 Well, thank you very much for that, Sarah. Can people hear me at the back if I speak this volume bit up? OK, a bit higher. All right. So yeah, the question of whether the USSR was communist is of enormous importance for anyone who is serious about the fight to overthrow capitalism. It is not enough to know what you are against. That part is easy enough. To be against this monstrous system of exploitation that every year condemns millions to starvation when ample food exists. A system that in its prolonged death agony is plunging the world into bitter wars is the imperialist's fight like drowning cats on a sinking ship. A mode of production that now has a lower standard of living to offer to the youth than was enjoyed by their parents and is an entirely incapable of averting the most serious of catastrophes in the form of climate change. And it's clear that this rotten capitalist system must be overthrown. Yet what are we to replace it with? What is required is a revolution that places the working class in power to begin the socialist transformation of society. So then are we simply to emulate what went before us to strive for a reproduction of what was constructed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? To answer this question properly, we must then ascertain whether the USSR was indeed the socialism we fight for. Now at the seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935, it was declared that the USSR had achieved the final and irrevocable triumph of socialism. Just over two decades later, Nikita Khrushchev went one step further than Stalin and declared at the 21st Party Congress at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1957 that the Soviet Union was now ready to take its first steps into communism. Within two years, he went even further and proclaimed at the 22nd Party Congress that we are strictly guided by scientific calculations and calculations show that in 20 years, we will build mainly a communist society. Just what those scientific calculations were will forever remain a mystery. So according to the leaders of the Soviet Union, not only was it a socialist country, but it was well on its way to the construction of communism, i.e. a classless and stateless society that has eliminated all class antagonisms through the production of superabundance. Yet the Soviet Union never achieved communism, nor did it even construct socialism, which in the words of Trotsky is a society which from the very beginning stands higher in its economic development than the most advanced capitalism. What existed was, and again in the words of Trotsky, a preparatory regime, transitional from capitalism to socialism. That is to say that capitalism was abolished and yet socialism had not yet been established and nor could it without the spreading of the revolution. Yet the Stalinists claimed that they had achieved socialism and were approaching communism to defend the power and privileges of the bureaucracy that has served the revolution in a cynical attempt to justify the existence of these parasites. But how did such a thing emerge? Well, before we delve into this question, it's important to make it clear that we stand in complete defense of the October revolution and the conquests of the nationalised planned economy. In 1917, Russia produced less than 3% of total world industrial output. In 1967, the figure was 20%. From 1913 to 1963, total industrial output rose by over 52 times. And this was despite suffering two devastating world wars and a bitter civil war. The productivity of Soviet labour in this period rose by an astonishing 1,310%. Whilst in the same space of time, it only rose by 332% in America and just 73% in Britain. The planned economy turned a backwards semi-feudal country which was 80% agrarian into an advanced superpower capable of launching the first satellite, man and woman into space. In 1970, the Soviet Union spent four times as much per head of the population on education than in Britain so that there were 4.6 million students. This allowed the USSR to expand the number of technicians it had by 55 times in 50 years despite a population growth of just 15%. In the realm of healthcare, it made enormous strides. Hospital beds increased by 10 times in half a century. In 1970, the number of doctors per 100,000 was at 205 in the USSR, compared to just 110 in Britain, France, and the Netherlands. In the realm of culture, the October Revolution produced a wave of phenomenal art with titans like Shostakovich in music, Eisenstein and Vertov in cinema, Malevich and Elizitsky in fine art. More importantly, for the first time ever, culture was opened up to the masses and was no longer a preserve of the elite. All of these achievements were accomplished in a country without unemployment and wanted abolished homelessness. Rents consumed just 6% of the monthly income of workers with the last increase of rents in the USSR occurring in 1928. Compare this to today, when we have to pay huge sums of our wages on rent, a problem only spiralling out of control, to say nothing of the money we have to spend on heating our own homes. And the remarkable achievements of the Soviet Union will forever be a source of inspiration to those who want to fight for a better world. As Trotsky put it in his masterpiece, The Revolution Betrayed, socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the Earth's service, not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity. For this reason, it is the duty of all revolutionaries to seriously study the history of the Soviet Union. Now, in order to get to the heart of the question being posed today, we have to understand how the USSR came into being. The Soviet Union was the product of the greatest event in human history, the October Revolution. For the first time ever, excluding the heroic but brief experience of the Paris Commune, the oppressed masses took their destinies into their own hands, and courageously strove to build a new society that would end the exploitation of man by man. On the 7th of November, 1917, the Bolsheviks having won a majority in the Soviets, the workers' councils, carried out the insurrection that swept away the provisional government and established the dictatorship of the proletariat through the convening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. This was the establishment of the most democratic regime in history. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean the rule of one man, but simply means the instrument of class rule of the workers. The Soviets were necessarily the most democratic organ in existence, one that most accurately reflected the mood of the masses. This was because of the direct representation that they gave and the right of recall that was established, meaning that deputies out of tune with the mood of the masses could be replaced before new elections. Compare this to bourgeois democracy in which we have the privilege to elect a representative every five years who can renege on every one of their promises without consequence. Not only that, but the real decisions of the government are then made by ministers behind closed doors in consultation with the ruling class. Parliaments therefore serve as window dressing, giving the impression of democratic debate. In the early Soviet Union, the Congress of the Soviets was not just a legislative body, it was also a committee of action carrying out the functions of administration through an executive committee that had elected. What's more, the Bolsheviks formed a coalition with the left SSRs and allowed all other political parties to operate within the Soviets. Incredibly, these supposedly bloodthirsty totalitarians released all of the members of the provisional government that they had overthrown. At once, the new Soviet government looked to meet the demands of the masses. Decrees on peace and land were made, beginning the process of ending the imperialist slaughter and redistributing land to the peasantry. Confirming the thoroughly democratic nature of the regime established by the October Revolution, Lenin stated at the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets in January 1918 that, I said to them, this is the workers and peasants, you are the power, do all you want to do, take all you want, we shall support you. This attitude reflected Lenin's unshakable confidence in the masses to transform society and construct socialism, and this was a far cry from the monstrous totalitarian dictatorship that was to come. Now, the October Revolution very quickly made enormous achievements. The eight-hour working day was introduced, which in turn forced the entire European bourgeoisie to follow suit in an attempt to stave off revolution in their countries. The power of the aristocracy was at once broken and land redistributed to millions of landless peasants. In the social sphere, the emancipation of women was immediately strived towards with the right to divorce women at no cost to them, being introduced alongside with the right to abortion. Compare these advances to the overturn of Roe versus Wade in the United States today. And yet despite all this, despite a healthy worker state having been established, this was not socialism. The conquest of power by the workers only began the transition towards socialism, and this could only be completed by the spread of the revolution. And from the outset, the young worker state faced enormous challenges that undermined the basis for a healthy regime of workers' democracy. The October Revolution provoked amongst the ruling class of all countries a sense of utter horror and dread. The revolution would have to be suffocated before it could spread elsewhere. And immediately, the young Soviet Republic was invaded by 21 armies from the various imperialist powers looking to support the efforts of the counter-revolution in Russia. And this plunged Russia into a bitter civil war. And this war completely shattered Russian industry. In 1920, the production of iron ore and cast iron fell to 1.6% and 2.4% of their 1913 levels. The output of industrial commodities stood at just 12.3% of the pre-war level whilst agriculture was ruined. With the 1921 harvest producing just 36, 7.6 million tons of various crops, marking just 43% of the pre-war average. And extremely important with regards to the future political and economic developments of the USSR, this crisis in agriculture had been brought about by the policy of war communism. And this was a policy of forced grain requisitions from the peasantry to ensure that the Red Army and the industrial workers didn't starve. And it was, as Lenin put it, socialism under siege, a policy forced upon the Bolsheviks by the acuteness of the crisis. And the outcome was disastrous, however, as peasants decided to produce only what was necessary to sustain them and their families. And perhaps the most crucial consequence of the civil war was the direct impact it had on the working class. The war itself claimed hundreds of thousands of workers. Many of those who survived migrated to the countryside so desperate was the breakdown of industry. And by the end of the war, the working class had been decimated. The very foundation for workers' democracy was effectively absent by 1922. What's more, the industrial collapse undermined one of the major conquests of the October Revolution, the eight hour day. In order to produce even the most basic articles of consumption, workers were forced to work 10, 12, even 14 hour days and to forgo their weekend. And the time necessary for workers to engage in Soviets simply didn't exist. And as a result, workers' control of industry became impossible. What's more, the historic backwardness of Russia meant that most workers were illiterate and consequently unable to take part in the management of industry. In all regards, a healthy regime of workers' democracy was impossible. And this was the material basis for the cancerous growth of a bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. Now it's important here to turn to the international situation because it was the development of the world revolution that would determine the fate of the young Soviet Republic. In fact, the very conquest of power by the Bolsheviks had been based on the fact that it would be the spark that lit the flame of world revolution that whilst the conditions for socialism were not present in Russia, they were ripe in the world. And in the words of Lenin on the 24th of January, 1918, we are far from having completed even the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We have never cherished the hope that we could finish it without the aid of the international proletariat. We never had illusions on that score. The final victory of socialism in a single country is of course impossible. And such was the importance given to the question of spreading the revolution that in 1919, at the height of the Russian civil war, the Bolsheviks established the third international as a vehicle to guide the world revolution. Indeed, the October revolution did inspire a wave of revolutions across the world. The German proletariat overthrew the Kaiser and put an end to the First World War. The masses established a Soviet Republic in Hungary and there were a wave of factory occupations in Italy. Yet every one of these revolutions ended in failure. The working class took power nowhere outside of the USSR. And the failure to build the Bolshevik party in these various countries in the preceding period effectively doomed them. The young communist forces made error after error and the moment was lost. The defeat of the workers across Europe had a profound impact on the developments within the USSR. Each defeat served to demoralize the workers, sapping their revolutionary energy and demoralizing them. In the economic sphere, it denied the USSR the advanced industrial techniques that were present in Europe and thus compounded the backwardness that the Bolsheviks inherited. And the isolation of the Soviet Union, the delay of the world revolution laid the basis for a period of reaction that culminated with the degeneration of the workers' state and the emergence of proletarian bonapartism. And as a result of the delay of the world revolution, there existed a deep contradiction within the USSR with the working class incapable of running society but the bourgeoisie incapable of restoring capitalism having been utterly vanquished. And it was from this vacuum that a permanent layer of functionaries emerged, the former managers and administrators of Tsarist Russia. This formed the basis of the bureaucracy. The sheer lack of competent administrators had forced the Bolsheviks to rely on the old Tsarist bureaucracy so that the state was, as Lenin put it, the same Russian apparatus we took over from Tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil. The state was thus composed of overwhelmingly hostile elements, men who had striven all their professional lives to shore up the rotten Tsarist regime. And Lenin recognized that this was a mortal danger to the revolution. The struggle against bureaucracy in all its forms became one of his main focuses. Right from the outset, Lenin introduced a series of measures to try to combat bureaucracy and maintain a healthy workers' state. These were free and democratic elections to all positions in the Soviet state, the right of recall of all officials that no official was to receive a wage higher than that of a skilled worker and with the aim that everyone should eventually perform the tasks of administration, the idea that if everyone is a bureaucrat, no one is a bureaucrat. However, these principles became impossible to enforce with the isolation of the Soviet Union. It was impossible for everyone to play a role in administration given the dire economic situation that the administering of society could only be performed by a select few, enabled these very same functionaries to demand wages far in excess of the wage of a skilled worker. The Bolsheviks were left with no choice. They had to make this concession or face a situation of complete chaos that would only have strengthened the tendency for the restoration of capitalism. And the isolation of the revolution forced many such compromises. And one of the most important being the new economic policy. In 1921, upon the recommendation of Trotsky, the requisitioning of grain was abandoned and market relations were introduced in the countryside. It had the effect of reversing the dramatic decline in agricultural production that the policy of war communism had engendered, but there were grave dangers flowing from this policy, the strengthening of pro-capitalist elements within Soviet society. And the policy disproportionately benefited the Kulak or rich peasant who with a larger land holding was able to more efficiently produce agricultural commodities. And the trade between peasants and the cities was then facilitated by so-called net men, a grasping class of petty merchants keen to make a quick buck. And the course of economic development, the policies that the young worker states should pursue became a battleground within the Communist Party. The various class and caste interests were reflecting themselves within it. And this fierce debate that opened up within the party is to what approach to socialist construction should be taken. Already, the bureaucracy was crystallizing around Stalin. A man who was almost their living embodiment and that he held a narrow outlook was a competent organizer and was ruthlessly ambitious. What's more, he carried the prestige of an old Bolshevik, even though his role in the Russian Revolution had been negligible. Perhaps most importantly of all, his position as General Secretary gave him enormous administrative power within the Communist Party. This bureaucratic caste was keen to assert its own power and privileges. To defend those, its main striving was for order, for an end to the upheaval of revolution. However, all of the privileges that these functionaries held were a direct consequence of the nationalized planned economy and this compelled the bureaucracy to defend socialist property relations, at least for a period. And the forces pushing for capitalist restoration found their expression in Bukharan and the right opposition that advocated for more market measures. For example, Bukharan wanted to end the state monopoly on foreign trade, which was a vital measure that prevented the imperialists from flooding the country with cheap commodities and thus undermining Soviet industry. Bukharan infamously raised the slogan of get rich to the Kulaks and saw private capital accumulation as the main motor force for the Soviet economy. The right opposition does propose the tortoise pace of growth for the development of state industry. Crucially, the vanguard of the workers found its expression through Trotsky's left opposition. Trotsky took up Lenin's struggle for a restoration of full party democracy, which had been severely curtailed during the Civil War, for a fight against bureaucracy and for measures that would strengthen the socialist elements of the economy, i.e., nationalized industry. And the left opposition therefore struggled for a new course in the party, of combating commandism and allowing the rank and file to participate in the development of party policy. And on the economic plane, it advocated much more ambitious five-year plans, correctly pointing out that through planning, far more could be achieved than by anarchic capitalist development. Only through the development of industry could the scissors crisis be brought to an end. This was a crisis whereby industrial commodities were rising at a far higher price than agricultural ones, driving a wedge between town and country. So these were the main strains of thought within the Communist Party, reflecting the major social forces that were present in the Soviet Union. And the triumph of the center over the left opposition was not decided by debate, but by the clash of these living social forces. It's for this reason and this reason alone that in the wake of Lenin's death, Stalin won the power struggle. The bureaucratic cast that Stalin represented was a more powerful social force than the workers, exhausted and shattered by years of the most heroic efforts. Yet Stalin's rise to power was by no means simple. It required all sorts of maneuvering and underhand measures. And one such measure was the so-called Lenin Levy that brought in hundreds of thousands of new members to the Communist Party, the overwhelming majority of which were the very bureaucrats that Lenin had waged an implacable struggle against. This flooded the party with yes men for Stalin, giving him a decisive majority. And even this wasn't enough. Stalin formed a troika with Kamenyev and Zinoviev, two other old Bolsheviks, to malign Trotsky with the latter weaponizing the term Trotskyism in order to make out that he was deviating from Marxism. Perhaps most scandalously of all, Stalin leaned on the right opposition in order to lay blows against the left. Thus the first five-year plan was based on the tortoise rate of growth and nothing was done to combat the increasing growth and power of the Kulaks. Even more pernicious, Stalin's opportunist policy in the Communist International was often maintained on the basis of opposing the prognoses of Trotsky with deadly consequences. So it was that Stalin urged the German communists not to seize power in 1923 when the situation was ripe. Then in China, he advised the Communist Party to merge with the Kuomintang, the Nationalists, leading to the massacre of 200,000 communist workers in Shanghai in 1927. Despite the fact that Trotsky had been correct on the positions to take in these revolutions and Stalin wrong, the further defeats of the world-working class only strengthened the latter as it demoralized the Soviet proletariat. Now this power struggle in the Soviet Union led to the development of one of the most absurd concepts ever to be devised, the theory of socialism in one country. The bureaucracy that Stalin represented was desperate for an end to revolutionary upheaval, for stability and a sense of normality. And they thus wanted to abandon the struggle for world revolution. And this formed the material basis for this theory. It reflected the consolidation of an anti-revolutionary bureaucracy. And there is nothing in Marxism that can justify such a theory. For instance, the communist manifesto itself drives home the point with its call to arms of workers of all countries unite. And Marx made the point in his analysis of the class struggles in France in 1848 that the task of the worker, i.e. the socialist transformation of society, who accomplishes that? No one. In France it is not accomplished. In France it is proclaimed. It is accomplished nowhere within the national boundaries. This fundamental principle of Marxism flows from the understanding of two things. Namely the capitalism itself has built a world market, a global economy with a global division of labor. To cut yourself out of this is necessarily to base yourself on less productive methods, even more the case for a backwards country like Russia. And crucial to answering the question of this session, what is socialism for Marxists? Marx understood it to be more advanced than the most advanced capitalism, that through the harmonizing of resources and economic planning, a higher level of productivity would be achieved. But this is impossible to achieve within the confines of a single country, even one as big as the Soviet Union. And this would be proven over the 20th century as the USSR failed to ever catch up with the United States in terms of productivity. And it is therefore impossible to characterize the USSR as having even achieved socialism, let alone communism. And Trotsky's left opposition would wage an implacable struggle against this opportunist deviation that Stalin pushed through. Yet the most decisive moment in this struggle would come in 1927 to 28, when the Soviet Union was faced with an acute crisis. The policy of allowing the Kulak to get rich came back to haunt Stalin and the bureaucracy. And just as Trotsky had warned, these rich peasants were asserting their class interests for the restoration of capitalism. They began to withhold grain, that there was the threat of starvation in the cities was looming ahead. And Stalin, the crude empiricist that he was, made an about face, breaking with Bukharan and calling instead for the liquidation of the Kulaks as a class. Stalin began to adopt huge swathes of the left opposition's program, but did so in an arbitrary manner, creating huge problems. For instance, industrialization was massively accelerated to the point of adventurism when Stalin called for the five-year plan to be completed in four years. Crucially, these measures were combined with the most brutal suppression of the left opposition itself. Trotsky was first exiled to Alma Arta in the Kazakh Soviet Republic before being exiled from the USSR altogether in 1929. There was a wave of expulsions of anyone hostile to Stalin's policies and his grip on power became absolute. The crisis accelerated this process as the bureaucracy was petrified that its weak position could see it overthrown from the left or from the right. As Trotsky put it, in its struggle against the left opposition, the bureaucracy undoubtedly was dragging behind it a heavy tail in the shape of net men and Kulaks. But on the morrow, this tail would strike a blow at the head, that is at the ruling bureaucracy. As early as 1927, the Kulaks struck a blow at the bureaucracy by refusing to supply it with bread. And the acute threats from left and right meant that Stalin was the strong man that they needed to defend their privileged position. This was the material basis for the proletarian Bonapartism that emerged. And here we must clarify our understanding of the state. In the last analysis, the state can be reduced to the armed bodies of men that are the coercive force that defends the interests of the ruling class or cast in a given society. In the Soviet Union, there emerged a ruling cast, the bureaucracy, but why a cast and not a class? The bureaucrat managed state property, but did not own it himself. He owed his privileged position to his job. He could not inherit property and he was not free to do within the industry he managed, what he pleased, as say a capitalist is, with their property. This may seem somewhat semantic. After all, isn't the bureaucrat a privileged parasite on the backs of the workers? Isn't that just the capitalist by another name? And true, this bureaucracy was parasitic, just as capitalists are today, but there is a crucial difference. By the fact that he did not own property, he was compelled to carry out the task of the construction of socialist property, compelled to adhere to a plan of production. In this way, Soviet industry developed without the cyclical crises of capitalist production. It was therefore a superior mode of production to capitalism. Nevertheless, this parasitic cast acted throughout as a break on the development of the planned economy. And crucially, with regards to the question of the state, stood in contradiction to the working class. The workers bitterly resented the privileges of these bureaucrats, which only grew more lavish over time. In order to defend themselves, the bureaucrats yearned for a strong man. And in the 1920s, this came in the form of Stalin. By the 1930s, his regime displayed all the elements of a Bonapartist one, leading on different classes at different moments, basing itself on the police and military as the main organs of its rule. Crucially, it was in the defense of the bureaucracy that the horrific crimes of Stalinism were carried out. I'm sure all of us have found this, that many a sneering liberal has made the claim that in order to build socialism, you must engage in the kind of bloodletting that Stalin oversaw, the great purges and so on. Yet this misunderstands entirely who this violence was directed at and for what reason. The chief target of the purges were the old Bolsheviks themselves, anyone who had a connection with the Bolshevik Revolution. So it was that by 1940, only Stalin and Kalantai from the Bolshevik Central Committee that had taken power in 1917 were still alive. Most were murdered by the GPU, the Soviet secret police, at Stalin's behest. The capitulation of figures like Kamenyev, Zinoviev and Radick did not save them. True enough, many of the victims of the purges were bureaucrats themselves. And does this not suggest that, even in a ham-fisted way, Stalin was striving to represent the workers? It does not any more than Louis Bonaparte's troops shooting down the bourgeois from their balconies or Hitler's expropriation of Jewish businesses. The reason for the purge of layers of the bureaucracy was the same reason that doctor might recommend amputation, to cut off the part to save the whole. Stalin leaned on the workers to strike blows against the most rotten elements of the bureaucracy, those whose voracious greed threatened to stir the workers and topple the whole edifice. So it was that over a million perished, not to establish socialism, but to preserve the rule of a parasitic cast of functionaries. So why is it that the Soviet Union remained a worker state when the workers themselves were subject to terrible repression, completely excluded from political power? The purges were a culmination of what Trotsky characterised as the Thermidorian reaction in the USSR. Basing himself on the experience of the French Revolution, Trotsky deduced that what had occurred in the Soviet Union was a political counter-revolution, whereby the workers had lost political power, but where the social conquest of the revolution, the nationalised planned economy, remained. This was comparable to the process of the French Revolution, whereby Robespierre's faction of the Jacobins, the most revolutionary element, were deposed by a more conservative element of the Jacobins, and eventually Napoleon Bonaparte seized power. In 1804, he would proclaim himself emperor, establishing a monarchy and so undoing the political gain of the republic. Yet Napoleon did not restore feudal property relations. He based his regime on the capitalist relations that had been established by the revolution. So it was in the USSR that Stalin based himself on the nationalised planned economy, but it has served the revolution. This process meant that, while socialist property relations remained, many of the gains of the revolution were rolled back under Stalinism. For instance, abortions were recriminalised and divorce was made more difficult, while censorship and the arts completely stifled the flourishing of culture the October Revolution had brought about. And what was the basis for this reaction? The reason for these reactionary developments correspond to the interests of the bureaucracy. For example, the bureaucracy was keen to reintroduce the traditional family unit and thus subordinate the woman to the man because they were incapable of constructing the material basis for the liberation of women, i.e. socialised childcare, communal cafeterias and so on, that would have liberated women from domestic labour. Unable to provide these due to the dire economic situation, it was better to disavow the struggle for women's liberation altogether. As Trotsky put it, the bureaucracy makes a virtue of necessity and this was the bureaucratic modus operandi and it had nothing in common with Leninism. In the realm of culture, the bureaucracy was terrified of there being anything that could channel discontent against them. Again, as Trotsky puts it, the bureaucracy superstitiously fears whatever does not serve it directly as well as whatever it does not understand. Culture therefore had to be sterilised in order to protect the rule of the bureaucracy to prevent any possible challenge to it. Now a monstrous, totalitarian regime reflecting a bureaucracy who rested upon the nationalised planned economy, this is the essence of Stalinism and it is for this reason that Khrushchev's supposed destalinisation was nothing more than the offering of reforms to stave off revolution. The fundamental character of the regime remained the same. Stalin had placed a heavy emphasis on developing the means of production at the utter neglect of light industry which meant that the standards of living were still much lower in the USSR than in the West. By the 1950s, this was laying the basis for a social explosion, particularly as the bureaucracy furnished itself with limousines and dachas. Lenin had established the maximum paid differential at one to four, which he himself characterised as a bourgeois wage differential. But by the post-war period, according to the historian Roy Medvedev, in the Soviet Ministries an important military establishment, the ratio established between the highest and lowest rates of pay is also one to 20 or even one to 30. But if one takes into consideration the many services available to officials at public expense, food coupons, medical treatments, holidays, personal transport, the total value translated into monetary terms would make the ratio of one to 50 or sometimes even one to 100. This in the country that Stalin claimed had irrevocably established socialism. The bureaucracy was increasingly fearful that the deep inequality combined with low standards of living would produce a revolution. And so under Khrushchev, concessions were granted in attempt to see this off. The average factory wage was raised from 715 rubles a month in 1955 to 778 rubles a month in 1958, while prices remained fixed and some were even cut. Shorter hours were introduced for young workers without a loss of pay alongside longer holidays and a shorter working week by two hours. Yet this brought the USSR no closer to socialism just as the concession of the NHS and the welfare state in the post-war period brought Britain no closer to socialism. The fundamentals remained the same. Indeed, this was graphically revealed in 1956 with the response of the Moscow bureaucracy to the Hungarian revolution. This was an uprising of the workers to establish genuine socialism. The workers formed Soviets and demanded workers' control of industry. And Khrushchev's response to this challenge to Hungarian Stalinism was to send in the troops and ruthlessly suppress it. The bureaucracy was as incapable of reforming itself out of existence as the ruling class under capitalism. De-Stalinisation remained a fig leaf. And being a transitional regime, if the workers' state could not move forwards to socialism, it would have to fall back to capitalism. And the reforms that were introduced deepened one particular problem for the USSR. The parasitism of the bureaucracy had been somewhat kept in check by the brutal purges Stalin inflicted upon it. But once this violence was lifted without workers' control, there was nothing to keep the bureaucrats in check. Their parasitism only grew. And this contributed enormously to the slowing down of the growth of the economy. Under Stalin, industrial production had been growing at a rate exceeding 20%. But under Khrushchev, they fell to an average of 10%. And then in 1963, the rate of growth fell to 8%. This wasn't just the consequence, however, of the greed of the bureaucracy. It was the outcome of the whole bureaucratic approach to planning the economy. Even under Stalin, bureaucratic mismanagement and bungling had led to terrible mistakes. Not in the least was the forced collectivisation of agriculture that had provoked a catastrophic famine. Yet as the economy grew more complicated, bureaucratic management became more and more stifling. Capitalism has the market as a mechanism of determining what should be produced and for maintaining a certain quality of the commodities produced. In a planned economy, this function must be carried out by workers' control of industry. But of course, this was not present in the USSR. And consequently, the economy was entirely directed by remote bureaucrats who were increasingly incapable of sensing the needs that existed in Soviet society as the number of commodities produced became more and more diverse. And this problem only got worse as time went up. So that under Brezhnev, by 1979, GDP growth was just 0.9%. By the 1970s, the Soviet Union had entered a period of stagnation. Bear in mind that just a year later, the USSR was meant to have established communism according to Khrushchev, yet it couldn't even match the rate of growth that was taking place in the United States. And this signaled the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. The bureaucracy, having led Soviet society into a blind alley, now looked for a way out of the impasse. And in the 1930s, Trotsky had predicted that the Soviet Union would either be rehabilitated by a political revolution that would see the workers reassert control over their state or that the bureaucracy would eventually restore capitalist relations. The prolonged delay of the world revolution made the latter effectively inevitable. As Stalinism entered into crisis, a layer of the bureaucracy looked endlessly at the positions of the capitalists in the West. In the 1980s, Gorbachev found his way to the top of the party. In an desperate attempt to save the system, he introduced the reforms of Perestroika and Glasnost. Of particular importance was the former, as Gorbachev looked to introduce some market relations as a measure to raise productivity and get the economy moving again. Yet he was conjuring up forces beyond his control, and very quickly, the forces for capitalist restoration became emboldened and exerted themselves within the party. Now, the collapse of the USSR demands a discussion all on its own, but suffice it to say, the very same ladies and gentlemen who had only yesterday claimed to be upholding Lenin's legacy became the champions of the free market and the virtues of capitalism. Thus, by 1991, the whole edifice came crashing down and a layer of the bureaucracy converted itself into the new Russian bourgeoisie, reintroducing private ownership of the means of production. And the consequences of this were cataclysmic for the Russian workers. Between 1991 and 1993, there was a 43% fall in real wages, and according to the World Bank, this left a third of the population living below the poverty line. From 1990 to 1995, production fell by 60%. Compare this with the 30% reduction that had accompanied the Great Depression in the United States. A corresponding collapse in peacetime cannot be found, and this is a damning argument to anyone who holds that the USSR was just state capitalist. How can we understand the sheer collapse that followed the restoration of capitalism if indeed capitalism was there all along? And why is it so important for us to clarify what makes a worker's state and whether a society is transitional or state capitalist? The experience of those who uphold the theory of state capitalism provide us with a valuable lesson on the importance of theory. This theory was found completely wanting in the 90s. Indeed, it was always completely superficial, failing to apply the dialectical method of drawing out the main processes and understanding things by tracing them in their development. Proponents like Cliff failed to look beyond the formal categories. If it wasn't socialism, and it must be capitalism, it was also a consequence of political corridors. bourgeois public opinion was so hostile to the USSR that these petty bourgeois types accommodated themselves to it. Doing so meant dismissing the USSR as just another capitalist state. And such thinking led them into a blind alley and that they could not explain what occurred with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet even worse, they characterized it not as a step forwards or backwards, but a step sideways, the collapse of the worker's state that saw life expectancy fall by six years, that saw the explosion of prostitution, the most brutal expression of the oppression of women, that saw one third of the population living below the poverty line. All of this was just a mere trifle to these people. And the importance of a correct theoretical understanding in determining action was damningly confirmed by the smug indifference that these petty bourgeois sectarians displayed at the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, which was a major blow to the world working class. Now, just as the astounding achievements of the USSR displayed the superiority of socialist economy in practice, the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated the inability to build socialism in one country. The most important lesson that we can draw from the history of the USSR is that the socialist revolution must be international. The Soviet Union never established socialism and nor could it whilst it remained isolated. It forever remained in a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism. Nevertheless, the immense gains of the planned economy have forever provided anyone fighting against capitalism with a wealth of evidence that a better world is possible. In Russia and across the world today, the basis for a new revolution is being prepared by the global crisis of capitalism and the deep levels of inequality the capitalist restoration has engendered. Yet what is so utterly lacking in Russia and around the world is the revolutionary party. The Russian Communist Party is a profoundly degenerate caricature of the Bolsheviks, its leadership having entirely accommodated itself to capitalism. The key task then is the same one that Lenin and Trotsky set about in 1919, the construction of a truly revolutionary international that can intervene in the class battles to come. In Russia, we fight not for the return of Stalinism, but the struggle for a socialist revolution with workers' democracy and control of industry. Only this can sweep away all the restored garbage of the preceding three decades and begin anew the fight for socialism.