Labor Action special May 1954: What is Stalinism?

• The Socialist Fight against Capitalism is the Positive Answer to Stalinism
• The Russian Stalinist Social System
• The Nature of the Communist Parties
• Stalinist Imperialism and the War Crisis

IT is impossible to discuss any important political problem of our time, let alone take a part in resolving it, without a clear understanding of what Stalinism really signifies.

It is just as impossible to get such an understanding from the writings and speeches of capitalists, their statesmen, politicians, hangers-on, apologists, or any other beneficiaries of their rule. They are quite capable of describing the notorious vices of Stalinism. Its true social significance, however, escapes them, and so also therefore does the simple secret of combating it effectively.

In the United States today, it takes very little intelligence and no courage at all to be "against Stalinism." Outside of the tiny American Stalinist movement and the narrow little circle of its non-party apologists, everyone is against it.

What kind of organization and movement is the Communist Party?

We know that in the countries where Stalinism is in power, it is the "state party," the ruling institution of the regime, the instrument through which the bureaucracy holds together the reins of totalitarian power. But what is the Communist Party in countries where capitalism still rules and it is in opposition?

There is a paradox - only an apparent one - in the development of Stalinist imperialism.