Reading notes - Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin

Conclusion: Some illusions that must be dispelled

....perspective of "popular fronts." Their hucksters cling to the rotten plank of bourgeois "democracy" and turn their infantile smiles towards the "less reactionary" capitalist groups, to save themselves from the "more reactionary." They await salvation from a Giolitti or a Bruening, who will deliver them in the end, bound hand and foot, to a Hitler or a Mussolini. If they have a weakness for suicide, it's their business. But others, who wish to live, have already chosen between fascism and socialism.

....The socialist movement could have, and should have, exorcized it if it could have torn itself out of its paralysis and impotence; if it had outstripped its adversary; if it had beaten fascism out in winning, or at least neutralizing, the impoverished middle classes; and if it had seized power before fascismnot in order to prolong the capitalist system for better or worse (as too many governments brought to power by the working class have done), but to put the financial backers of fascism (the heavy industrialists and the big landowners) out of action: in a word, if they proceeded to the socialization of the key industries and the confiscation of big land-holdings. In conclusion, any antifascism is a frail illusion if it confines itself to defensive measures and does not aim at smashing capitalism itself.

                          *     *     *

....In spite of its verbose demagogy, it has no great designs; it lives from week to week; it aspires to nothing more than to keep a handful of monopolists and big landowners alive through wage cuts, state orders and subsidies, seizure of small savings, and autarky. And in order to prolong the reign of this oligarchy, at the price of a restriction of free enterprise, it hastens the ruin of all other layers of the population-wage earners, consumers, savers, working farmers, artisans, and even industrialists manufacturing consumer goods.

....Rash prophets have announced ten times, a hundred times, the imminent and inevitable crumbling of the fascist dictatorship in Italy or Germany under the blows of the victorious revolution.

....it has not succeeded in suppressing the class struggle, a sociological phenomenon which it is granted to no regime, however perfected, to stamp out.

....It is manifested, for instance, through the demagogy of the plebeians in the "fascisized" or ''gleichgeschaltet" unions, etc., etc.

....In Germany the elections to the factory "confidential councils" have twice (April 1934 and April 1935) constituted a stinging defeat for the regime

....with consummate skill fascism in power follows a policy which, for lack of a better term, I will call "dust in the eyes." This consists of disguising or blurring its real countenance, to some degree, in the eyes of a quite large section of the popular masses.

....massive reabsorption of the unemployed by big and indisputably useful public works....

....the men of wealth who financed fascism and brought it to power were not satisfied with their creation.

....economic policy of fascism, however favorable it may be, is not entirely satisfactory to its former underwriters. Although they eagerly pocket the fabulous profits from armaments orders, they are terrified at the possible consequences of this policy. They are haunted by the thought of a financial catastrophe that would spark a middle-class uprising against them. They also reproach the fascist government for increasing its expenses at an "imprudent" pace. They also fearfully note that the "war economy" regime is constantly imposing more burdensome state regulations on them, that it is forever eating away at sacrosanct "private initiative."

They dare not deprive themselves entirely of the incomparable and irreplaceable means of penetrating into all the cells of society which they have in the fascist mass organizations. Above all, they hesitate to deprive themselves of the services of the "Man of Destiny," for the mystic faith in the Duce or the Fuehrer, though declining, is not yet extinct.

....industrialists are apprehensive lest a radical change in the regime, such as they desire, should cost much bloodshed. They dread a civil war, even a short one, in which "national" forces would oppose one another: they fear nothing so much as what in Germany was called in anticipation, a "new June 30." Therefore the bourgeoisie hesitates.

Stripped of all appearances, all the contradictions which dim its real face, all the secondary aspects which hide its essential character from so many, and all the circumstances peculiar to any one country, fascism is reduced to this: a strong state intended to artificially prolong an economic system based on profit and the private ownership of the means of production. To use Radek's picturesque figure of speech, fascist dictatorship is the iron hoop with which the bourgeoisie tries to patch up the broken barrel of capitalism.

....It merely tries to check, through artificial means, the fall in the profits of a private capitalism which has become parasitic. In spite of its verbose demagogy, it has no great designs; it lives from week to week; it aspires to nothing more than to keep a handful of monopolists and big landowners alive through wage cuts, state orders and subsidies, seizure of small savings, and autarky. And in order to prolong the reign of this oligarchy, at the price of a restriction of free enterprise, it hastens the ruin of all other layers of the population-wage earners, consumers, savers, working farmers, artisans, and even industrialists manufacturing consumer goods.

....It intensifies to the utmost the conflict between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production. While it could socialize, without striking a blow, whole sectors of the economy, it respects and shores up private capitalism as far as it can. It does not lead to socialism even by a roundabout road; it is the supreme obstacle to socialism.

....By detaching the economy from the international division of labor, by adapting the "productive forces to the Procrustean bed of the national state," fascism brings, "chaos into world relations."

....At the same time fascism aggravates and brings to their highest degree of tension the contradictions resulting from the uneven development of the capitalist system, and thus hastens the hour of a new division of the world by force of arms-the hour of that "relapse into barbarism" which Rosa Luxemburg foresaw in case the proletariat should be slow to fulfill its class duty and achieve socialism.

....Tomorrow's war will find the satisfied nations, who long ago got their "places in the sun" and divided the planet among themselves through blood and iron, opposing the hungry nations-the late-comers who also demand their share in the feast, if need be through blood and iron. One group is ready to make war to force a new division of the world; the other is ready to make war to prevent this division....

....fascism was rather the specific product of the most advanced form of capitalism, monopolistic heavy industry. However, in these two countries certain special causes accelerated its development; in particular, the fact that after the First World War, these two countries found themselves in the position of "proletarian" nations, vis-a-vis the wealthy countries....

....As for an open fascist dictatorship, however, the bourgeoisie, wiser by the precedents of Italy and Germany, is hesitant to take such a step.

__________

From: Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.702/.f?sc=8&category=110

Reading notes - Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin

10. Fascism in power: Agricultural policy

....fascism's agricultural policy tends to reconcile what it calls the "interests of agriculture" and the "interests of industry"-in reality those of the big industrialists 339 and big landowners-on the backs of the poor peasants and urban proletariat. It does not protect the small peasantry against capitalism; on the contrary it completes capitalism's invasion of the land.

....In spite of its verbose demagogy, it has no great designs; it lives from week to week; it aspires to nothing more than to keep a handful of monopolists and big landowners alive through wage cuts, state orders and subsidies, seizure of small savings, and autarky. And in order to prolong the reign of this oligarchy, at the price of a restriction of free enterprise, it hastens the ruin of all other layers of the population-wage earners, consumers, savers, working farmers, artisans, and even industrialists manufacturing consumer goods.

....opposes dividing up the land and tries to reassemble large and medium-sized farms at the expense of the small peasantry.

....agricultural laborers are deprived of their independent unions, fixed hours of labor are no longer guaranteed, medieval forms of exploitation are imposed on them, they are excluded from unemployment insurance, and their wages are cut below the subsistence level. The result is that many of them try to escape their wretched condition by pouring into the cities, and the rural districts are depopulated. But access to the centers is severely forbidden them, and they are pitilessly herded back onto the land. Various archaic systems are revived, such as the payment of wages in kind, in order to bind them more securely to the soil.

....gives the big landowners and well-to-do peasants all sorts of favors-tax exemptions, subsidies, debt relief, etc.-which scarcely benefit the little dirt farmer.

....tariffs and prices favors the big landowners and rich farmers almost exclusively at the expense of the small peasants.

....a compromise that safeguards the interests of both the big landowners and the industrialists, but that is paid for by the small peasants.

....To win over the small peasants, the fascist demagogues promised to free them from exploitation by the banks, the big agricultural machinery trusts, the fertilizer trusts and the power trusts; they promised to emancipate them from the big speculators and middlemen with a monopoly on farm products, who buy cheap from the producers and sell dear to the city consumers. But once in power, the fascists do exactly the opposite and aid in every way capitalism's penetration into agriculture.

___

From: Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.702/.f?sc=8&category=110

Reading notes - Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin

Chapter 9: Fascism in power: Economic policy

....

When fascism takes power, overflowing with gratitude for big business which financed it, its words and its deeds exhale the purest sort of laisser-faire economic doctrine. It announces its intention of favoring and protecting in every possible way private property and individual initiative. It rejects with horror the idea that the state might meddle in production. But the fascist state stands aside only so long as Messieurs Capitalists request it not to interfere in their private affairs. It imposes on them the lightest possible taxes, the most tenuous sort of control. But it is always ready to come running whenever these gentlemen cannot pull through by themselves. In any such crisis, it is immediately at their service, "socializing" their losses, refloating their enterprises, and keeping them alive with its orders.

....

the course of events soon forces fascism to give its program a serious wrench. Carried away by its eagerness to resurrect big business profits, it finds itself embarked, above all in Germany, on a huge armament program. Fascism speedily gets caught up in a system of wheels within wheels which insensibly conducts it from laisser-faire capitalism to autarky and a wartime economy.

....

fascism is compelled to gradually bureaucratize the economy and is more and more trapped in the contradiction between what it would like to do and what it must do. Groping tortuously forward, it succeeds in maintaining the capitalist system, but only by restricting each individual capitalist's freedom of movement, and by sacrificing the other branches of the economy on the altar of heavy industry. Only the great capitalists continue to draw their profits, while the economy as a whole is paralysed and individuals of every class are ruined or put on short rations.

....

For a moment, fascism, by repairing the profit-making mechanism, seems to banish the illness that capitalism suffers from. But this only aggravates the disease. Charged with saving the system, it ends by plunging it into a worldwide holocaust.

....

Nor is this denouement peculiar to fascism. Every expedient that capitalism has resorted to in other countries has sooner or later led to the same result. Thus the authors of the "New Deal" in the United States temporarily succeeded in restarting the capitalist machine only by arms purchases even more gigantic than those in Germany. With the return of peace, American capitalism could survive only by remaining on a war footing-a nuclear war footing-that imperils the future of the whole planet.

....

It would be a mistake to interpret this state intervention as "socialist" in character. It is brought about not in the interest of the community but in the exclusive interest of the capitalists.

....

generously refloating sinking enterprises. It takes over a block of the stock, but instead of using the opportunity to nationalize these enterprises, it preserves their character as private corporations and leaves the industrialists at their head. Its intervention is only temporary, and it hopes to be able-after it has made the companies solvent by standing all the expense and assuming all the risks-to restore to the private owners the stock it has taken over.

....

In all industrial countries today heavy industry, having become parasitic, survives only thanks to state orders. If there is a difference, it is to be found in the disproportion, much more striking in Italy and Germany than elsewhere, between the national income and the huge expenditures undertaken.

....

State orders are of two sorts: great public works for the sake of prestige, generally yielding no return, and orders and works for "national defense." It is rather difficult to draw a strict line of demarcation between the two sorts of outlay; but as the second is intensified, the first tends to go into the background. Part of the outlay for public works, it is also true, arises out of "national defense," particularly highway and railroad projects.

....

it issues paper and ruins the national currency at the expense of all the people who live on fixed incomes from investments, savings, pensions, government salaries, etc.,-and also the working class, whose wages remain stable or lag far behind the rise in the cost of living.

....

An abundance of paper is issued. But it is not banknotes, but rather commercial paper and short-term bonds.

....

Gradually the hidden inflation produces the same effects as open inflation: the purchasing power of money is lessened. But fascism wants to conceal this depreciation-or at least put off as long as possible the moment of its open appearance-and it wants to preserve as long as possible the artificial value of the currency. It succeeds to a large extent by police terror and by secrecy. But these extraordinary measures are effective only within the national boundaries; they have no effect abroad. Fascism is thus driven to a new expedient: that of placing a wall around the national currency.

....

To forbid the flight of capital is not enough. It is necessary to prohibit all withdrawals of gold not justified by an urgent need for importations. Only the import of materials needed in the manufacture of armaments and not produced domestically can be authorized; other imports are tolerated only if the former have not already exhausted the available foreign exchange.

....

from expedient to expedient-following no preconceived theory but in a purely empirical fashion, perhaps without having foreseen exactly where the road was leading which excessive armaments was forcing it to takefascism arrives at a "war economy" similar to that of the belligerent countries between 1914 and 1918. The only difference between yesterday and today is that the economy of 1914-1918 was a wartime economy in the proper meaning of the word, while the present fascist economy is war economy in peace time.

....

distinguishing characteristic of this economy is the continuous extension of the functions of the state. The state is the supreme director of the whole economy; the state becomes the sole customer of industry; the state drains off all private savings; the state monopolizes foreign trade; the state controls prices; the state freely disposes of labor; the state allots raw materials; the state determines in what sectors of economy new investments are necessary and decides on new manufactures, etc., etc.

....

a few innocent people are still convinced that under a fascist regime the big capitalists have no power over the state, but that, on the contrary, the state rules the capitalists with a rod of iron. Whence comes this persistent illusion? The fascist plebeians have a large share of responsibility for its spread. In fact, they take their wishes for reality, and would have others do so also. Indeed they would like to reverse the roles and use the "war economy" and the "corporations" to subject capitalism to the authoritarian rule of the state-that is to say, to themselves. As masters of the economy, they would possess wealth and power. Also a little verbal demagogy seems useful to allay the discontent of their rank-and-file. But they no more manage in this field than any other to go from words to deeds. The capitalists vigorously defend themselves against these pretensions. Faithful to economic liberalism, they accept the war economy only under the force of circumstances and insist on being in charge of it. They will not stand for the plebeians taking advantage of it to imprison them in an ever more stringent "statism." They fear that the "corporations" or "professional groups" may be diverted from their original aim, strictly limited in space and time, so that they are caught in their own trap. The rulers of the fascist state formally condemn and repudiate all "socializing" tendencies. They draw the line between temporary measures capitalism may resort to and the idle dreams of some who, following a preconceived scheme, would transform this "statism" into a permanent system.

....

industrialists start grumbling not only about the plebeian demagogues but about the man who has done the most for them, who is entirely devoted to them, who would doubtless readily dispense with subjecting them to restrictions were he not himself forced to insure the success of the "four-year plan" at all costs.

....

sections of light industry working for domestic consumption have still more cause for complaint. They pay dearly for the enhanced domination of heavy industry, through higher prices for machinery, fuels, etc. They see their markets constantly growing smaller because of the lessened buying power of the masses. On account of the preference given the importation of products to be used in armaments, they suffer a serious scarcity of raw materials and undergo a severe crisis.

....

As for the middle classes-the very ones whose discontent put fascism in power-they are simply bled white.

....

small manufacturers and independent craftsmen suffer both from a scarcity of raw materials and a lack of markets.

______

From: Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin http://www.pathfinderpress.com/s.nl/it.A/id.702/.f?sc=8&category=110

Isolated and confused: Paul Sweezey and the retreat of the 1970s middle class left

I've been reading the late 1970s issues of The Militant during the last two weeks.

One trend The Militant followed was the retreat of the U.S. petty bourgeois left under the onslaught bourgeois public opinion as Vietnam aided Kampuchean rebels in ousting the brutal capitalist dictatorship of Pol Pot and China subsequently invaded Vietnam (with tacit approval of the Carter administration).

Paul Sweezey is presented as a prime example of this trend.

I am probably not the only one to hear echoes of middle class left's collapse as Washington beat the drums for war in 1939-1940. Sweezey seems to be channeling Max Shachtman and Bruno Rizzi.

Jay

18 June 2018

____

Crisis of petty-bourgeois left

The correctness of the SWP's turn to the indus-trial working·class is highlighted by the crisis and
decay that infect petty-bourgeois radical formations that looked elsewhere for solutions.

More than a few radicals of the 1960s now
denounce affirmative action as unfair to white
males. Some, like Joan Baez, who opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam, have enlisted in the imperialist
propaganda campaign that continues the war
against the Vietnamese revolution in the guise of
concern for the "boat people." Still others have
drifted into the search for personal solutions
through "liberating lifestyles."

"Marxists" such as the editors of the Guardian
cry that "these are sorry days for socialism," while Monthly Review editor Paul Sweezy pronounces Marxism inadequate to explain today's world.

Isolated from and indifferent to the growing
proletarian resistance to the rulers' drive, and
completely incapable of charting an independent
course, such petty-bourgeois ex-radicals are being drawn in the wake of the imperialist offensive.

Invariably they cover their retreat by proclaiming
that the American workers are moving to the right.
They mistake their own drift for that of the masses.
The experiences of socialist workers as described by delegates on the floor of the convention and by
other SWP members in industrial union fraction
meetings and workshops show how far off the mark the ex-radical doomsayers are….


Feldman, Fred "Socialists meet: big advance in building party of industrial workers."
THE MILITANT/SEPTEMBER 7, 1979
http://themilitant.com/1979/4334/MIL4334.pdf

*

'Crisis of Marxism' or Crisis of Stalinist 'Theory'?

(This month's column was contributed by Leslie
Evans. Evans Is the author of the book 'China After Mao' published by Pathfinder Press. )

In the June issue of Monthly Review, Paul
Sweezy, the journal's founding editor, who still
commands some reputation as a Marxist econo-
mist, proclaims "A Crisis in Marxian Theory."

The crisis that Sweezy perceives can be summed
up in the fact that the principal workers states, the
Soviet Union and China, are not moving to elimi-
nate inequality, have clung doggedly to a repres-
sive state apparatus, and, in Sweezy's view,

"They go to war not only in self-defense but to impose their will on other countries-even ones that are also assumed to be socialist." Sweezy no doubt had Peking's invasion of Vietnam in mind as an example.

From this summary, Sweezy draws a pessimistic
conclusion about the prospects for establishing a
genuine socialist society:

"We do not need to rule out the possibility of a
post-revolutionary society's being socialist in the
Marxian sense. That would be foolish and self-
defeating. But we do need to recognize that a
proletarian revolution can give rise to a non-
socialist society .... Having recognized this, we
can proceed along one of two lines: (1) the
hypothesis that the only alternative to socialism is
capitalism, and (2) the hypothesis that proletarian
revolutions can give rise to a new form of society,
neither capitalist nor socialist. I believe that the
second line is the fruitful one." (Emphasis in
original.)

In the past, Sweezy used the term "socialist" to
describe all workers states. His new terminology
does not mark a recognition that these are socie-
ties in transition from capitalism to socialism. He
has concluded that a new form of class society has emerged, qualitatively different both from capitalist and workers states. He appears ready to apply this label to all workers states, whether Stalinist-governed as in the Soviet Union, or led by revolutionists as in Cuba.

Sweezy maintains that revolutions against capi-
talism carry within them a monster that gestates in the state apparatus of a successful revolution,
emerging as a new repressive ruling class.

Clearly, a "new ruling class," if we mean by that
what Marxists mean, rests on a definite new set of production relations. Such a new ruling class must be assumed to have a fairly long historical life-span ahead of it, until it has exhausted the potential of its productive system. So the outlook for the workers is pretty bleak, from Sweezy's standpoint.

This theory is not new. It is usually called
"bureaucratic collectivism," that vision of a monoli-
thic, totalitarian superstate described in the novel
1984.

The first thing that must be said in reply to
Sweezy's dismal perspective is that it lacks the first requirements of a serious Marxist analysis: it does not examine either the causes, development, or the specific manifestations of the bureaucratization of the Soviet and Chinese workers states.

That is not surprising, given Sweezy's own
political trajectory. He began as a Stalinist fellow-
traveler in the 1930s, who closed his eyes to the
destruction of workers democracy in the USSR
under Stalin. He accepted and still accepts the
reactionary theory of constructing an isolated
"socialism in one country," the diametric opposite
of Marx and Lenin's concept of a world socialist
society transcending previous national boundaries.

Having defended Stalin's rule, Sweezy turned
away from Moscow towards Peking when many of Stalin's crimes were revealed for all to see by his successors in the late 1950s.

He moved in recent years toward the views of
French economist Charles Bettelheim, who deve-
loped an elaborate theoretical justification for
Mao's claim that the socialist revolution in the
USSR had been reversed.

Sweezy was a proponent of Mao's "cultural
revolution." He refused to recognize that Mao was
the leader of the bureaucratic caste in China, not
its proletarian opponent. When Mao's Red Guard
broke up trade-union meetings, burned books, and assaulted leaders of the Chinese Communist Party who belonged to factions Mao sought to crush, Sweezy assured his readers that this was a great emancipation of the masses from traditional bureaucratic elites. Even today, Sweezy clings to this false judgment. In his current article he writes of the existing workers states:

"They have not eliminated classes except in a
purely verbal sense; and, except in the period of
the Cultural Revolution in China, they have not
attempted to follow a course which could have the
long-run effect of eliminating classes."

With blinders like these on, it is small wonder
that the revelations of the crimes of the Mao era
that have poured out of China in the past two years caught Sweezy unawares. It must seem to him that a "new ruling class" inexplicably walked into power upon Mao's death, deposing the followers of his beloved Chairman.

To worsen Sweezy's predicament, China's work-
ing people gave every indication of being pleased
at the fall of the "proletarian" four. What they saw
as an opening to press for concessions looked like a counterrevolution to Sweezy.

For those like Sweezy, recent events must in-
deed seem like "A Crisis in Marxian Theory."
The truth is that it is impossible to understand
the real nature of the bureaucratized workers
states while clinging to a belief in Mao's self-
serving justifications for the great purge that he
called a "Cultural Revolution."

It is necessary to go further back, to the struggle
in the 1920s between the proletarian wing of the
Russian Communist Party, led by Lenin and Trot-
sky, against the rise of the reactionary bureau-
cracy led by Stalin.

Sweezy never came to grips with the Trotskyist
analysis of the social character of Stalinist bureau-
cratic castes as privileged layers that live as
parasites on nationalized and planned economies.
The progressive dynamics of the economic struc-
tures, established as a consequence of working-
class victories, are in contradiction to the long-
term existence of the governing castes.

The bureaucratic caste's need for a monopoly of
political power-and repressions like the "Cultural
Revolution" that flow from this-is an expression
of its weakness and vulnerability, not of strength. It is not a ruling class linked to a mode of production which cannot exist without it-as is the capitalist class. The mode of production in a workers state is in the interests of the working class. The bureaucratic caste feeds off the workers state by keeping tight political control within it.

In complaining that the workers states-in a
world still dominated by imperialism-have not
abolished classes or inequality, Sweezy protests
the fact that Stalin's and Mao's promises to build
socialism in one country have been exposed by
actual events as a fraud.

But this, like the origins of the castes them-
selves, was explained by Marxists in the 1920s and 1930s. Trotsky showed that socialism could not be achieved in individual backward countries while imperialism remained dominant on a world scale.

He demonstrated that "socialism in one country"
was no theory at all but a rationalization that the
bureaucracy used to justify its rule and its collabo-
ration with imperialism against the spread of
socialist revolution. The invasion of Vietnam by
Peking's forces is a recent example.

"Socialism in one country" is not the slogan of a
new ruling class confident of its capacity and
destiny to rule the world, as would follow from
Sweezy's theory. It is the watchword instead of a
conservative, bureaucratic governing caste that
seeks to preserve its privileges by reaching a live-
and-let-live arrangement with world imperialism.

Far from seeing proletarian revolutions as the
prologue to its rule, the bureaucratic castes join
with imperialism in trying to block them, for the
overthrow of imperialism would doom the castes
as well.

Rather than recognize that the "theory" of build-
ing socialism in one country was fallacious,
Sweezy now repudiates the workers states as new class societies because of their failure to accomplish the impossible.

He continues to reject the Marxist view that the
working masses-not bureaucratic saviours like
Mao-have the capacity to establish proletarian
democracy by overthrowing the bureaucratic
castes. And he shows no interest in the struggle
for an internationalist course aimed at removing
the imperialist obstacle to building world social-
ism.

Quite the contrary. Sweezy's growing pessimism
leads him to adopt a theory that has invariably led
its proponents to renounce the defense of the
workers states against imperialism on the grounds that the workers had nothing to choose between hem. Unless he plans to rally to the defense of the "new ruling class," what else can be the political significance of his theory of the "new form of society."

Ironically, the events that threw Sweezy's "Marx-
ism" into crisis-such as the exposure of Stalin's
crimes in the USSR, the Hungarian, Polish, and
Czechoslovak antibureaucratic upsurges, and the
precipitous decline of the Mao cult in China-
inspire real Marxists with added confidence in our
socialist perspective. Along with such recent
events as the overthrow of the shah, Somoza, and Pol Pot, they indicate that the working people of the world are growing stronger relative to their
enemies and have the power to topple capitalist
exploiters and bureaucratic parasites.

Such events provide new confirmation of the
Marxist analysis of Stalinism, developed most
thoroughly by Trotsky in The Third International
After Lenin and The Revolution Betrayed.

THE MILITANT/AUGUST 10, 1979
http://themilitant.com/1979/4331/MIL4331.pdf