The socialism-in-one-country debate masked a dispute over state-property stability

Evidence

Thus the debate, beginning with socialism in a single country, remained for ever and ever within the categories of leninism. Stalin said: whatever I do is leninism. Trotsky said no: it is not leninism. I am the genuine leninist. That was the setting. Stalin was not very serious about it. His actions were pure empiricism. Trotsky was serious about this leninism and was caught in it and strangled in it. He was entirely wrong in every theoretical and practical conclusion that was drawn from the debate… . The debate was that socialism could not be built in a single country. Does anyone believe that Stalin or any of his people believe that what is in Russia is socialism? Only an utter fool can think so. What the debate was about was whether the state-property system would be maintained without a revolution sooner or later in the West. (p. 350) And of course while Trotsky was preoccupied, fixed at the level of Understanding, he never possessed the energy nor the insight to realize that Stalinism … — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1308

Categorization

• XREF: Deepens the earlier discussion of state capitalism and the rise of Stalinism in the Johnson-Forest tendency.