Anti-Stalinist left

The anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule. More broadly, it also refers to those on the left who are opposed to dictatorship, a cult of personality and a police state that is used against workers and working class organizations (i.e. not only Stalinism, but also Maoism and other similar regimes, such as the one in North Korea). There are several currents in the anti-Stalinist left.

Trotskyism

Associates and followers of Leon Trotsky were organised in the Left Opposition within the Communist parties before they were purged in the Moscow Trials in the 1930s. Subsequently, his followers formed the Fourth International in opposition to the Stalinist Third International. Trotsky saw the Stalinist states as deformed workers states, where a political structure gave most workers very little power in decision making.^[1]

Trotsky and his followers were very critical of the lack of internal debate among Stalinist organizations and societies and political repression enacted by Stalinist governments (i.e. The Great Purge); nationalist elements of Stalinist theory (the Socialism in One Country thesis, for example, adopted by Stalin as state policy), that led to a very poor revolutionary strategy in an international contest (and breaking with the internationalist traditions of Marxism); and its dictatorial, bureaucratic, obscurantist, personalistic, and high repressive methods (which Trotsky called "inquisitorial", in a speech that was read and broadcast in English). Less orthodox Trotskyists and other critics of Stalin have seen it as a new form of class state, called bureaucratic collectivism (James Burnham, Milovan Đilas, and Max Shachtman) or as state capitalist (Tony Cliff and C. L. R. James).

Left communism

The communist left was initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution, but lines of tension between the communist left and the leadership of the Communist International opened up very soon. Left communists such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Rosa Luxemburg were among the first left-wing critics of Bolshevism. Left communists see communism as something that can only be achieved by the proletariat itself, and not through the dictatorship of a vanguard party acting on its behalf. (See also council communism, Marxist humanism, ultra-left, luxemburgism.)

Anarchism

Anarchists like Emma Goldman were initially enthusiastic about the Bolsheviks, particularly after dissemination of Lenin's pamphlet State and Revolution, which painted Bolshevism in a very libertarian light. However, the relations between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks soured in Soviet Russia (e.g. in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion and the Makhnovist movement). Anarchists and Stalinist Communists were also in armed conflict during the Spanish civil war. Anarchists are critical of the statist, totalitarian nature of Stalinism (and Marxism-Leninism in general), as well as its cult of personality around Stalin (and subsequent leaders seen by anarchists as Stalinists, such as Fidel Castro or Mao).

Democratic socialism

A significant current of the democratic socialist movement has defined itself in opposition to Stalinism. This includes George Orwell and the Independent Labour Party in Britain (particularly after World War II), the group around Marceau Pivert in France and, in America, the New York Intellectuals around the journals Partisan Review and Dissent. These democratic socialists saw Soviet Communism as a form of totalitarianism in some ways mirroring fascism.

Right Opposition

Another major split in the international communist movement was that between Stalin and the Right Opposition. In several countries parallel communist parties were formed that either were rejected by the Comintern or distanced themselves from it. Their criticism did in some ways become similar to positions raised by the Trotskyists, but as a tendency they were far less coherent. The Right Opposition developed contacts with other groups that did not fit into either the international Social democracy or Comintern, such as the Independent Labour Party in Britain. This tendency largely died out at the time of the Second World War. In other cases dissident Marxist trends developed outside of the established communist movement, such as the Anushlian Marxists in India.

The New Left

The emergence of the New Left and the new social movements in the 1950s and 1960s led to a revival of interest alternative forms of Marxism. Figures associated with British cultural studies (e.g. Raymond Williams), Italian autonomism and workerism (e.g. Antonio Negri), French groups like the Situationist International (e.g. Guy Debord) and Socialisme ou Barbarie (e.g. Cornelius Castoriadis) as well as the magazine Telos in America, were examples of this.

Notable figures in the anti-Stalinist left

References

^ "Class Nature of Eastern Europe" Resolution Adopted by the Third Congress of the Fourth International—Paris, April 1951
^ http://www.marxists.org/archive/sik/1972/third-way/introduction.htm