The infant Soviet republic under Lenin and Trotsky had, in fact, tried unsuccessfully to do so in the roiling European social crisis which accompanied the end of WW I. But by the early twenties, as you note, capitalism had stabilized itself after quashing the abortive attempts at revolution in Hungary and Germany. Trotsky would later properly call for a united front with the social democrats to prevent the rise of Nazism in Germany, but the success of such a policy was not assured. When they had earlier been forced to choose, the vacillating social democrats had aligned themselves with the bourgeoisie and the precursors of the Nazis to crush the German communists under Liebknecht and Luxemburg, without their working class base deserting them. Trotsky also subsequently condemned the Stalinist policy in Spain, aimed at preventing the takeover of factories and landed estates by the revolutionary workers and peasants. But would "neutral" Britain and France have allowed this process to culminate in the establishment of a Soviet Spanish Republic in the heart of Western Europe? It's hard to accept that in their alarm they wouldn't have suppressed their differences with the German and Italian fascists to unite in a bloody counter-revolutionary crusade against a revolutionary Soviet Republic and its supporters throughout Europe.
I agree Stalin's attempt to characterize what was built under his leadership as "socialism" was "delusional", but I think you would need to go into greater detail than what you offer in reply to Charles below to show how a Soviet effort to "retrench" in peace would not have been at odds with a more active Soviet policy to promote a European revolution. It may be that there was such an "objective" contradiction, which would have confronted any Soviet leadership (Stalinist, Trotskyist, or Bukharinist) - ie. the failure to pursue a "Leninist" policy had less to do with the character of the Soviet leadership, than that the bourgeoisie, with the benefit of a more developed (albeit crisis-ridden) economy and the assistance of the mass labour and social democratic parties, was able to contain the revolutionary left.
On 2012-10-08, at 5:53 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> 'What is Stalinism' asks Charles, and 'what is the difference between Leninism and Stalinism'?
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> I think there is a clearly stated break, which is this:
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> ‘in the new period … the old formula … becomes incorrect and must inevitably be replaced by another formula, one that affirms the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country.’ 'The Social-Democratic Deviation in our party', Report delivered at the Fifteenth all-union conference of the CPSU(B), Nov 1, 1926 in Stalin On the Opposition (Foreign Language Press, Peking 1974)
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> Stalin was aware that his was a new policy. The policy was an attempt to deal with the stabilisation of capitalism post-world war I, under the Dawes plan. The policy was pragmatic - an attempt to retrench - an not wrong for that. It was though, delusional, in that there was no possibility of building socialism in Russia, without access to western technology, on terms that simply were not on offer.
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> The negative consequences of the 'socialism in one country' policy were that European communist parties were tempted to mix up diplomatic advantage for the USSR with what was best for building revolution in their own countries. At key moments, the advice from Moscow was to put off the revolution, where it jeopardised the Soviet Union's own diplomacy. At that point, you could say that 'Stalinism' was a reactionary influence. In the USSR the police measures that the bureaucracy took to shore up the bad policy were extreme, and destructive.
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