Capitalist Restoration vs. Revolutionary Vindication - Why the USSR's Collapse Confirmed Mandel's Analysis
Part 4: Responding to the AWL's Distortions of Ernest Mandel
Note: As part of our five-party response to the AWL’s open letter to Ernest Mandel, we have published two background notes to outline some of Ernest Mandel’s views on the topics addressed by the AWL: Ernest Mandel's Evolving Perspectives on 20th Century Socialism and Capitalism and Ernest Mandel: Some of his Contributions to Marxist Theory and Revolutionary Practice. The whole series of articles is available here.
Sean Matgamna's central accusation against Ernest Mandel could not be more direct: "The collapse of the USSR shows conclusively that your version of 'Trotskyism' was radically wrong, false, and disorienting." This represents the Alliance for Workers' Liberty's strongest argument—their supposed ace in the hole that allegedly demolishes not just Mandel's analysis, but the entire theoretical framework of the Fourth International.
Yet a careful examination of the historical record reveals something far more devastating for the AWL: the collapse of the USSR represents one of the most spectacular vindications of Mandel's theoretical framework in the history of Marxist analysis. Far from being "radically wrong," Mandel's predictions about the USSR's trajectory proved remarkably prescient, while alternative theories—including those favored by the AWL—failed to account for the specific dynamics of how and why the Soviet system collapsed.
The AWL's Theoretical Incoherence: State Capitalism or Bureaucratic Collectivism?
The AWL's defense will be complicated by their own internal theoretical incoherence. After decades of debate, they have never formally resolved whether the USSR was "state capitalist" (following some version of Tony Cliff's analysis) or represented "bureaucratic collectivism" (a new exploiting class). This theoretical confusion is revealing: both currents within the AWL supported Yeltsin's rise to power despite their different analyses of what the USSR actually was.
As Martin Thomas acknowledged in his critique of state capitalist theory, Cliff's framework faces the fundamental problem that "a capital which no longer competes with other capitals is not a capital in the Marxian sense." Thomas noted that state capitalist theories could only be defended "by reasoning with dubious analogies" and concluded that "not a single theory of state capitalism succeeded in being both orthodox-Marxist as well as consistent with the facts."
Similarly, Paul Hampton's assessment of bureaucratic collectivism noted that such theories "cannot pretend consistency with Marxian orthodoxy" and face the problem that they describe "a ruling class [that] emerged which did not exist as a class before it came to power." Both theoretical positions led to the same political conclusion: supporting what they characterized as the progressive overthrow of a totalitarian system.
For the AWL's state capitalist wing, if the USSR was already capitalist, their entire narrative of "capitalist restoration" becomes theoretically incoherent. For their bureaucratic collectivist wing, the collapse meant the overthrow of a "new exploiting class"—but this still led them to welcome bourgeois democracy as progress.
The Prophetic Framework: Mandel's "Transitional Society" Analysis
Mandel's analysis was fundamentally different from both AWL variants. He characterized the USSR as a "transitional society"—neither fully socialist nor capitalist, but a unique social formation emerging from the October Revolution's abolition of private property, yet deformed by parasitic bureaucratic rule.
Crucially, Mandel argued this was not a stable formation but one marked by constant pressure toward resolution—either through political revolution by the working class or capitalist restoration by the bureaucracy. This framework allowed him to make specific predictions about the dynamics of collapse that proved remarkably accurate.
The Documented Predictions: Mandel's Warnings About Capitalist Restoration
The documentary evidence demolishes the AWL's claim that Mandel was caught off-guard by the USSR's collapse. The project materials show that Mandel explicitly warned about the possibility of capitalist restoration and predicted the specific form it would take.
Mandel's analysis identified the structural contradictions that would drive the system toward crisis and the mechanisms by which restoration would occur. His framework predicted both the system's instability and the violent, chaotic character restoration would assume—predictions that proved tragically accurate.
The AWL's Documented Support for Yeltsin's Rise
Martin Thomas's own survey of Trotskyist responses to the August 1991 events documents the AWL's position clearly. As Socialist Organiser, they issued materials opposing the coup and supporting what they explicitly characterized as a "bourgeois revolution."
Thomas quotes Socialist Organiser's assessment: "What we are witnessing in the USSR is a bourgeois revolution. The leaders of the anti-Stalinist revolution and their ideas; the ideas in the heads of the mass of the people (including the working class); the West European and US social models they look to - all define it as a bourgeois revolution."
This wasn't accidental—it flowed directly from their theoretical analysis. Whether viewing the USSR as state capitalist or bureaucratic collectivist, both currents within the AWL had concluded that the system represented a form of exploitation that needed to be overthrown, even if the immediate outcome was capitalism.
The "Double Struggle" Strategy: Against Both Bureaucracy and Restoration
The AWL's critique reduces Mandel's position to simple "defense of Stalinism." This represents a fundamental distortion. The project materials show that Mandel consistently advocated what he termed a "double struggle"—defending the gains of the October Revolution while simultaneously fighting the bureaucracy that had usurped workers' power.
This strategy was evident in Mandel's support for anti-bureaucratic movements throughout Eastern Europe, including the Polish Solidarity movement. The "double struggle" framework enabled Mandel to simultaneously oppose imperialist intervention while supporting workers' movements against bureaucratic rule.
Post-Collapse Vindication: The Nature of Russian "Mafia Capitalism"
The specific form that capitalist restoration took provides powerful vindication of Mandel's analysis. The emergence of Russian oligarchy—where former nomenklatura members transformed themselves into private proprietors—matched what Mandel had predicted about the bureaucracy's drive to secure privileges through private property ownership.
The "shock therapy" of the 1990s, with its massive economic contraction and social devastation, confirmed Mandel's warnings about the violent character restoration would assume. As one analysis notes, this process was "responsible for the deaths of at least three million people, along with a drop in the standard of living of the working class to a quarter of what it was in Soviet times."
The Failure of Alternative Theories
While Mandel's framework provided accurate predictions, the AWL's alternative theories struggled to explain what actually happened. Both state capitalist and bureaucratic collectivist theories faced fundamental problems in accounting for the specific dynamics of collapse and restoration.
State capitalist theories faced the logical problem of explaining "restoration" if capitalism already existed. Bureaucratic collectivist theories struggled to explain why their supposed "new ruling class" would dismantle its own distinct form of exploitation rather than defending it.
The False Binary of "Democracy vs. Totalitarianism"
The AWL will likely defend their support for Yeltsin by claiming they were fighting for "democracy against totalitarianism." This defense only confirms our critique: their theoretical framework had evolved to a point where supporting bourgeois democracy against degenerated workers' states became not just acceptable, but principled.
Their critique of Mandel served to justify their own accommodation to "democratic" capitalism: if authentic Trotskyism was "wrong" about everything, then supporting capitalist restoration could appear not as capitulation, but as theoretical progress.
The Pattern of Accommodation: A Broader Trajectory
The AWL's support for Yeltsin was not isolated but part of a broader pattern of accommodation to "democratic" imperialism. Their positions on Ireland (supporting the Good Friday Agreement despite acknowledging it "erects institutions of power-sharing above the existing partition") and Palestine (their "No to Netanyahu, No to Hamas!" slogan creating false equivalence between oppressor and oppressed) reflect the same methodological errors.
Living Marxism vs. Sectarian Dogmatism
The fundamental issue is method itself. Mandel's approach represented dialectical analysis that could develop in response to concrete conditions while maintaining revolutionary principles. As he wrote in defending this approach:
"Each one of us is against 'overinvestment', against 'gigantism', against Stalinist and post-Stalinist 'superindustrialisation', most of which represent a total loss of expenditure in material resources. But we are not against accelerated industrialisation as such in these countries or in Russia, which was the first to opt for it, after the October revolution... Above all it would mean condemning those countries to flounder in barbarism while they wait for the victory of the world revolution. But when would that come about? After five years? After ten years? After 20 years? After 30 years? Who knows? Must we in the meantime fold our arms and tolerate the intolerable?"
The AWL's method, by contrast, subordinates concrete analysis to predetermined schemas, rendering them incapable of understanding complex historical developments.
Conclusion
The collapse of the USSR represents not the refutation of Mandel's analysis but its vindication. His characterization of the Soviet system as an unstable transitional society, his warnings about capitalist restoration, and his predictions about the violent character restoration would assume all proved accurate.
The AWL's critique reveals the poverty of their own method. Their claim that the collapse proved Mandel wrong rests on fundamental misrepresentations of what he actually predicted. More damaging, their mechanical approach—reducing everything to predetermined categories—rendered them incapable of analyzing concrete political developments.
The choice facing revolutionary Marxists today is between Mandel's living tradition—theory that develops through engagement with concrete struggles while maintaining revolutionary principles—and the AWL's sectarian method that subordinates reality to predetermined schemas. The collapse of the USSR provides a definitive test of these approaches, and history has rendered its verdict: Mandel's framework proved far superior to the alternatives promoted by his critics.