No person could be expected to join the Communist cause if it is a nice idea, but one that is inevitably condemned to failure. We would then be talking about a cause which will die as the remnants of the Communist movement, (using that term in its broadest sense), who already have an high average age come to their inevitable meeting with Lenin.

There is another – important – point to make. The collapse of the Soviet Union has given a substantial boost to bourgeois ideological conceptions in general and post-structuralist/postmodernist academic versions in particular. They perceive the end of socialism in an empirical sense (1) as reinforcement for the view that the Marxist 'meta-narrative' is done with, and all we can do now is to concentrate on individual aspirations as opposed to notions of collective action or political solidarity. The totally reactionary nature of such argumentation in legitimising, if only by default, the status quo is obvious.

To make the obvious point's, then, if Communists do not provide an adequate analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and no one else will be interested, it leaves us unable to explain why anyone should join the struggle for Communism and allows the victory of all sorts of reactionary ideological constructions by default. When discussing the end of the Soviet Union we are actually deliberating about not only the past of the Communist project but also the future: no less than whether it has any future.

The traitors thesis, the argument that the Soviet Union was more or less a paradise for workers until the death of Joseph Stalin, when the ruling party and state apparatus were almost immediately seized by traitors and capitalist roaders is, thankfully, nonsense. I say 'thankfully', because if this vulgar conception was correct then it means that any attempt to construct socialism is probably a waste of time and effort. There will always be people in revolutionary organisations that are inadequate to the task of social change: who wilt away in the maelstrom of revolution. I may well be one of them. (2) There are no guarantees in history.

If it is true, as the Communist League suggest, that a number of party personnel will turn 'traitor', and remember that they argue that everything was brilliant under the fine leadership of Stalin - such propitious conditions are unlikely to be experienced again – then the failure of any future revolutions are almost inevitable.

I distributed a document entitled 'Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?' (3) to, amongst others, the National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party (4) in which the Communist League participates. The following relates to their (untitled) response.

The Communist League are fond of political abuse when they dub the document as, "unacceptable reactionary revisionism," "reactionary, anti – Marxist-Leninist, revisionist," and add that it "will contribute to the "inevitable confusion of readers." (They have little faith in their reader!). In the final and devastating denouement, the Communist League pronounce the document as embodying the ultimate heresy: Trotskyism! It goes "beyond anything which Trotsky said about the Soviet Union" and it "may legitimately be described as a manifestation of ultra-Trotskyism". (5)

Now they have let off some steam let us see if the Communist League has any criticism that is remotely constructive to make.

They start by complaining that my article is "contrary to established and agreed Marxist-Leninist principles" (p.1) as if there is extant a Holy Bible entitled 'Marxism-Leninism' to which the Communist League alone hold the doctrinal interpretation. In fact, as it so often is, the selection of literature by the Communist League is very narrow and specific - as I will show.

The document 'Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?' begins with the sentence, "One of the most retailed reasons amongst Marxist-Leninists for the demise of the Soviet Union is the 'traitors thesis'." The effort exerted by the Communist League with a whole series of quotes over the first two pages, the People's Daily, Victor Ampilov, Nina Andreyeva, of their paper to 'prove' that the traitors thesis is widespread within sections of the Communist Movement is futile if not altogether bizarre. Reading what people write saves an enormous amount of time! (I say 'sections' of the Communist Movement in that the Communist League only recognise the epigones who agree with them as a legitimate 'Communist Movement', everyone else is a revisionist or worse.)

The Communist League quote me as writing that the traitors thesis:

This is an accurate summary, and repeating it will help to ensure that the reader who has not read 'Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?' is not lost. The Communist League goes on immediately to assert:

My reason for referring to Cathy Majid's pamphlet is that it is a fairly recent, clearly written and concise exposition of the traitors' thesis. The Communist League will have none of this and take an excursion into character assassination via amateur psychology. I have no reason to 'distrust', (with all the connotations such a word has on the left, connotations which are well known to the Communist League), Cathy Majid and it appears that the Communist League cannot accept that there may exist political differentiation devoid of personal antagonism. In their schema, all opponents are some type of agent. (7)

In the following pages the Communist League work themselves up into a frenzy because I have, at least by implication, wait for it, criticised Lenin and Stalin. (8) Let us not be mealy-mouthed dear comrades. One man management, piece work, Taylorist work methods, 'socialist competition' and so on are bourgeois modes of work organisation and Lenin, amongst many of his contemporaries and predecessors, was completely wrong, as the collapse of the Soviet Union has eventually proved, in imagining that socialism could be built by using capitalist methods. But facts never impinge on the fantasy world inhabited by such epigones as the Communist League.

The quotes from Lenin and Stalin which the Communist League give prove my point, they show the strong impact of productive forces theory on the founders of communism in the Soviet Union. Once again the Communist League completely misunderstand, whether through malice or more likely through simple ignorance, my intention and engage in protracted 'quotationism' to substantiate something which I have already indicated an agreement with! I am not, repeat not, disputing that Lenin and Stalin said things indicating that they held, at times a very crude, theory of productive forces as primary agency of creating socialist society! I am saying that they were wrong to uphold such views.

However, the Communist League does not quote Lenin and Stalin for the purpose of identifying Lenin and Stalin's position. As far as the Communist League are concerned if Lenin and Stalin say that Taylorist work methods, etc. are socialist then they must be! The 'text' is reality for the Communist League. (9) Anyone who holds a position, in my case with the benefit of half a century's hindsight, which can be contradicted by referring to the text of Lenin and/or Stalin, must be wrong. This is the Communist League's 'method' of argumentation and it has nothing in common with the critical dialectical approach demanded by Marxism. The Communist League's approach does not require any thought at all, simply access to a referencing service.

The quotes from the Communist League cover a long timescale as if the context of the situation in the erstwhile Soviet Union was static. Productive forces theory, the notion that a rise in the productive forces will automatically create a socialist human being, was a tendency, but only a tendency, in the seminal works of Marxism and influential within the Second International. (10) The devastation of the early Soviet economy strongly reinforced the ideological weight of productive forces theory as all attention had to be directed to basic economic survival. It is not that I am 'blaming' Lenin (11) for adhering to productive forces theory, but rather pointing out that it had a long history in the Marxist movement and was even seen as totally necessary in the constrained circumstances of a wrecked economy. That Stalin was still promoting material incentives in 1941 (12) says a lot about the, completely anti-Marxist, practice of following Lenin in a completely different historical context.

On the question of objective material circumstances the Communist League write in their shoddy 'reply' (p.6) "Lenin 'decomposes the working class' " as if this were my view. Of course, it would not be possible for any individual to decompose the working class, but we are referring here to the material circumstances imposed by World War 1, revolution, a war of intervention and Civil War. It is a fact that the early Soviet working class was very substantially numerically diminished by these events – almost by definition many of the most revolutionary elements put themselves in the front line and perished. In this situation, the Bolsheviks did create a new proletariat out of former peasants: they had to. Until meeting the Communist League I thought that this was a totally uncontroversial argument agreed by both bourgeois and leftist historians. Perhaps the Communist League can tell us how they come to the conclusion that Soviet workers were not killed in large numbers in the events named above?

Let us do what Marxists should do and think for a moment about the effect of such procedures as one-man management, piecework, Taylorist work methods, and 'socialist competition' and so on in practice. (13) (I am assuming here that even the Communist League are not stupid enough to imagine that socialism can be built on behalf of the masses by a party elite.) How can the mass of people possibly be drawn into a self-reliant autonomy coupled to a collective good definition if they are constantly excluded from any real decision making processes? In other words, how can the mass of people develop a socialist consciousness if they are in the same alienated position vis a vis their work environment as they are under capitalism? The obvious answer is that the masses could not evolve a socialist consciousness, and by the conclusion of the Soviet Union, there was no indication of any real consternation at its end – certainly no mass revolt broke out.

This will not bother the Communist League because they argue that the Soviet Union only went bad after the end of the Stalin period, but even then they have to explain the remarkable ease with which the 'traitors' were able to take power? If the Stalin regime was as rigorously socialist under the Stalin regime as the CL assert, then, how can it be that that very same society provided an economic, cultural and political framework that produced not socialist personnel, but 'traitors'?   How could it be that the socialisation process under Stalin created people who supposedly wanted to overthrow socialism rather than consolidate it? Original sin may be an adequate explanation for religious people and secular religionists such as the Communist League, but it is no answer at all for Marxist materialists.

Communist League literature is always instantly recognisable in that it is nothing more than a series of quotations, actually often misquotes or chopped quotes, strung together. The quote is offered as 'proof' of the Communist League's perspective. The output of the Communist League reads like a biblical pronouncement as dissenting elements are ritually 'excommunicated' from their version of 'Marxism-Leninism'. Their reliance on textual authority rather than argumentation is reminiscent of post-structuralism where the 'text' is the world. In a similar manner, for the Communist League the reality is documents. Their 'debate' is conducted at a level of abuse and hysteria highly reminiscent of bourgeois politics.

It also has to be said that the selectivity with which the Communist League choose their documents is very similar to that of post-modernism even though the intention is somewhat different. For the postmodernists all texts have their own integral meaning, 'postmodernist relativism', whereas for the Communist League the purpose is different, it is to support whatever 'theory' they have dreamed up. From a Marxist perspective, the point to make is that it is antagonistic to a materialist way of working.

A basic methodological premise of the Communist League is conspiracy theory, Dimitrov was a Nazi agent, Mao was a revisionist, Khruschev and co. were traitors, etc. Whilst I am arguing that people such as Khruschev were a product of socialisation processes, i.e. a materialist explanation, the Communist League have no other explanation but personal failure and original sin. As previously mentioned: it is religion, not Marxism.

Their account is personalist in that in each case condemnation or approval is attributed to individuals. There is no place for the impingement of objective historical circumstances. To read the CL's account of Soviet history one could be forgiven that hardly anyone else but Stalin was involved. The Third International and the millions of people affiliated to and influenced by that organisation are not mentioned. It is, as I mentioned in the original document, akin to a bourgeois historical method, which views historical events as the mainly determined by the prerogative of great or weak monarchs.

The Communist League account is Stalinophobic in that they view the Stalin period in black and white terms as completely non-contradictory. Because they take this view, they are forced to defend everything that Stalin ever did. (The orthodox Trotskyists have an identical method with a mirror image content.. They assert problematics such as that Fascism was defeated despite the leadership of Stalin or that the TI did indeed overthrow capitalism, but only in a counter-revolutionary manner.)

There are two obviously incorrect methodologies on the Stalin period, the Trotskyist one where almost everything is viewed in a negative light, and the CL one where only adoration of Stalin is allowed, and any criticism is conveniently labelled as 'Trotskyism'. Both accounts are travesties of a dialectical explanation. The machinations of such as the Communist League makes the task of those who wish to present a proper objective account of the Stalin era much more difficult. They make Communists who want to defend the generally progressive nature of the Third International into a laughing stock by unfortunate association.

I wrote 'Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? not as something which describes what happened there, there are dozens of such documents in existence, (14) but rather why the society collapsed. The starting point that a central explanation is the failure throughout the Soviet period to revolutionise the relations of production is, naturally, by no means my own and emanates from Mao's Critique of Soviet Economics. (15) In Britain, the Marxist Group, whose passage I use as a conclusion, has been eloquent in promulgating this view.

I think that it is important that Marxists can explain the end of the Soviet Union (16) in a materialist manner, rather than in terms of personal psychology's, if only to maintain an element of theoretical integrity. In addition, as I have mentioned above, this debate is also about the future in that we do need to attract new personnel to the Communist movement. New people can only be repelled if all we can offer them is the shrill whining of the insane asylum.

The so-called 'anti-revisionist movement' in general and the CL in particular are themselves revisionists living in the past. The attempt to resist such currents as Euro-communism by uncritical homage to the Soviet Union up to 1953 is theoretically barren and simply historically incorrect.

Objectively, inasmuch as they hold any influence at all which thankfully is minimal, they constitute a lead weight around the necks of those attempting to investigate the history of communism.

Ted Talbot.

1. This is why Cuba remains important for Communists. Even under blockade and CIA terrorism, it maintains a living if rudimentary example of what Socialism could be about.

2. All of us in the imperialist countries, where the promotion of Marxism-Leninism is mainly by talk, and punishment for holding revolutionary views is generally such things as exclusion from employment rather than death, need to be somewhat careful in judging comrades operating in completely different environments.

3. I subsequently extended this original document slightly, mainly to include some commentary by Rosa, definitions of productive forces, relations of production and productive forces theory, along with correcting some misprints. With an organisation as venal and mendacious as the Communist League it is necessary to mention this lest they attempt to 'make an issue', 'The secret document' etc., out of it.

4. Which despite its name is London based.

5. No, I do not have a clue what "ultra-Trotskyism" is, and I doubt whether the Communist League do either. There is a serious point here: Can't We Do Better Than This? In terms of supposedly Communist debate, not only in the content of the documents, but also in the methodology of the argumentation. Alternatively, is all that stuff about dialectical materialism just for show? More on the Communist League's 'methodology' later.

6. The National Committee for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

7. These are the type of paranoids who seriously imagine that people joined the Bolshevik party in the late 1890's early 1900's with the conscious intention of betraying it thirty odd years later. If this is indeed the case then, it seems to me, the only safe thing is for all of us on the left to shoot ourselves now, just to make absolutely sure we do not become 'traitors'!

8. A knock at the door at 4am crime if it was left, which fortunately it is not, to the Communist League.

9. The Communist League's mode of argumentation is identical to that of the scholar of the Koran who answers every criticism by quoting the Koran. What we have here is a terminal, case of dogmatism.

10. See Gugliemo Carchedi, Class Analysis and Social Research, Basil Blackwell, London, 1987.

11. As mentioned in the text, but it is worth repeating, all analysis in the Communist League's account is personalist. They usually talk of Stalin, never the Third International. Reading their materials one would imagine that the Second War was won by Stalin rather than the armed forces of the USSR. Their method of analysis is completely bourgeois.

12. According to the Communist League, Stalin was still promoting material incentives, a bourgeois method that should be used strictly short term if at all, in 1941. "The worker fulfils and over-achieves the plan because we have piece-work for the workers, a bonus system for the supervisory staff and bonuses for farmers who work better." The quote is given as from Revolutionary Democracy, vol. 4, number 2, Sep. 1998, p.100.

13. The Chinese experience requires study in that they realised that socialism could not be built by material incentives, i.e., you essentially manipulate the masses into socialism, which comes at some later date. See also Che Guevara's, Socialism and Man, Pathfinder Press, NY, 1986.

14. Of which W. Bland of the Communist League's effort is just one. (The Restoration of Capitalism in the Soviet Union). The events are described in a long series of quotations, but it is all description. There is no attempt at analysis, to ascertain why things went wrong. In this situation, the traitor's thesis has obvious appeal.

15. Mao Tse-Tung, Critique of Soviet Economics, Monthly Review Press, NY/London, 1977.

16. Whilst the Bloc countries had their own unique problems, the failure to collectivise agricultural production and to oppose the Catholic church in Poland or the influence of nationalism in the Baltic states it has to be asked why reactionary ideologies remained strong? Only the failure to really revolutionise the relations of production can realistically explain the lack of a mass socialist consciousness.