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History of the Trotskyist Movement Trotskyists debate Ireland Workers’ Liberty Volume 3 No 48 December/January 2014 £1 www.workersliberty.org Reason in revolt The two Trotskyisms during World War Two Left: the “orthodox Trotskyists” try to annex some of the Russian Army’s glory. Right: those same Trotskyists knew who Stalin was. History of the Trotskyist movement By Sean Matgamna was the main writer on that side of the divide. On the under - leader Hugo Urbahns, Trotsky had dealt comprehensively lying political issues, as we shall see, the picture was far less with more or less all the political issues concerning Stalinism By the eve of Leon Trotsky’s death in August 1940, the Amer - clear-cut. and its place in history with which he dealt in 1939-40. ican Trotskyist organisation, which was by far the most im - And why was this the starting point of two distinct Trot - 1940 was the definitive branching-off of the two Trotskyist portant group in the Fourth International, had split. Two skyist tendencies? From the very beginning of his exile from roads for two reasons. It was the end of Trotsky’s life, his last currents of Trotskyism had begun the process of complete the USSR in 1929, Trotsky and his comrades had had many word on the subject. And it marked a decisive turn for Stalin - separation, but only begun. disputes about the exact nature, the class content, and the his - ism — the beginning of the Russian expansion that would by It would take most of a decade before the evolution of two torical implications of Stalinism and of the USSR over which 1945 see Russia gain control of half of Europe. distinct species was complete. it ruled. Trotsky’s views on Stalin’s Russia, and the programme he For brevity they can be named after their chief proponents, Trotsky broke with the biggest group in the Left Opposi - had put forward for the liberation of the Russian working James P Cannon and Max Shachtman. Trotsky’s political rela - tion outside Russia — the German Leninbund — in 1929 over class, had evolved and changed as the Stalinist system had tionship to those two currents is one of the things that will their conflicting attitudes to Russia’s conflict with China over evolved and changed. Until 1933 he had thought that the Stal - concern us here. the Chinese Eastern Railroad. Trotsky was vehemently on the inist aspects of the Russian state could be “reformed” out of There is no question where he stood in the actual split and Russian government’s side. existence. the events that led up to it — solidly with Cannon. Indeed, he In October 1933, in a polemical exchange with Leninbund He had postulated, however, a special type of reform. He 1 Workers’ Liberty The two Trotskyisms during World War Two expected the bungling and irrationally-run Stalinist system to unknown type of class-exploitative society. that the military defence of the USSR was the business of those encounter disaster. The bureaucracy would begin to break up; If the world war produced not the overthrow, one way or who would know best, the Russian government. then the party which Stalin had strangled would separate out another, of Stalinism, but the spread of Stalinist-type regimes Despite Trotsky’s continuing “defence of the USSR” in late from the bureaucracy; bring back the Left Opposition, which across the world, then “it would be necessary in retrospect to 1939 and 1940, he had taken the giant step of accepting that was confined in internal exile; reconstitute Bolshevism; and establish that in its fundamental traits the present USSR was the USSR, as it was, could be reconceptualised as a new form take power. the precursor of a new exploiting régime on an international of exploitative class society. In 1933 he had shifted towards the belief that a “political” scale”. What if capitalism was in terminal decline (Trotsky was revolution would be needed to break the Stalinist dictator - When some of his American comrades and its factional al - sure it was), and the working class should fail to replace cap - ship, though at that stage he still wrote of a resurgent Bolshe - lies recoiled from such an idea, saying it was “revisionism”, he italism with socialism, and Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Ger - vik party carrying out a “police action” against the replied in October 1939 with Again and Once More on The Ques - many proved to be the prototypes of a new world society? bureaucracy. In 1936 he had deepened and sharpened what tion of the USSR , in which he dismissed such condemnation as That, said Trotsky, would be a slave society. Then the social - he meant by “political revolution”, defining it, de facto, as a nonsensical know-nothing dogmatising. ists would have to elaborate “a new ‘minimum’ program... for full-scale working-class revolution against “the sole com - “Some comrades evidently were surprised that I spoke in the defence of the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bu - manding stratum”. my article of the system of ‘bureaucratic collectivism’ as a the - reaucratic society”. In 1936, too, he defined the conundrum of the USSR and oretical possibility. They discovered in this even a complete If Stalin’s system on a world scale would be an exploitative state ownership thus: “The means of production belong to the revision of Marxism. This is an apparent misunderstanding. slave society, what was the Stalinist one-sixth of the world, in state. But the state, so to speak, ‘belongs’ to the bureaucracy”. The Marxist comprehension of historical necessity has nothing the USSR? Logically, there was only one answer to the ques - In 1937, in disputes with two members of the American in common with fatalism.... [If the working class fails to take tions posed by Trotsky’s reasoning: Russia was already that Trotskyist organisation, James Burnham and Joseph Carter power], fascism on one hand, degeneration of the Soviet state exploitative slave society. Trotsky said explicitly that, looking and with the French Trotskyist Yvan Craipeau, he had uncou - on the other outline the social and political forms of a neo-bar - back, the socialists might have to accept that the USSR was al - pled the politics of “defence of the USSR” (against an expected barism...” ready in 1939 the “precursor of a new exploiting régime on an assault from the West) from the characterisation of the system Stalin simultaneously broke new ground when, on 17 Sep - international scale”. as a “degenerated workers’ state”. Assume for the sake of ar - tember 1939, with the prior agreement of Hitler, he invaded Was there some additional quality which the Russian Stal - gument, Trotsky had written, that the bureaucracy had be - Poland from the east. His army and Hitler’s met as friends inist system would get from participation in a worldwide net - come a new ruling class: “When we are faced with the and allies in the middle of Poland, dismembering the coun - work of similar states? Yes, there was: stability. But in terms struggle between two states which are – let us admit it – both try. of the social structure, and the roles of social groups in it, es - class states, but one of which represents imperialist stagna - “Defence of the USSR” had been seen in terms of a Russia pecially of the working class, Stalinist Russia would remain tion and the other tremendous economic progress, do we not prospectively under attack, on the defensive. Here the USSR itself. have to support the progressive state against the reactionary was expanding its territory as Hitler’s partner in imperialist state?” rapine and plunder. NOT STABLE The direction of evolution of Trotsky’s politics on the USSR Was Russia, then, imperialist? The disputes that erupted Why then did Trotsky reject defining the USSR as already a through the 1930s was unmistakable. He moved closer and around that question were heated, but more about terminol - form of the new order which he saw it as maybe pioneering? closer to abandoning the “degenerated workers’ state” cate - ogy than substance. Because it was not stable, not a coherent “order”. “Might gorisation. At the beginning of the 1930s he was in public a At the very start of the Left Opposition against the rising we not place ourselves in a ludicrous position if we affixed to critical defender of the Russian state. By the end he was de - oligarchy, Lenin, from his deathbed, had indicted the Geor - the Bonapartist oligarchy the nomenclature of a new ruling nouncing the Russian bureaucracy as worse than all the his - gian Stalin, whom he urged the party to dismiss as general class just a few years or even a few months prior to its inglo - torical ruling classes, and publicly calling for a new revolution secretary, for his “Great-Russian chauvinist” treatment of rious downfall? Posing this question clearly should alone in against it. Georgia. our opinion restrain the comrades from terminological exper - The majority of the peoples of the USSR were not Great Rus - MORE UNBRIDLED imentation and overhasty generalisations”. sians, but members of distinct nations. The Bolsheviks, in 1917 The USSR would give way either to a workers’ revolution Trotsky’s defence of Russia, and his insistence that it was a and after, had had to tear down the walls of what had been or to capitalist restoration. The great test would be the world “degenerated workers’ state”, were not the result of his being known as the Tsarist “prison-house of nations”. war which was already being fought, and which would reach “soft on Stalinism”. As Stalinism developed, the rigid bureaucratic centralising Russia ten months after Trotsky’s death.
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