WAS THE SOCIALIST FEDERATIVE REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA (SFRY) A WORKERS’ OR BUREAUCRATIC STATE?
On the eve of the Second World War interesting debates about socialism were held. After Stalin had driven the October Revolution to the deadlock, extensivere-questionings of the Marxist practice were launched. Theories came in showers regarding the nature of the USSR. The three main theses were the following:
- STALINISM=SOCIALISM.
This thesis otherwise equally pleaded for by both imperialists and
Stalinists argues that Stalinism is a natural continuation of Leninism
and that Stalin’s USSR stands exactly for the social order which is
generated from the proletarian revolution.
- STALINISM =
DEFORMATION OF SOCIALISM. This is Leon Trotsky's thesis which insists
upon the fact that the USSR is still a workers' state though deformed by
Stalin's usurpation of power. Trotsky claimed that Stalinist
bureaucracy is not a class by itself since it does not possess means of
production but it is only the caste that usurps the government.
- SOCIALISM = STATE CAPITALISM. This is the thesis propounded by an Italian shoe salesman, Bruno Rizzi, who used it to oppose Trotsky. In its essence, it claims that bureaucracy is a new class and that socialism is nothing else but state capitalism, that is, the form of capitalism in which profit does not belong to a capitalist individual but to a collective of bureaucrats who manage it alienatedly from the working class, i. e., the revolution had never happened at all. The main idea of this supposition is to deny revolution as such; accordingly, October is only a coup d’état in which one group of power holders replaced another while the worker was not liberated at all; profit is again alienated from labor.
All of us who used to live in the SFRY can give firm first-hand testimony that Bruno Rizzi’s thesis is not correct. Namely, the profit of the socialist society was structurally accessible through the right to labor, the right to education andother rights including the policy of peace. Deformations were, naturally, present, but it is incorrect to claim that the working class was estranged from profit. Regarding the nature of ownership over the means of production Yugoslavia was, just like the USSR, a workers' and not a bureaucratic State.
In Jelšane, September, 9, 2015