THE degeneration of the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy has been revealed for all to see with its hiring of a mercenary army of criminals to fight in Ukraine, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
His rapid elevation however went to his head with a vengeance when he decided that as a reward for the formation of his private army, he had enough armed forces at his disposal to march on Moscow with the object of bringing down his discoverer, supporter and master President Putin.
This could well have opened up the way for a US intervention into Russia, following up on its intervention into the Ukraine, if the army of criminals had managed to touch off fighting in Moscow, the capital city they were headed for.
This plot has failed and instead of serving a lengthy jail sentence Prigozhin has been allowed to decamp to Belarus which is governed by supporters of President Putin. He has been assured that he will not face prosecution, while his supporters will be able to join the Russian army.
What this whole episode reveals, is not only that Prigozhin has got away with attempting to remove his leader, but that his leader feels that he may be available to play a useful role in future action.
It also makes obvious that what Russia needs is not a social revolution, the working class already has the power in its hands. It needs to re-establish the Soviet Union, with Workers, Farmers and Soldiers Soviets holding the power and wielding it.
What is needed is a political revolution carried out by the working class, to remove the pro-imperialist Stalinist bureaucrats, and the sections of a new bourgeoisie that has emerged, and to impose rule by Workers, Farmers and Soldiers Soviets to carry forward the Soviet Union.
The current revolutionary situation in Russia requires a return to Soviet Power.
Trotsky in his book The Revolution Betrayed writes that ‘The proletarian dictatorship is a bridge between the bourgeois and socialist society.
‘In its very essence, therefore, it bears a temporary character. An incidental but very essential task of the state which realises the dictatorship consists in preparing for its own dissolution. The degree of the realisation of this ‘‘incidental’’ task is to some extent a measure of its success in the fulfilment of its fundamental mission: the construction of a society without classes and without material contradictions.
‘Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.’
He adds: ‘The final physiognomy of the workers state ought to be determined by the changing relations between its bourgeois and socialist tendencies.
‘The triumph of the latter ought to signify the final liqiuidation of the gendarme – that is the dissolving of the state in a self-governing society.
‘From this alone it is sufficiently clear how immeasurably significant is the problem of Soviet bureaucratism, both in itself and as a symptom!’
The Putin regime has sought to bring in a bourgeois order of society, where ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their need’ is a hopeless utopia, not what modern productive forces make both possible and necessary.
Workers in Russia must proceed with their political revolution to smash the Stalinist bureaucracy and bring in socialism.
Workers in Russia and the workers of the world must carry through the worldwide socialist revolution, to put capitalism into the dustbin of history and bring in a worldwide order of society whose maxim will be ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their need’.
It was Marx who called for workers of the world to unite. ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.’
This is the time to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead the worldwide socialist revolution to its victory. What began in October 1917, will be completed in the period ahead.
