they were not preceded by a workers’ revolution.

It soon became apparent that what was unique about the USSR was not the structure or the dynamic of its society, but the quite exceptional way it came about as the degeneration of a successful workers’ revolution. With hindsight we can now see that the much more general case is that of a weak compromised bourgeoisie, perhaps sitting on top of a peasant rebellion, with a petty bourgeoisie desperate for national development and organised in a Stalinist or nationalist party as the prospective recipient of the collective national capital.

By contrast in the Russian revolution of 1917, the exercise of power by a new class – the proletariat – required a totally new form of state. Not only was the old statesmashed, but a new one was created – the soviet state – which was based on recallable delegates from councils of direct workers’ power in the factories and barracks. The new state therefore presupposed both the existence of factories and of workers. The tragedy of course, was that this basis of the state was itself destroyed by the failure of the international revolution. As a result the workers’ state found itself blockaded and invaded by 16 imperialist nations. The vanguard of the class left the factories for the Red Army, and the factories were unable to function because of the blockade. Production declined to one fifth of its 1913 level and the remaining workers deserted the factories for the villages because they were starving.

Without workers and without production,