soviet Russia is defended from imperialism, supposing this
imperialism still to be an effective force. Who can assure us that an invader, whoever it
be, imperialist or not, would change the form of property in the USSR?
If it is true that in the first months of the Soviet regime the proletariat administered a
bourgeois economy and that now there exists an opposite case of class contradiction
between the economy and the State, well, is this a good reason for validating the theory
that the dictatorship of the proletariat is still a reality in the land of the Soviets? And,
finally, for attaching no value to the reverse contradiction? Decidedly, this is a strange
way of reasoning! In other words, if a proletarian State has existed with a bourgeois
economy, why could not a non-proletarian State exist with a nationalised economy?
Perhaps this cannot be admitted only because a phenomenon of this kind has never been
seen or because Marx did not envisage it? It seems to us that our theory is the most
logical since all the other factors which serve to characterise the nature of a State have
been turned upside down in Stalin’s land. Not in the least, considers Trotsky, even the
second and inverse proposition must help prove his theory. (Let us point out that this
second proposition ought not to come about in a regime aiming at socialism, while the
first is understandable and clear to everybody.)
In the first months following the October revolution, the proletarian dictatorship was a
true, real fact; if everybody is agreed on this point, even though there was no
nationalised property, this means that the dictatorship of the proletariat is in the first
place a question of political and not economic forms, at least during the phase of
transition between the bourgeois economy and the socialist economy.
From what we know it follows that the proletarian dictatorship is the political form of
the working class during this phase, that of social construction. But when its specific
products cease it is logical to consider that the phase itself has ceased to exist. Until the
day when, on socialism being achieved, the proletarian dictatorship disappears, political
factors will have their word to say in the classification of the type of power. As it is true,
as everyone admits, that not even as a result of the nationalisation of property is
socialism an accomplished fact in the USSR, it seems evident to us that the
nationalisation of property and the planned economy are not sufficient reasons to prove
the existence of the proletarian dictatorship. For this the proletariat must also hold
power — that’s a self-evident truth. This condition is so important that, whereas we
have seen a genuine proletarian dictatorship while the economy was still bourgeois, or a
Third Estate ruling over a feudal economy, we have not yet seen the opposite case
appearing in history. The USSR of today is far from convincing us. It has to be a form
of society which is neither capitalist nor socialist, and a form of State which is neither
proletarian nor bourgeois. We still consider that the dictatorship of the proletariat, after
realising the nationalisation of property, should continue its way, following the socialist
programme. However everybody, and Trotsky first of all, accepts that this way was not
subsequently followed in the land of the Soviets. Thus of what dictatorship of the
proletariat are we speaking? Of the dictatorship of the proletariat which has wiped out
the revolutionaries and which organises, with the help of murders and sell-outs, the
sabotage of the proletarian revolution in the world? Or is it perhaps that one which
makes the difference between the classes ever wider?
“The USSR does not correspond to the criterion of a Workers’ State that is advanced in
our programme ... History ... gave us the process of the degeneration of the Workers’

13
State,” Trotsky tells us. But what is left for us, then, after this degeneration of the
workers’ State and of the dictatorship of the proletariat? “Nationalised property and the
planned economy,” replies Trotsky. That’s very well, but what is their aim? Is it the
realisation of socialism? Obviously not, and even Trotsky denies that it is. So? So, if
nationalised property and the planned economy remain, this happens because they both
suit the interests of the regime in power. In fact, the Soviet bureaucracy has no reason to
eliminate these innovations of the October revolution but, on the contrary, has political
and social reasons for maintaining them. From the political point of view, the Soviet
bureaucracy tricks the workers by telling them that the nationalised property is theirs
and, from the social point of view, it cannot go against the current, i.e. against the
development of production. Even the bourgeois States themselves are proceeding more
and more to the nationalisation of property and the planning of the economy. In doing
this, they are undermining the sacred right of private property, but where this work has
already been accomplished does this right need to be destroyed? If only for this, a new
reverse transformation of property in Russia is not to be feared.
All the facts prove to us that this domination of the bureaucracy in the late land of the
Soviets is real. This has lasted for so long that a clear differentiation of classes has been
established. All the political and social acts are those of a dominant class concerned
with maintaining and strengthening its power. Well, according to Trotsky, it is not
scientific to consider that the Soviet bureaucracy, which monopolises the government,
can be a new class!
“It is not a question of a new bourgeoisie,” we are told; or “it is not yet” and so it is not
a class but a “clerk"! Although tradition, even at home, teaches us that many “clerks”
have ended up by becoming masters, in the camp of Agramant they are unable to
envisage a new class apart from the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, even if the latter is
well dead and the former is whipped by a new master. It has to be a case of a simple
clerk, almost an ordinary bureaucrat, who in the case of the USSR becomes the valet of
world imperialism, including, at least one would say, Italo-Japano-German imperialism!
We do not think that Marxism can lead to such nonsense. Simplification has always
been a vice of Marxists, even though the essence of the doctrine of their master is
universal. Marx could not foresee the coming of the totalitarian State, dominated first by
a clique and then by a social stratum which later consolidated itself definitively as a
class. But the facts are there to examine and ideas do not fall from the sky. Even in the
camp of Agramant these ideas fall in rare and large flakes, real signs of a coming
snowstorm.
The Marxists, who claim to be orthodox, are not content to examine the facts in a
Marxist way, they enquire about what’s beneath them! They have discovered that
whoever reasons like us is a victim of a mirage, whereas in reality it is they who put the
world on its head like the idealist philosophers of the past. They serve us their
knowledge on plates garnished with Marxist dialectic, a dialectic which we hold to be
based on the class struggle, but they, the Marxists, do not see that all over the world a
new class is crystallising. Trotsky, wishing to disregard or ignore the bureaucratic class
in power, tells us in order to explain what is now happening in the land of the Soviets:
“With full justification one can say: the ruling proletariat in a backward and isolated
country remains still an oppressed class. The source of this oppression is world
imperialism, the transmission machinery is the bureaucracy.”
Trotsky, thanks to his mind and skill, knows how to make the most extravagant theories
seem realistic and a superficial observer is easily taken in by the beauty of the
explanations of this well-established thinker. That may be, but we are not affected. It is
a fact that if the international proletariat had beaten imperialism as it emerged laden

14
with crimes from the bloodbath of 1914-18 we would now have a world soviet republic
developing in a socialist direction. Up to a certain point, therefore, we can ourselves
also hold that the origin of the oppression comes from imperialism; but the most
important question is to establish whether the Soviet bureaucracy is something other
than a transmission machinery.
The USSR, besieged by capitalism, has degenerated more and more, while the
machinery of this process is embodied in the Soviet bureaucracy. But what is the social
outcome of this regression? Perhaps it is not the all-powerfulness of this “transmission
machinery"? Perhaps it is not the defenestrating of proletarian power to make way for
what is called the agent of imperialism? Perhaps even this supposed valet of
imperialism can be envisaged as defending the conquests of the October revolution? We
think, on the contrary, that such a valet would obey a new master and that it would give
the revolutionary conquests a third-class burial. We see it in fact emptying the soviets of
their class content, enchaining the proletariat, physically destroying the Marxists and,
finally, distinguishing between imperialisms in order to join the strongest and oldest
clique. We also see it playing roles in the international arena which are prompted not
with a view to re-introducing capitalism into their country, but in exchange for the
protection it receives for its present regime of slavery. If it becomes patriotic and
warlike this is only for reasons of self-preservation.
Trotsky does not deny these facts, but he adds that the Soviet regime maintains and
defends nationalised property:
“As long as this contradiction is not taken out of the sphere of distribution into the
sphere of production . . . the State remains proletarian.”
Trotsky and all the Marxists cannot envisage a society which is neither bourgeois nor
socialist. A new social form which organises production on the basis of nationalised
property and the planned economy must be basically proletarian, even if the measures
applied in the sphere of distribution are anti-socialist! As far as we are concerned, in
Russia the proletariat after a short period of power has only changed masters. The
bureaucratic State of today maintains the forms of collective property and a planned
economy only because these forms accord with its nature, just as the Roman Empire
absorbed the religion of Christ and the One God in place of the innumerable pagan gods
because this suited its interest. These new economic forces are growing up everywhere
on Earth, beginning in the weak capitalist countries which are least able to resist the
general disappearance of capitalism. Since the latter has accomplished its historic task
and the proletarian revolution has not triumphed, the world has been obliged to continue
its evolution with a new social form, even if Marx did not foresee this form and if
Messieurs the Marxists have not noticed it!
The “clerk” who according to Trotsky is only the transmission machinery of
imperialism has dominated Russia for twenty years and rules a country which is a sixth
of the world, with a population of 180 million inhabitants. Clearly, the clerk has
alarming proportions, much greater than those of its masters themselves. A domination
of this kind needs a “staff” which for us is, on the national scale, a class. To strengthen
this domination, this class extends into all social spheres and, where it encounters
resistance, overcomes it by climbing over mountains of bodies. The bureaucratic regime
in the USSR has sacrificed first the Communist Party and the Third International and
then the Red Army itself. Work of this magnitude cannot be done by “cliques” or
“staffs” or “clerks,” but only by classes.

III. Class Property

15
Since Trotsky attaches an inordinate importance to the fact that the contradiction has not
passed from the sphere of distribution into that of production, he can be considered as
conceiving Soviet production to have a proletarian character. It seems to us that, here
again, there is a mirage and that it is not us who are its victims.
Production is considered to have a sufficiently socialist character to assure us that the
continuation of the Workers’ State from the sole fact that property is nationalised and
the economy planned. In reality, the whole system of production remains collective, as
in the organisation of large capitalist enterprises, while property passes from the private
to the collective form. It follows, therefore, that if economic characteristics are the only
determining factors of the nature of a State, we are reduced as far as the USSR is
concerned to nationalisation and State planning.
It remains for us to see what the nationalisation of property in the USSR in fact means.
It is here that we also, without claiming to be orthodox Marxists, will allow ourselves to
look beneath the facts. The nationalisation of property was certainly the first
revolutionary measure that the proletarian class in power decreed with a view to
constructing socialism. But, with the Stalinist degeneration, this construction stopped;
since this nationalisation should have been followed by the socialisation of property, it
is logical to ask what it has become from the sociological point of view. Everybody in
the camp of Agramant is agreed on this point. Trotsky adds that the distribution of
products is done in such a way that the bureaucracy allocates itself the lion’s share. We
wonder what sort of “nationalised” property this is where the property is exclusively
directed by a class which then lays hold of the products with as much effrontery as the
old bourgeoisie. There exists in Russia in fact an exploiting class which controls the
means of production and which behaves as their owner. The members of this class do
not share this property out but are themselves, in a bloc constituting a class, the real
owners of the whole nationalised property.
Property, after having been everybody’s and non-existent for the men of distant times,
passed collectively to the communities to be transformed afterwards into private
property. Now it seems that, as class property, it is again taking on a collective form.
In Russia the exploiting class has become an owning class, and so realised its legal-
social nature. To avoid the assault of the workers, they fool them with the
“nationalisation” of property as if in fact such property belonged to everybody. Despite
this they are afraid and, being unable to carry on their work in a democratic
environment, are condemned, at least for the moment, to construct a police State.
Property forms must go in line with the system of production. If the exploiting class is
not up to the task which history has assigned it, it will break up and a new class will
emerge which we can describe as historically parasitic. Perhaps it is thus that the
judgment of history is realised. The contradiction, peculiar to capitalist society, between
the method of production and the form of property has been resolved in the USSR, even
without establishing socialism and without raising the proletariat to be the ruling class.
Exploitation remains but, instead of being exercised by individuals on individuals, is
exercised by one social class on another. The exploitation of man, under the pressure of
inevitable economic development, has taken a new form. Private property has become
collective, but of a class. We know of no other way of defining this “national” property
which does not belong to everybody, which is neither bourgeois nor proletarian, is not
private nor socialist either.
Trotsky is unable to see the new exploiting class in Russia, he cannot see the
progressive extinction of the bourgeoisie in the world, he does not observe the more and
more noticeable establishment of class property not only in Russia but in the totalitarian
countries as well. He sees the world “as a decaying bourgeois society.” This is very little

16
for a Marxist with pretensions to scientific analysis. From Mussolini to Labriola, from
Tardieu to Wallace, all the literature of this quarter of a century is only an accusation
and a sarcasm directed against old bourgeois society. The De Profundis has been sung
for capitalism in every language. It seems to us that the task of scientific Marxists, the
trustees of the dialectic of the class struggle, is not to extricate themselves from this
difficulty by a commonplace definition. Their task is precisely to see what changes are
taking place in classes in this epoch where capitalism is ending and then to identify the
new property forms and new social relationships. We thus see that not even the famous
surplus value has disappeared in this enigmatic State which is the Soviet Union.
Everyone is agreed on this, but dissension arises when it comes to determining where
this surplus value finally goes. Does it go to the non-existent bourgeoisie? No. Perhaps
it goes to the workers? Not at all, since, if it did, socialism in a single country would
have been established and it is precisely this that is “the big lie.” Perhaps we should
consider that the surplus value goes to the Workers’ State? For the reason just mentioned
this would be the triumph of Stalinism whose N° 1 enemy is Trotsky. If someone claims
that surplus value has disappeared in the land of the Soviets, it would then have to be
deduced that labour power is no longer bought. Then socialism would be a reality,
which is against all the evidence.
In fact there is only one possible reply that can be admitted: the surplus value goes to
the new exploiting class, to the bureaucracy en bloc. When bourgeois society is seen as
decaying, this means that it is losing its economic characteristics; this means also that
the particular characteristics of the dominant class are disappearing and that society is
changing. The phenomenon, completed in the so-called Soviet State, is taking shape
everywhere in the world. The class property which in Russia is a fact is certainly not
registered with any lawyer or in any register of property. The new Soviet exploiting
class has no need of such nonsense. It has the force of the State in its hands and that is
worth much more than the old registrations of the bourgeoisie. It defends its property
with machine-guns, with which its all-powerful oppressive apparatus is provided, and
not with lawyers’ deeds.
If the thesis that nationalised property really belongs to everybody can be supported by
fascism with its concept of class collaboration and of the State above classes, we do not
understand how Marxists, even scientific Marxists, can extricate themselves on this
point. According to Marx and Lenin, the State is only the dominant class’s organ of
oppression. As long as the State exists in fact, classes remain and property, under the
aegis of the State, is managed by the dominant class using its apparatus of domination.
Speaking like the Marxist, the concept of nationalised property is nonsense, it is anti-
scientific and anti-Marxist. According to Marx, property from being private should
become socialist and he understood it to be socialist, or at least potentially, even during
the period of the proletarian dictatorship. According to the Marxist theory, behind the
State there is always a class, and if the possibility of an intermediate form of property
(class property) was not foreseen, this comes almost certainly from the miscalculation
of assuming as certain the rapid disappearance of classes after the proletariat takes
power. In reality, during the dictatorship of the proletariat property has a class character,
it belongs to the workers who manage it, so it shows its socialist character only
potentially. If property is nationalised in a non-proletarian regime, it loses its character
as potential socialist property and remains class property only.
In the case of the USSR, a State where the bourgeoisie has scarcely any weight, if the
State remains, this means that at least two classes are still in existence and are effective.
If common sense refuses to hold that the Soviet workers are the owners of the means of
production, it is logical to consider that the ownership of the means of production

17
belongs effectively to the bureaucracy. A clerk! Far from it, it is a well-established
owner! The fact which is very probably at the origin not only of the discord in the camp
of Agramant but also of the political confusion in the world is that a transitional form of
property between private property and socialist property was not foreseen. In addition,
the work of Stalin, Mussolini or Hitler is everywhere described either as socialism or as
capitalism, whereas in reality it is only bureaucratic collectivism.
In the camp of Agramant terrific efforts are made to avoid these logical deductions: it
could be said that there is a chorus of cats in the mating season there, spending the
nights of March tearing apart our soul with their mournful bawling.
Lieutenant Naville, who had been asked “what was the difference between private
property and collective property if a bureaucracy only was able to benefit from the
latter,” replies “that there would only be a difference of degree between capitalist
private property and the gigantic ‘private’ property of the ‘bureaucracy’.” [5] What a
discovery! The property of many millions of citizens, considered as a social group,
would still remain private property. But will this scientific Marxist then tell us what he
understands by collective property? Perhaps this Solon takes human society for a
limited company with shares? Human societies must be considered as single wholes and
not as aggregations. Private property remains such as long as continual “Statisation”
does not change its characteristics. Even capital is not such until it has attained a certain
size. Hegel’s dialectical law of the transformation of quantity into quality is valid for
property also, we say so with or without the permission of the whole camp of Agramant.
The first crystallisation of collective property was identified with class property, even
under the proletariat. The Marxists have not foreseen nor seen this, but that’s another
matter.
If, according to Naville, the property of the fascist State take-overs remains private —
even if this process is going to totally swamp capitalism — we do not see the reason
why we should not also consider Soviet nationalised property as private, seeing that in
Russia the process has been completed and the bureaucracy is its great beneficiary! This
deduction is logical on Naville’s reasoning, even if it is false. In reality, the
nationalisation of the means of production in Russia has created a collective, though
class, form of property which resolves the capitalist contradiction between collective
production and private appropriation. We cannot use two measures when studying social
facts. We also state that the basic economic acts of the totalitarian States, involving
nationalisation and economic planning, are leading to the disappearance of the same
contradiction. This has social consequences, viz: the appearance of class property and
the domination of the bureaucracy, the extinction of the bourgeoisie, and the
transformation of the proletarians into State subjects.
Referring to bureaucracy in general, Naville goes on:
“Whether it has property titles or not (and it has not), the bureaucracy cannot freely
control the use of (distribute) either the accumulated capital or the surplus value
produced. Theirs is not a case of capitalist private property, even in its State monopoly
stage.”
It seems to us that the opposite is true. The Soviet bureaucracy in particular controls the
use of the amassed capital and distributes the surplus value. Trotsky goes so far as to
say:
“What was only a ‘bureaucratic distortion’ is preparing to swallow up the Workers’
State, skin, hair and all, and on the ruins of nationalised economy to build up a new
possessing class” [6].
We add: who directs the economy? Who draws up the five-year plans? Who fixes the
selling prices? And wages? Who decides the public works, industrial installations, etc.,

18
if not the Soviet bureaucracy? And if they do not control the use of this property who
then does? Who has responsibility for distributing the surplus value? Perhaps the dead
Tsarist bourgeoisie or world imperialism or the Russian proletarian? Naville does not
give us any explanations and continues:
“Is it then a question of a new form of property, of historically established relations on
the basis of collective appropriation but for the benefit of a particular class, the
bureaucracy? In this case, the bureaucracy would have to be seen as benefiting from the
system like a capitalist class because it would expropriate surplus value like a capitalist
enterprise.”
Heavens, yes, that’s precisely it! However, the bureaucracy must be seen as benefiting
from the class-divided system of society not as a capitalist class, but as a bureaucratic
class. It grabs the surplus value not as a capitalist enterprise, but as a class exploiting en
bloc.
Naville, on the other hand, replies thus to the question he timidly posed:
“History shows that the phenomenon of the production and appropriation of surplus
value is not peculiar and limited to liberal capitalism or private monopoly. Ground rent
and surplus value, which existed at the time of feudalism, became fully significant with
the commodity economy and then industrial development. They continue to exist in the
USSR, despite the denials of Stalin, Bukharin and their school. Only they are
nationalised and therein lies the essential difference. If one wants to clarify the nature
of present Soviet society, it is on this point also that one must avoid making errors.”
Driven into a corner, finding himself under the ineluctable necessity to admit that
surplus value is “fully significant” in bureaucratic collectivism too, Trotsky’s disciple
avoids the obstacle in a hardly scientific manner. He supports the ambiguous, anti-
Marxist and reactionary position according to which ground rent and surplus value are
nationalised in Soviet society. He sees some essential difference in this!
We are going to reply with the words of his master who, in The Revolution Betrayed,
expressed himself thus:
“It is perfectly true that Marxists, beginning with Marx himself, have employed in
relation to the workers’ state the terms state, national and socialist property as simple
synonyms. On a large historic scale, such a mode of speech involves no special
inconveniences. But it becomes the source of crude mistakes, and of downright deceit,
when applied to the first and still unassured stages of the development of a new society,
and one moreover isolated and economically lagging behind the capitalist countries.
“In order to become social, private property must as inevitably pass through the state
stage as the caterpillar in order to become a butterfly must pass through the pupal stage.
But the pupa is not a butterfly. Myriads of pupae perish without ever becoming
butterflies. State property becomes the property of ‘the whole people’ only to the degree
that social privilege and differentiation disappear, and therewith the necessity of the
state. In other words: state property is converted into socialist property in proportion as
it ceases to be state property. And the contrary is true: the higher the Soviet state rises
above the people, and the more fiercely it opposes itself as the guardian of property to
the people as its squanderer, the more obviously does it testify against the socialist
character of this state property.” [7]
Thus it does not seem that so-called nationalisation of property leads to ground rent and
surplus value being effectively nationalised, i.e. belonging to the whole people. There is
no essential difference, except that the bourgeoisie is no longer the exploiting class that
receives the surplus value, but it is the bureaucracy which is granted this honour. Naville
identifies nationalised property with socialist property, which seems to us neither too
scientific, nor too Marxist.

19
Such a mistake was excusable in Marx’s time, but the same mistake amongst his
disciples is unpardonable since now the forecasts of the Master are becoming real, even
if unclearly.
If one wants to assess “the nature of present Soviet society” errors on this point
precisely must be avoided and what nationalised property is, sociologically speaking,
must be gone into more deeply. Of course this work must be done in a scientific Marxist
way if that pleases the knights of Agramant better. We do not claim that our answer is
complete, we have only given the outlines.
If they pursue this line of reasoning, the coming of the totalitarian State in the world
will also become clearer to those who up till now have shown us a complete
incomprehension with regard to fascism, holding it to be the preserver and continuer of
capitalism.
In these regimes a new ruling class in formation declares that capital serves the State,
and then makes the facts conform. This class already largely fixes the prices of
commodities and the wages of the workers and organises the national economy
according to a pre-established plan.
Obviously, ownership of the means of production cannot be identified as easily as that
of the means of consumption. The latter are for personal use, while the former are as
immovable as mountains. There is no owner, nor any class, nor any State which can put
them on its back and drag them where it wants. It is thus not surprising that there are
times when it is difficult to determine who is their owner.
In our opinion, in the USSR the owners are the bureaucrats since it is they who have
power in their hands. It is they who direct the economy, just as was normal amongst the
bourgeois. It is they who reap the benefits, just as is normal for any exploiting class;
those who fix wages and the selling prices of commodities are, once again, the
bureaucrats.
The workers count for nothing in the control of society; further, they have no share in
the receipts of surplus value and, what is still worse, have no interest in defending this
alien nationalised property. The Russian workers are still exploited and the bureaucrats
are their exploiters.
The nationalised property of the October revolution now belongs as a “whole” to the
class which directs, exploits and ... defends it: it is class property.
In the course of the development of capitalism the system of production became
collectivised; as a result private property could not escape collectivisation. This
collective property is not however under the protection of the proletarian class; but
under the protection of a new class which in the USSR is an accomplished fact and
which in the totalitarian countries is in the course of formation.

IV. Bureaucratic Exploitation
“If it is true that the USSR has become settled in a new stable social form other than
capitalism or socialism and that instead of the bourgeoisie another dominant class has
arisen, will you also explain to us what is the new form of exploitation and by what
means the surplus value is pumped out of the workers?”
Scientific Marxists have the right to speak like this, or something like it, and we will do
our best to meet their wishes. While Trotsky agrees with Naville on the question of
nationalised property as the characteristic of a Workers’ State, it does not seem that the
Master is of the same opinion as the discipline when it comes to considering ground rent
and surplus value as nationalised in Stalin’s land. Here’s what he tells us in The
Revolution Betrayed:

20
“If we translate socialist relations, for illustration, into the language of the market, we
may represent the citizen as a stockholder in a company which owns the wealth of the
country. If the property belonged to all the people, that would presume an equal
distribution of ‘shares’, and consequently a right to the same dividend for all
‘shareholders’. The citizens participate in the national enterprise, however, not only as
“shareholders,” but also as producers. On the lower stage of communism, which we
have agreed to call socialism, payments for labour are still made according to bourgeois
norms — that is, in dependence upon skill, intensity, etc. The theoretical income of each
citizen is thus composed of two parts, a + b — that is, dividend + wages. The higher the
technique and the more complete the organization of industry, the greater is the place
occupied by a as against b, and the less is the influence of individual differences of
labour upon standard of living. From the fact that wage differences in the Soviet Union
are not less, but greater than in capitalist countries, it must be inferred that the shares of
the Soviet citizen are not equally distributed, and that in his income the dividend as well
as the wage payment is unequal. Whereas the unskilled labourer receives only b, the
minimum payment which under similar conditions he would receive in a capitalist
enterprise, the Stakhanovist or bureaucrat receives 2a + b, or 3a + b, etc., while b also in
its turn may become 2b, 3b, etc. The differences in income are determined, in other
words, not only by differences of individual productiveness, but also by a masked
appropriation of the products of the labour of others. The privileged minority of
shareholders is living at the expense of the deprived majority.
“If you assume that the Soviet unskilled worker receives more than he would under a
similar level of technique and culture in a capitalist enterprise — that is to say, that he is
still a small shareholder — it is necessary to consider his wages as equal to a + b. The
wages of the higher categories would be expressed with the formula: 3a + 2b, 10a +
15b, etc. This means that the unskilled worker has one share, the Stakhanovist three, the
specialist ten. Moreover, their wages in the proper sense are related as 1:2:15. Hymns to
the sacred socialist property sound under these conditions a good deal more convincing
to the manager or the Stakhanovist, than to the rank-and-file worker or collective
peasant. The rank-and-file workers, however, are the overwhelming majority of society.
It was they, and not the new aristocracy, that socialism had in mind.”
We endorse this entirely, and if Trotsky says that a privileged minority lives at the
expense of a deprived majority, we think Naville too should be convinced of it!
We do not even dare hope that we will be listened to, but it seems to us in passing that,
if the nationalisation of surplus value and ground rent benefits only the bureaucrats, it is
permissible to consider that the “nationalised” property is also the province of these
bureaucrats and that it does not belong to the whole of society, for then it would be
genuinely socialist. The French lieutenant, as a good disciple, has drawn from the
concept of the Master conclusions regarding Soviet property. The deduction is exact but
it is the premise that is not, so the result could only be wrong. Let him be annoyed with
Trotsky if he wants or let him understand that in this world geniuses are only men and
therefore fallible, and that even mediocrities can sometimes notice the mistakes of great
men. Naville submits to us in this connection an interesting extract from Capital:
“The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of direct
producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of
production itself and, in turn, reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this,
however, is founded the entire formation of the economic community which grows up
out of the production relations themselves, thereby simultaneously its specific political
form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to
the direct producers — a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in

21
the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity — which
reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure and with it
the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the
corresponding specific form of the state. This does not prevent the same economic basis
— the same from the standpoint of its main conditions — due to innumerable different
empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical
influences, etc. from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance, which
can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances.” [8]
One would say that Marx had just written all this. We also fully consider that the
innermost secret of a social edifice is revealed by the specific economic form in which
surplus value is pumped out of the direct producers. But if this surplus value goes to a
privileged class and if the ground rent of the collective farmers takes the same road (as
Trotsky shows) and does not go to the State as Naville wants to prove with a naïve
example about a collective farm, that proves that the Soviet bureaucratic class is not an
illusion but that it has the qualifications of a ruling and exploiting class.
Here is Naville’s example of the collective farm with which he shows us how only 37
per cent of production goes to the workers and the remainder to the State, only part of
which goes directly to the bureaucracy:
“An example. Here is how ground rent goes back to the State. The distribution of
products and money in a collective farm is carried on in accordance with regulations
laid down by the government. First of all, a deduction is made for the benefit of the
State whose amount varies according to the fertility of the region and with a maximum
of 41 per cent of the crop. Then 2 to 3 per cent is deducted for administrative expenses
and 13 to 25 per cent for the depreciation of the tractors and agricultural machinery and,
finally, 10.5 per cent for the reserve fund. The rest is divided amongst the workers in
proportion to the quantity and quality of work carried out by each of them.”
The essential point is to see if, through the percentages paid directly for the costs of
administration, the bureaucrats are paid in line with the average wage of a worker; but it
is still more interesting to see what the Soviet State does with the 60 per cent of
production it corners. Does it totally put back this surplus value into circulation, in the
interests of the mass of the people not in the government, or does it channel it in ways
particularly dear to its specific qualities as a class State? The reply is almost pointless:
Jesus Christ also first washed his feet so as to then leave the Apostles their turn. All the
literature of the knights of Agramant, all of it we repeat, is there to make the accusation:
“the extreme differentiation of income between Soviet citizens,” “the growing class
differences,” “the new bureaucracy,” “the Soviet aristocracy,” “the lion’s share,” “the 40
per cent of production swallowed up by the bureaucracy,” “the growth of social
antagonisms, of inequality,” and so on. It needs only the candid naivety of the philistine
Naville to suppose that the surplus value extracted from the Soviet workers largely
comes back to them via a so-called “Workers’ State.”
In reality, the bureaucratic State pays the surplus value in different ways to its officials
who form a privileged class, directly installed in the State. We too have never seen a
dominant class without a bureaucracy to directly control the State, nor a bureaucracy
which was also a ruling class. But we see this today and we are also convinced that we
are not taking illusions for reality. We are sorry for the knights of Agramant who today
tilt at windmills or, better still, we are sorry for the Don Quixotes invading the camp
cursed with the discord which a vindictive archangel has thrown there; but we believe
this precisely is the social reality. These are the jokes of history, little revolutionary
inconveniences for great scientific Marxists and philistines. To be fair, we must agree

22
that Naville himself realises that the Soviet bureaucrats do not remain indifferent before
the mountains of surplus value amassed by the Workers’ State; this is what he says:
“The Stalinists repeat that surplus value no longer exists in the USSR since ‘the
factories belong to the workers’. But there is no point in opposing this absurdity with an
absurdity just as great, viz., that the surplus value is produced and distributed as in the
capitalist system and that consequently the relations of domination and servitude, as
Marx put it, are the same as in capitalism. In reality, the specific form in which a part of
the unpaid surplus labour is appropriated gives it the role and function of a semi-
parasitic caste and, in certain of these strata, the direct tendency to push through as
owners.
“The extreme differentiation of wages, a striking phenomenon full of significance, does
not however exhaust the ‘innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social
edifice!'; the secret of the transitional State which is the USSR and the new
contradictions which it conceals is revealed if the real meaning of the nationalisation
measures is not lost sight of and if their real character is not masked by superficial
analogies with the fascist Statism of Mussolini or Hitler.”
See how modest Naville finds these Soviet bureaucrats, precisely he who is always
heaping insults on them.
These bureaucrats appropriate only a “part” of the unpaid surplus labour. Who knows
with what instrument he can measure this? Then he sees in the bureaucracy a “semi-
parasitic” caste. This is amusing, this “semi"! Similarly this caste should also be semi-
ruling, semi-exploiting and semi-owning! It is true that the “innermost” secret is not at
all exhausted by the “extreme differentiation of wages,” this is only an indicator. The
innermost secret resides in the relation between the masters of the conditions of
production and the direct producers: in algebraic form: masters/producers = innermost
secret.
The denominator of this ratio is known since the direct producers are a known constant
in social evolution (labour). The numerator, on the other hand, varies since the form of
property varies in the course of economic development. It is precisely this term which
must be identified and we have found it to be the bureaucracy, the owner, as a class, of
the means of production en bloc. So we go on to write the relationship like this:
bureaucrats/producers = innermost secret.
Without the new identification of property the innermost secret will remain a mystery!
If one wants to know the relations of domination and servitude, the way in which the
surplus value is pumped out of direct producers must be sought.
In Soviet society the exploiters do not appropriate the surplus value directly, as the
capitalist does in cashing the dividends of his enterprise, but they do so indirectly,
through the State which appropriates the whole national surplus value and then shares it
out amongst the officials themselves. A good part of the bureaucracy, viz., technical
specialists, managers, Stakhanovites, etc., etc., are to a certain extent authorised to
deduct directly their very high salaries at the enterprise they control. In addition, they
also enjoy, as do all the bureaucrats, the State “services” paid from surplus value which,
in honour of the forms of “socialist” life, are very important and very numerous in the
USSR.
The bureaucracy as a whole pumps out the surplus value from the direct producers
through a colossal inflation of the general expenses in the “nationalised” enterprises. It
is a question, not of the 2 to 3 per cent for administrative expenses observed in Naville’s
famous collective farm, but of enormous percentages which make the hairs of the most
brazen capitalism stand on end and which are mentioned in the works of Trotsky
himself.

23
We see then that exploitation passes from its individual form to a collective form, in
accordance with the transformation of property. There is a class which en bloc exploits
another in accordance with class property, and which then goes on to distribute through
the State the proceeds internally amongst its members. (The inheritance of bureaucratic
posts is to be expected.) The new privileged swallow up the surplus value through the
State machine, which is not just a machine for political oppression but is also a machine
for administering the nation’s economy. The machine for exploitation and for the
maintenance of social privileges has been united in a single organ; a perfect apparatus, it
could be said!
Labour power is no longer bought by the capitalists, but is monopolised by a single
master: the State. The workers no longer go to offer their labour to different employers
and chose the one who suits them the best. The law of supply and demand no longer
functions: the workers are at the mercy of the State.
The general expenses of enterprises increase very considerably in the totalitarian States
and even the big democracies are not spared this; these increasing expenses show us that
Bureaucratic Collectivism is forming and class property crystallising everywhere in the
world.
In the USSR wages are fixed by the “Planning” Commission, viz., the top bureaucracy.
The selling prices to the public follow the same course. This allows us to realise by
intuition that it is in the difference between the price of production of commodities and
their selling price to the public that the bureaucracy makes its fortune.
The bureaucracy costs a lot, so it increases the price of production and in order to cover
its salaries — more or less hidden — it goes on to include enormous mark-ups in the
selling prices. The trade unionist Citrine, when he visited a shoe-making factory, was
unable to obtain from the manager the selling price to the public of the shoes he was
shown. But he was able to discover that in the shop situated inside the factory itself the
price of the shoes was 32 roubles, whereas in other shops he found the same shoes at 70
roubles. It must be pointed out that the sale of articles in the factories where they are
manufactured is very limited: the bureaucracy treats the workers as customers and sends
them out to buy in the “State shops.”
In a regime with “socialist tendencies” a mark-up of 120 per cent seems to us
outrageous, all the more so since capitalist shopkeepers limit themselves for the same
article to an average of 40 per cent.
It is the bureaucracy which does the accounts of enterprises and of the State, and while
it does not receive dividends as the old capitalists did, it freely arranges the investment
of the sums accumulated. The whole meaning of the “happy life” which Stalin has
announced lies in the mark-up of cost and selling prices imposed by the bureaucracy
and in the investment of the reserve capital in “public works” that are useful to the
bureaucratic class.
Mr. Naville will tell us that capital is accumulated for the State too, and for the future,
through the establishment of large factories, power stations, etc., etc., but what
exploiting class has not been obliged to do the same? The bourgeois also, while
exploiting the proletarian, was able to lead a happy life and at the same time accumulate
capital for mankind. He has left us the most perfect structure the world has ever seen.
The bourgeois did not do all this as a gift to mankind, but because the imperatives of the
development of production pushed him to perfect his machines, to rationalise work
scientifically and to create model factories. Thus it was not philanthropy; the Soviet
bureaucracy is obliged by the same laws to accumulate capital for the future, even
though it still has an especially exploitative nature.

24
V. The Proletariat
What has become of this class in the USSR? Everybody takes it to be cheated,
oppressed, exploited; but not a voice is raised to see if by chance the legal status of the
workers, which was changed following the October revolution has not undergone a new
change. Yet the direct producers have often changed their legal form: they have been
slaves, serfs, proletarians, pariahs, etc. Not a voice has been raised of course because “it
is written” that the proletariat will be the last exploited class to have the dishonour of
appearing on the scene of History; then classes will disappear into a humanity of equals.
However observations are not lacking: “The worker in our country is not a wage slave
and is not the seller of a commodity called labour power” says Pravda. Trotsky’s reply:
“For the present period this unctuous formula is impermissible bragging. The transfer of
the factories to the state changed the situation of the worker only juridically. In reality,
he is compelled to live in want and work a definite number of hours for a definite wage.
Those hopes which the worker formerly had placed in the party and the trade unions, he
transferred after the revolution to the state created by him. But the useful functioning of
this implement turned out to be limited by the level of technique and culture. In order to
raise this level, the new state resorted to the old methods of pressure upon the muscles
and nerves of the worker. There grew up a corps of slave drivers. The management of
industry became superbureaucratic. The workers lost all influence whatever upon the
management of the factory. With piecework payment, hard conditions of material
existence, lack of free movement, with terrible police repression penetrating the life of
every factory, it is hard indeed for the worker to feel himself a ‘free workman’. In the
bureaucracy he sees the manager, in the state, the employer. Free labour is incompatible
with the existence of a bureaucratic state.
“With the necessary changes, what has been said above relates also to the country.” [9]
But if the State is the employer and the bureaucracy a manager, given that the State is an
apparatus and that, from a Marxist point of view, behind the State there is always a
class, is it not true that the bureaucrat-manager is also the employer and that the State is
only his organ of oppression?
Further on Trotsky adds:
“When the new constitution announces that in the Soviet Union ‘abolition of the
exploitation of man by man’ has been attained, it is not telling the truth. The new social
differentiation has created conditions for the revival of the exploitation of man in its
most barbarous form — that of buying man into slavery for personal service of
another.” [10]
Is this agreed? Yes, “the buying of man for the personal service of another,” but then say
it in a single word: slavery!
What in fact is meant by proletarian on the capitalist free market if not the free seller of
his labour power? The proletarian is in the end someone who gets his food solely from
the use of his muscles in a private enterprise. His wage is governed by the relation
between supply and demand in a free market.
This law is not valid in the USSR. With the market closed and competition abolished it
is the State which determines wages by using means which completely wipe out the law
of supply and demand. To cast aside this law definitively the State has monopolised
labour power. There is only one employer: it!
In the past the proletarian used to offer his services to whoever he preferred; he
discharged himself at any moment and left when he pleased, he enjoyed trade union
freedom and freedom of thought, the press, meeting and religion. The proletarian had to

25
suffer the uncertainties of the market; he was like a free bird soaring high and able to
nest anywhere on Earth.
The Soviet worker has only one master, he can no longer offer his commodity-labour,
he is a prisoner with no choice. He has been put on “short rations,” he has been
uprooted from his village and transplanted where it suits the State better and, finally, he
needs a passport to travel internally. He is regarded by the State as a function of the
national economy, his individuality disappears. The proletarian has become merely a
small cog in an immense machine and only has social significance when placed in this
machine.
The social relation between proletarians and capitalists was reduced to the simple
expression of an act of buying and selling and the outcome consisted in the payment
once a week of the wage. Beyond this simple and rapid gesture there was no other social
link; each went his own way according to his tastes.
In contrast, the Russian worker is now continually and directly in contact with his
master at the factory, at home, in school, in the trade union, at the theatre, in the country.
He has to participate in political “meetings” and always says yes; whether he wants to
or not he must pay his subscription, buy the paper and listen to the claptrap which his
master lovingly prepares as daily food for his mind. If he wants to take part in politics,
there is only one party to choose from; he enters it not as a free thinker but as a soldier.
The Soviet bureaucracy is everywhere, like a divinity.
The State, the sole employer of labour, cannot permit itself the capitalist luxury of
paying for labour power and from then on taking no interest at all in the human being
who produces it. As a monopoly it can no longer restrict itself to the purchase of a
certain amount of labour for a given period. In monopolising labour power without any
time limit it in fact also becomes the owner of those who produce it. In the final
analysis, today’s Soviet State has purchased en bloc the whole proletariat and the
relation between employers and lenders of labour has completely changed. the worker
of Russia today has ceased to be a proletarian and has taken on the characteristic of a
slave.
Exploitation takes place just like in slave society, the State subject works only for the
master who has bought him, he becomes his capital, he is the livestock which must be
looked after and housed, in whose reproduction the master is greatly interested. Even
the part-payment of the so-called wage in goods and State services must not deceive us
and lead us to assume a socialist form of distribution: this represents in fact only the
upkeep of a slave! The only fundamental difference is that in the past slaves were not
given the honour of bearing arms, whereas the modern slaves are very ably taught the
art of war.
They must be ready to let themselves be shot through by a machine-gun or shot to
pieces by a cannon in the interests of our bureaucracy. From the cradle to the grave the
Soviet worker belongs to the State.
It is the bureaucratic class that is the master of the working class, they decide the use of
its labour power and of its blood; they give it the possibility of living at a “standard”
superior to that of the slaves of Antiquity since everything is relative. But the Russian
working class is no longer proletarian, it is only a slave. It is a slave both in its
economic sense and in its social manifestation; it goes down on its knees when the
“little father” passes and it deifies him, it takes on all the characteristics of servility and
lets itself be driven from one end of the immense Empire to the other. It digs navigable
canals, builds roads and railways just as in the past this same class put up the Pyramids
and the Coliseum.

26
There is a small part of this class which is not yet lost in the most complete apathy;
since it keeps the faith, it meets to discuss in cellars just as in the past the Christians
prayed in the catacombs. From time to time the praetorian guards carry out a raid and
round up everybody. “Monster” trials in the manner of Nero are prepared and the
accused make their “mea culpa” instead of defending themselves. All the characteristics
of the Russian worker contrast with those of the proletarian, he has become a State
subject and has acquired nearly all the characteristics of the slave.
He has no longer anything in common with the free worker except the sweat of his
brow. The Marxists may as well arm themselves with Diogenes’ lantern if they intend to
look for some proletarian in the Soviet towns.
The Russian worker, together with his trade union, has been incorporated bag and
baggage into the State. In the past he heard the pamphlets which Lenin wrote read in the
Duma by his representative; now, in contrast, he is obliged to take part in political
meetings to which he goes as a sheep; he is only an unconscious element in a
manipulable mass which the bureaucracy alone controls.
A single great slave master has arisen on the plains of Russia: the State. The
descendants of Marius can well sharpen their weapons! Marx had not foreseen such an
end for the proletarians, but that is not a sufficient reason for denying it. We don’t
worship the saints!
Just as each year the Jews go out beyond the ramparts to await the Messiah so the
philistine Marxists await the rescue of the proletariat in Russia; they will have to wait as
long as for the Messiah. When the Soviet bureaucracy falls stone dead at the foot of the
Lenin Mausoleum it will be the sword of Marius that will have pierced its heart. The
Fourth International Squadron of the Camp of Agramant states, still scientifically, that
from now on there is no need for a social revolution in the USSR and that any change
will reduce itself to a purely political proclamation. Well, let them invoke in order to
question them the souls of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Tomsky, etc., the whole infinite number
of obscure martyrs! These will reply in chorus: “We died in the class war needed by the
bureaucracy to consolidate its social domination; we wanted something quote different.
Saddle the horses and brandish the lances!” What crowning irony: the lances do not
come grasped in hand, but broken for the “defence of the USSR"!

VI. Nationalisation
The nationalisation of the means of production in Russia is the highest “trump” the
knights of Agramant have played in support of their theory of the Workers’ State.
According to Trotsky, state capitalism means the partial substitution of State property
for private property. Statism, on the other hand, means State intervention on the basis of
private property. While the former is “one of the signs that the productive forces have
outgrown capitalism and are bringing it to a partial self-negation in practice” [11], the
latter is only the economic result of the intervention of the bourgeois State forced to
save private property. Trotsky does not deny that state capitalism and statism have
points of contact but, taken as systems, he considers them as opposites. We are not
convinced that there is such an opposition. In our opinion, it is only a case of two
different manifestations of the same phenomenon and in a sense of an internal reaction;
an almost natural reaction of the sick social organism that clearly shows both the
collective form which property must take and the necessity of introducing a planned
economy. Statism comes into play to save it as an unconscious reaction of the capitalist
organism. But from the sociological point of view, it cannot be seen as having as its aim
the “preservation of private property at the expense of the productive forces” [12]. As long
as the bureaucratic or socialist doctor does not intervene, the sick person treats himself.

27
In our opinion, state capitalism and statism correspond in miniature, and respectively
together, to nationalisation and the planned economy. As long as they remained
restricted to having a sporadic nature, they keep the same social characteristics as the
economy in which they appear, but when the phenomenon becomes general it is the type
of economy itself which changes completely. Then the dialectical law of the
transformation of quantity into quality enters on to the scene, ignorance of which has
led some ultra-lefts to tax Trotsky with the epithet “juggler.”
In our opinion, Trotsky’s mistake lies precisely in the fact that he does not apply this
law to the phenomenon of fascism. If the bourgeois State belongs to the bureaucracy
only “in some respect” [13] there must consequently come a given moment when the
economy, as a result of the progressive development of State intervention and state
capitalism, is no longer capitalist and when the bourgeois State no longer belongs “in
some respect” to the fascist bureaucracy. The State becomes specifically fascist and the
bureaucracy the class on which it is socially based. In the USSR the “nationalisation” of
property came in one swoop following the October revolution, but, since the concept of
nationalisation has no scientific validity in Russia, in effect this was the generalisation
in one swoop of state capitalism and its foster brother statism.
What has happened to the economy? Has it become socialist? No, says Trotsky. Is it still
capitalist? No, we say, precisely because of the law of the transformation of quantity
into quality; it is Bureaucratic Collectivism.
Trotsky considers that “the foundations of society can [not] be changed without
revolution and counter-revolution” [14] and we are in full agreement. However, we would
ask: what was the struggle which he himself waged and endured? Was it not the class
struggle between the proletariat and the nascent bureaucracy? And is not, perhaps, the
storm of crimes which has strained Russia with blood for some years the last phase of
this struggle? A real class war in which the new ruling class is consolidating its power?
Does not Trotsky know about the struggle between the Italian bourgeoisie and fascism?
At the time of the birth of their movement, the Blackshirts freed themselves from the
proletariat with a few club blows. What has followed since has been a fierce struggle,
even undercover, an implacable struggle between the old ruling class and the new ruling
class in formation. Once they are beaten, it will be difficult for the bourgeoisie to again
gather the strength necessary for “violent opposition,” especially not so as to “open up
great revolutionary possibilities for the workers” [15].
“Better the worse than the worst” say the Italian bourgeoisie and instinctively the most
crafty invade the State and change themselves into bureaucrats. The friction between the
original fascists and the recent arrivals has its origin in just this phenomenon.
It is quite true that the fascist State is only subordinate to the bureaucracy “in some
respect”; it does not yet belong to it entirely, but will happen with the complete coming
of the totalitarian State.
Since Trotsky admits that the fascist bureaucracy could transform itself into a new
ruling class, why does he not admit this has already happened in Russia where the
totalitarian State has already been established? He continues to delude himself if he
thinks that Hitler and Mussolini would bump up against the violent opposition of the
capitalists if they tried to completely nationalise property. It would be too late and for
information on this it suffices to ask Von Schleicher, Amendola, Nitti or Senator
Albertini.
Unfortunately abroad, and particularly in the Marxist camp, the fascist phenomenon has
been little understood. It was defined first as a petty bourgeois phenomenon, whereas it
was clearly a capitalist force which only later, when it was organising its consolidation
as a class, turned to the petty bourgeois. The Marxists have seen fascism fling itself on

28
the workers’ organisations; and have seen in this only a phenomenon of social reaction.
Blinded by the bourgeoisie-proletariat binomy they have been unable to admit that, due
to the disintegration of the capitalist economy and the failure of the attempt by the
proletariat to seize power, another class has risen to solve, at least in the sphere of
production, the great contradiction of capitalist society. Without much noise, as
moreover in England during the bourgeois revolution which preceded the French by a
century and a half, a handful of determined men have imposed themselves on the ruling
class which had invested them with temporary power. These men were soon made to
understand that, to stay in power, they would have to follow a direction opposed to the
immortal principles of the liberal economy. A direction they did not hesitate to follow.
It cannot be denied that fascism came to power by violence even if with the consent of
the Crown. It suffices to re-read Corriere della Sera of those days to be convinced of
this. The great journal of the liberal bourgeoisie was not only anti-fascist; one would
have said that it was edited by revolutionaries. The Matteotti affair itself, on whose
body one of the most disguising spectacles of History was made, is only one of the
manifestations of this struggle between the bourgeois and the fascists. It is of no
significance that the so-called socialist parties are to be found on the side of the
bourgeoisie, for these parties are only in the tow of the old ruling class. The proletariat
had no other road to take but to go into the streets and fight, but they followed a false
direction. The various Turatis, Treves, Modiglianis, Nennis, etc. advised them to remain
calm, not to provoke anyone and to have the courage of cowardice. Today fascism is so
strong that the bourgeoisie is at its mercy. It is possible that some upset could still
overthrow it, but the struggle has been over for some years now. The “putsches” made
in their time against Hitler had the same bourgeois basis, but they were stifled in blood,
just as any resistance to the domination of the Soviet bureaucracy is stifled in blood in
Russia today.
The question of nationalisation was already dealt with in passing by Engels. In 1878 he
put it precisely:
“The transformation . . . into State-ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic
nature of the productive forces . . . And the modern State, again, is only the organization
that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the
capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of
individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a
capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total
national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more
does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The
workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away
with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State
ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed
within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.” [16]
The nationalisation of the Railways, Posts and Telegraphs or Tobacco, which took place
at the height of capitalist development, shows us the inevitable and ineluctable
transformation of private property into collective property. These nationalisation
measures also began the process of State intervention into which capitalism is sinking
more and more, and which is becoming more and more frequent in the present phase of
the liquidation of the old society.
The process of involvement and over-development of the State is a consequence of the
failure of the proletarian revolution, but the nationalisation measures about which
Engels spoke with such foresight in 1878 take on a quite different aspect in this period,
which is a period not only of the decay of capitalism but also of its liquidation. In 1878,

29
at the height of capitalist development, nationalisation was the non plus ultra of the
capitalist creation, i.e. the “ideal personification of the total national capital” as Engels
put it. Today nationalisation is not confined to tobacco or railways but it besieges
industry, commerce, banking, insurance, foreign trade and even the land; finally, these
nationalisation measures in “nationalising” private property destroy it and,
consequently, extinguish the bourgeoisie as a class.
It seems to us that Engels clearly saw the social upheaval which is brought about when
the State pushes nationalisation to its furthest limit. “Brought to a head, it topples over.
State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict.” It topples
over, we too say; but what Engels only wrote about is today a social reality whose
nature must be identified. It has always been thought that the seizure of power by the
proletariat was the key to the solution, but in reality the proletariat has been deprived of
power in the USSR, and in the rest of the world has been defeated politically.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon occurs and, in the absence of the proletariat, who has
taken power? The bureaucracy, we reply.
The officials and technical specialists, who carry out this task, join together and form a
new ruling class. In the USSR the collectivisation of the means of production occurred
suddenly and was a collectivisation tending in a socialist direction, but the cessation of
the revolution in the world stopped this process. Only the collective form of property
remains but has passed from the aegis of the proletariat to that of a new social class
which was born following the social disintegration.
Moreover, there is no new historical phenomenon here; History does not insist that a
new ruling class should coincide with a former exploited class. It is sufficient that the
economic programme is, in no matter what way, progressive. After the French
Revolution too, it was not the people with their sansculottes who took power but the
bourgeoisie which Napoleon Bonaparte embodied.

VII. Bourgeois Restoration
Bourgeois restoration is the bête noire of the orthodox scientific Marxists. It roams like
a ghost in the camp of Agramant, upsetting the sleep of these Marxists and filling their
dreams with anguish. They are all obsessed by the fear of seeing the bourgeois reappear
as a result of a metamorphosis of the bureaucracy. It is an excellent argument suitable as
a bogey against those who do not want to defend the USSR; but it seems to us
somewhat difficult to sustain as this argument assumes that economic development can
go back on its tracks. Marx never made any reference of this sort and history records a
constant growth of the volume of production accompanied by the driving out of old
methods of economic organisation by progressive ones. Our knights declare that the
present productive system in the USSR is better than the bourgeois system, yet continue
to invoke their ghost.
There is no point in giving a series of quotations: their whole literature is full of it,
Trotsky’s above all. However Naville goes further and must be quoted, even if we regret
wasting time on such a trivial argument:
“The wave of counter-revolutionary terror which the bureaucracy has unfurled on the
railways, in the factories and fields, by shooting hundreds of recalcitrant workers and
officials, is the consequence of the new Constitution and of the hope which it opens for
a series of social strata behind whom world capitalism stands on the look out. The
bureaucracy, the equerry of this restoration, however risks not mounting into the saddle.
It is this which reveals the contradictory and ambiguous function of the Soviet
bureaucracy which itself undermines the basis of its existence: collective State
ownership of the land, means of production, large-scale industry, houses and trade.”

30
Capitalism is on the look out and the bureaucracy is committing hara-kiri! Sleep
peacefully, gallant knight, the bureaucracy has quite other intentions! Further on Naville
adds:
“The bureaucracy has voted a new Constitution which guarantees a series of its
privileges, it has murdered nearly all the old Bolshevik leaders whose loyalty to it was
suspect, it has given unparalleled guarantees to the diplomacy of the League of Nations:
despite all this it remains linked to the property framework established at the time of the
October revolution, not only by its origins but also by its present method of functioning,
recruitment, reproduction and consumption.”
These two quotations alone are enough to make any ordinary worker purse his lips and
refuse to risk even the nail of a finger for the land of the “happy life”; but scientific
Marxists die hard. They hold themselves upright and impassive on a dummy breach and
slash the air invaded by ghosts. The October revolution needs a second edition.
Naville’s foresight goes to the extent of detailing the specific form which the economy
will take following the restoration:
“Given the fundamental difference which exists between the State industry of the USSR
and monopoly capitalism in the imperialist system, it is clear that to return to private
capitalism in the fundamental branches of production, the bureaucracy would have to
break up too: one would then see arising in the USSR social classes which by their
whole mode of existence would be the victim of the bourgeoisie and even of European
fascism.”
The bureaucracy, because of its mode of economic existence, is already a descendant of
the bourgeoisie and fascism is nothing else but its twin. Calm yourself, Mr. Naville, the
Soviet bureaucracy will never break up and particularly not into monopolies. State
capitalism has already been reached for a long time; it is more or less widely applied in
all countries and its application is always increasing. It does not seem logical to us that
there should be a return to monopolies, a capitalist economic form prior to state
capitalism!
Trotsky has taught that the Soviet bureaucracy is the clerk of imperialism, but his pupils
go further in the march against the course of History: they arrive at monopolies!
Even if the USSR is overthrown by the Anti-Comintern it is difficult to understand why
the conquerors should destroy the very economic system which is being constructed in
their own countries at the price of enormous sacrifices nationally and internationally.
Besides, it is this very system which explains to us the conquerors’ appearance in
history and their success. If the totalitarian States overthrow the USSR we think that the
political form will be maintained and that the Soviet bureaucracy this time really would
become a Japano-Italo-German “clerk.”
Did feudalism ever have the intention of going back to slavery? Did capitalism ever
have any nostalgia for feudalism? And did not the celebrated French Restoration
establish the uncontrolled domination of the bourgeoisie? This was precisely its reason
for existence, its historic task. It benefited from Napoleon’s insane megalomanic plans,
but on condition that it remanded the defender and propagandist of the “Immortal
Principles.”
The whole analogy which Trotsky draws between the authoritarian regimes and the
bonapartist regimes is not very appropriate. The bonapartist phenomena of the 19th
century have nothing to do with what is happening in Russia, Germany and Italy. The
bonapartism of Napoleon I and Napoleon III left the social-economic basis intact,
whereas the alleged bonapartism of the 20th century uproots precisely the connecting
tissues of society. The bureaucracy found property already nationalised in the USSR and

31
till now has maintained it; if all this is mistakenly described as bonapartism there is a
danger of historically justifying the phenomenon of Stalinism.
Trotsky always has a fortunate hand for choosing “slogans”; he has an innate skill and
succeeds even when his skill causes confusion. He has found an uplifting analogy in
order to justify the description “Workers’ State” which is thrown at Stalin’s bureaucratic
collectivism. Here it is:
“Is the USSR a Workers’ State? The USSR is a state which is based on the property
relations created by the proletarian revolution and which is led by a workers’
bureaucracy in the interests of new privileged strata. The USSR can be called a workers’
State in more or less the same way — in spite of the enormous difference in scale —
that a trade union led and betrayed by opportunists, i.e., by the agents of capital, can be
called a workers’ organisation.” [17]
It follows from this that a workers’ bureaucracy economically exploits its master, which
has never occurred under the arch of heaven. And to give body to the ghosts recourse is
had precisely to that “noisy shouting” of which Trotsky has great horror, i.e., the State is
compared to a trade union! It occurs to us to think of that racist whose name we don’t
recall who, to prevent the crossing of Aryans and Semites, tells us that dogs make love
to dogs, cats to cats, lions to lions, consequently . . .
Throughout his article Craipeau[18] is rightly indignant and champs at the bit. It was a
pleasure for us to discover this five-footed sheep, a pleasure comparable to that which
Robinson Crusoe felt when he finally found a companion. However we consider that his
concept of a Soviet bourgeoisie smells too much of the “bourgeois.” That the new class
abandons itself to pleasures of all sorts is logical, since this is to be found in the
programme of all dominant and exploiting classes. But Craipeau should not be afraid of
the accumulation of wealth nor its hereditary nature: it is a matter here of property over
the means of consumption not of production.
The bureaucracy is not like an individual bourgeois owner. The latter displays his
goods; but today property is so close (in the evolution of history) to socialisation, i.e. to
its disappearance as restricted property, preserving only its character as a means of
production, and besides having taken a collective form it is also disguised and denied by
its present possessors. What is important to the bureaucrat above all is the surplus value;
but he is obliged to consume it in secret!
And why does Craipeau consider that the bourgeoisie has returned? Since he admits the
existence of a new class which is non-bourgeois or at least not yet bourgeois, why does
he want it to transform itself straightaway into a bourgeoisie again? If a new class forms
it is because, historically or as a matter of fact, it must develop a role to play in the
historic rise of mankind. Our conclusion on this point is that the bureaucracy has the
task, or has assumed the task, of organising production on the basis of collective
property by planning the economy within the framework of the State, while only
international “nationalisation” and the problem of the socialist distribution of the
products remain for socialism.
Craipeau also judges the nature of fascism wrongly. Fascism was at the service of the
bourgeoisie and also tried to continue with the capitalist economy but it found, in the
imperatives of economic development, conditions even more authoritarian than its own
political movement which obliged it to rapidly take the road to the totalitarian State.
To be afraid of these facts is to help the opposite aim; somebody else’s game is played,
the film of reformism is wound in reverse. Since you have noticed precisely this in
Trotsky, why do you not do so in yourself? Has the hypothesis of the Revolution
Betrayed which you quoted[19] really any historical sense? Especially since the author
added the following phrases to this hypothesis: “But to speak of that now is at least

32
premature,” “the proletariat has not yet said its last word” (it is we who have underline
the word premature).
Once the existence of a new class in the USSR is admitted a yawning chasm opens up
before the Marxist mentality, but this chasm will not go away by closing one’s eyes. The
cup of bitterness must be drunk to the dregs, only then will it be possible to take up the
wire again and follow it to safety.

VIII. The definition of the USSR
Here is what Trotsky says[20] followed by our observations:
“To define the Soviet regime as transitional, or intermediate, means to abandon such
finished social categories as capitalism (and therewith ‘state capitalism’) and also
socialism. But besides being completely inadequate in itself, such a definition is capable
of producing the mistaken idea that from the present Soviet regime only a transition to
socialism is possible. In reality a backslide to capitalism is wholly possible. A more
complete definition will of necessity be complicated and ponderous.
The Soviet Union is a contradictory society halfway between capitalism and socialism,
in which: (a) the productive forces are still far from adequate to give the state property a
socialist character;”
These forces are not only inadequate for this, but the State property is a class property;
it is bureaucratic property.
“(b) the tendency toward primitive accumulation created by want breaks out through
innumerable pores of the planned economy;”
This is quite natural, but this does not mean that the planned economy is going to be
submerged: economic development does not go backwards.
“(c) norms of distribution preserving a bourgeois character lie at the basis of a new
differentiation of society;”
It is not a question of bourgeois norms, but of the norms of a new exploiting class.
“(d) the economic growth, while slowly bettering the situation of the toilers, promotes a
swift formation of privileged strata;”
Thus we have two features which prove the existence of a new exploiting society: the
economic system is progressive and the privileges remain. In place of “strata” we would
read “class.”
“(e) exploiting the social antagonisms, a bureaucracy has converted itself into an
uncontrolled caste alien to socialism;”
Yes, but it has become not only a caste or a stratum or a clique, but a class. Its character
is stable and, from now on, clearly fixed.
“(f) the social revolution, betrayed by the ruling party, still exists in property relations
and in the consciousness of the toiling masses;”
A party which governs a State can only be the expression of a class which finds the
established property relations in its interest.
“(g) a further development of the accumulating contradictions can as well lead to
socialism as back to capitalism;”
Left to itself development will never bring society back to capitalism, but towards the
accomplishment of the historic task based on planned production and collective
property.
“(h) on the road to capitalism the counterrevolution would have to break the resistance
of the workers;”
The counterrevolution is not on the road to capitalism, but has settled at bureaucratic
collectivism. The workers have already been defeated.

33
“(i) on the road to socialism the workers would have to overthrow the bureaucracy. In
the last analysis, the question will be decided by a struggle of living social forces, both
on the national and the world arena.”
Full agreement. Here however a “new question” arises. To defend the USSR means to
defend the new exploiting system which is imposing itself on the whole world.
In our opinion, the Stalinist regime is intermediate, it throws aside outdated capitalism
but it does not rule out socialism for the future. It is a new social form, based on class
property and class exploitation.
The inadequacy which Trotsky notes of describing this society as transitional on the
grounds that it could lead us back to capitalism has no justification; it is an intermediate
society viz., stable until it accomplishes its historic task. Given that this task is only a
matter of fact, national or international events could prevent its accomplishment; then
the working class would again take up its historic task.
Meanwhile this new society is a fact. As a result of all its political and moral
manifestations it finds itself enclosed in the old world instead of that of the hoped-for
workers’ international. Its character as a society ruled by a national class will always
make it opposed to internationalist “fantasies,” while it will join various “Leagues of
Nations” according to the particular interests of its ruling class.
Once again the workers of the world are being tricked when they are pushed to fight
against Fascism and in defence of the USSR. Precisely the proletariat was the only class
capable of holding up its head against fascism, but it should have been a proletariat
which led and not one in tow to the old carcase of capitalism. The examples of China
and Spain are unambiguous in this respect, and other still more harsh examples are
being prepared.

IX. The Rule of the Petty Bourgeoisie
This is our definition, for this phenomenon, for this phenomenon is general and not just
Russian. In the USSR this phenomenon is principally bureaucratic because it was born
from the bureaucracy; but in the totalitarian countries it flourishes naturally among
engineers, specialists, trade union and party officials of all kinds and all colours. Its raw
material is drawn from the large army of the State and semi-State bureaucracy, the
management of limited companies, the Army, the liberal professions and from the
workers’ aristocracy itself.
The so-called subversive parties, displaying a complete lack of political skill, pushed the
middle class into the arms of capitalism. The time has now come for this class to give
free rein to its grudge against the old masters and those who were unable to close their
eyes to their inevitable organic weakness. The proletariat should have conciliated the
middle class and made use of their talents while leaving some satisfaction to their petty-
bourgeois mentality, but instead they see them lined up against them as the ruling class.
The whole economic, political, moral and cultural world reflects the mentality of the
middle class.
Nationalisation is restricted to the large enterprises; this point is being reached in Russia
from an opposite direction. Ownership of the means of consumption becomes sacred
and has been re-established in Russia. They proceed not to the accumulation of capital
but to the conquest of the happy life, this of course in bureaucratic terms. There is
levelling down but a differentiation is made halfway and, in order to stabilise the
situation, the State is taken over and possessed with a firm hand. Its cult begins to
appear; this State is made omnipotent, all-seeing, all-powerful. The economy becomes
hierarchical from the top downwards, as happens in all bureaucracies.

34
On the political side parties are reduced to a single one which is not even a party but an
organ of State. The petty bourgeoisie, opposed to both capitalist and socialist
democracy, is intransigent and absolute since it has no well-defined programme. The
nationalist concepts of heroism, devotion to the leader, etc. have been exacerbated or
brought back into fashion in Russia too.
The morality of the petty bourgeois family returns together with its idol, God; as well as
the authority of the father, and of the man over the woman, the practice of abortion for
those who can pay, etc., has come back. The Russian bureaucracy feels itself boss and
master, its inner contempt for the workers is the logical consequence. “You are born to
work,” that’s what it says to itself of them.
We are not too surprised by this whole phenomenon. For what are the great majority of
trade union and party bosses if not petty bourgeois who in their shop flatter the
proletarian customer whose dossier has been put under an inkpot to sleep? So when the
colleagues of these bosses come to power they straightaway put themselves at their
disposal, happy to have found a solid fund which does not undergo the fluctuations of
the capitalist market and which is well-provided and open on the sole condition of clear
bureaucratic obedience. It was not difficult for them to come to agreement but where,
may we ask, was and is the proletariat? Its misfortune merits a little something, since in
history a class which aspires to become dominant should not show itself weak to the
point of being subjugated by its own bureaucracy, even in the pre-revolutionary period.
Instead of a State which dissolves itself into an economic administration from below,
there is a State which has been inflated by the bureaucratisation of the economy
controlled from above.
The House of the Soviets, 360 metres high, will remain a symbol of this period and the
“Bastille” of the bureaucratic world.

Footnotes
1. Once Again, the USSR, and its Defence.
2. The USSR: Non-Proletarian and Non-Bourgeois State? All the other quotes from
Trotsky in this chapter come from this same article.
3. This seems not to be a direct quote from Trotsky but rather Rizzi’s summary of
Trotsky’s position.
4. Quoted by Trotsky in his article.
5. All the quotes in Rizzi’s book from Pierre Naville come from Naville’s “Rapport sur
la Question russe” to the congress of the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste in October 1937.
6. The USSR: Non-Proletarian and Non-Bourgeois State?
7. All Rizzi’s quotes from Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed are from chapter IX on
‘Social Relations in the Soviet Union’.
8. Capital, Volume III, Chapter XLVII, section II.
9. The Revolution Betrayed.
10. English version slightly altered to fit in with Rizzi’s comment which follows.
11. The Revolution Betrayed.
12. Ibid.
13. Once Again, the USSR, and its Defence.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, part III, Historical Materialism.

35
17. This is not a quote from Trotsky, but from a thesis on the “Fourth International and
the USSR” adopted at a conference in July 1936 and quoted by Naville in his report
above.
18. Trotsky’s article Once Again, the USSR, and its Defence was directed against the
views put forward by Yvan Craipeau.
19. The passage from The Revolution Betrayed that Craipeau had quoted reads: “The
means of production belong to the state. But the state, so to speak, ‘belongs’ to the
bureaucracy. If these as yet wholly new relations should solidify, become the norm and
be legalized, whether with or without resistance from the workers, they would, in the
long run, lead to a complete liquidation of the social conquests of the proletarian
revolution.”
20. The Revolution Betrayed.

36