the COMMUNIST from The Communist, Spring 2004. See the whole issue at http://plp.org/communist/communistspg04.pdf Why Trotskyism Is Reactionary The Progressive Labor Party recognizes that Trotskyism but their chains.” The working class has no reason to hang is phony communism, also called “revisionism” – capitalist on to outmoded ideas, refight old battles, or embrace ideas in a left disguise. Many people, including many errors made by our heroic ancestors in the communist Trotskyists themselves, don’t understand the reactionary movement. essence of Trotskyism. We have studied Trotskyism, ready to learn whatever we might find that was valuable. If Trotskyism, and Trotskyist In this pamphlet we’ll expose the fallacies of Trotskyism parties, offered anything positive, we would embrace it. in two ways. If Trotskyists were forces we ever could unite with, we would do so. • We’ll discuss some facts about Trotsky himself that But we can’t. Trotskyism has nothing positive to offer expose how reactionary he was. the world’s working class and the struggle for a communist • We’ll expose the idealist* – non-Marxist, anti- world. It is a reactionary, idealist philosophy. materialist – basis of Trotskyism. Trotskyist groups trace their beginnings in pro-Trotsky factions within the Bolshevik Party -- called the Communist Leon Trotsky Party of the Soviet Union/Bolshevik, or CPSU(b) – during 1879-1940 the 1920s. When Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet in 1928, his supporters were also expelled from other Trotsky was a Russian radical parties in the Communist International, or ‘Comintern’, Marxist, a fluent and prolific writer, or quit on their own. Some of these groups formed new a powerful public speaker and, Trotskyist parties in various countries, continuing after until August 1917, a Menshevik. Trotsky’s assassination in 1940. They attracted some left- The Mensheviks believed that only leaning and anti-Soviet intellectuals, though few workers. after capitalism had industrialized a Their determined struggle against the Soviet Union and country could a socialist revolution be successful. Comintern earned them publicity by the capitalists far By the middle of 1917 the Tsar had abdicated and a beyond their numbers. government of big capitalists had taken over Russia. With Khrushchev’s denunciations of Stalin in 1956 and 1961, The working class in the large cities had proven open to but especially with the end of the USSR in the early ‘90s, revolutionary leadership. Trotsky and some others, the the pro-Soviet revisionist groups shrank in numbers and “Mezhraiontsy” or Inter-district committee, joined the influence. The disappearance of pro-China communist Bolshevik Party, where Lenin immediately put Trotsky on groups after Deng Xiao-ping led the Chinese Communist the Central Committee. He played an important role as Party swiftly to the right upon Mao Tse-tung’s death in military and political leader during the four-year long Civil 1976 completed the collapse of the old Communist War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution of November movement. Trotskyist political parties have become more 1917. prominent in a much smaller “left” no longer dominated Trotsky shared with Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks by pro-Soviet groups. the view that the working class in Russia could not long hold power without revolutions in the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe. However, Trotsky was on Cult of “Great Leaders” Always the “right” of this continuum of views, believing more Reactionary firmly than most that a failure of such revolutions would inevitably doom the socialist revolution in Russia. Others Even if Trotsky had been a great revolutionary and theorist were less fatalistic. like Marx or Lenin, Trotskyism would still be reactionary, This belief led Trotsky to advocate devoting all efforts to because Trotskyist groups treat him as an unquestionable stimulating international revolutions. That, in turn, earned authority. In reality, Trotsky was a dishonest reactionary, Trotsky a reputation as a “leftist”. But note that this “super- whose arrogance and great ego led him to be one of the revolutionary” attitude proceeds from a Menshevik -- an main founts of anti-communism for capitalist exploiters. economic determinist, pessimistic, and ultimately “right” We in PLP do not intend to simply continue the “Stalin –analysis: that capitalism still had a “progressive” role to – Trotsky” battles of the past. In the Communist Manifesto play in industrializing Russia, unless this could be done Marx and Engels wrote that workers “have nothing to lose with the aid of more advanced socialist countries. 17 Trotsky’s Arrogance had been outlawed by a party vote in 1921. Many former Mensheviks became good Bolsheviks. All Bolsheviks had doubts and questions about how to develop Democratic Centralism “socialism in one country” if – as proved the case – there were no helpful revolutions in advanced capitalist societies. According to Democratic Centralism, all communists What determined Trotsky’s reactionary political path were must fight to put the party’s line into practice once it has his class position as an elitist Russian intellectual, and his been decided upon by debate and vote. There is no other personality. way to judge whether the Party’s line is correct or not. Intellectuals as a stratum of the petty bourgeoisie, For, if all members do not try to put it into effect with all were drawn to Menshevik analysis since it left capitalism their effort, who can say, in the case of failure, whether and its relations of production, in place, and so justified the line was incorrect, or whether it was correct but just a continuation of the relatively privileged position of never carried out? intellectuals, and those with education generally, above Factionalism creates a situation where party members workers and peasants. The Bolsheviks regarded this as spend their time organizing around their own line, rather a “necessary evil”, a form of bribery to win technically- than vigorously trying to put the party’s line into effect. It skilled intellectuals to help educate and industrialize the is similar to “democratic” capitalist politics, where different workers’ state. parties, and even different factions within a party, spend The Mensheviks went much further, rejecting the all their time trying to advance themselves by “beating Bolshevik revolution as illegitimate in the absence of the other guy.” In a communist party, this is a recipe for revolutions in more industrialized countries. Trotsky had disaster. abandoned the Mensheviks because he hoped the Russian Trotsky was called to account time and again for his Revolution would spark revolutions in advanced industrial factional activity in the party debates of the 1920s. Each countries like Germany, which could then help backward time he recanted, but went right back to doing the same Russia advance. thing. Eventually the exasperated Bolsheviks expelled him Not all Bolshevik intellectuals took this line, however. for incorrigible factionalizing. Central to Trotsky’s political career was his extreme Stalin was among the last to agree to this expulsion; individualism. Trotsky was convinced that he himself was Trotsky’s later allies in the secret Opposition, including a world-class genius and the only one who deserved to Bukharin, wanted to expel Trotsky much sooner! When succeed Lenin as leader of the Bolshevik Party. Arrogant he and some followers organized a counter-demonstration in his personal relations, he angered even his greatest at the Bolshevik Revolution’s 10th anniversary in 1927, admirers like Max Eastman. Arrogance is an extreme form Trotsky was expelled from the Party, exiled to a remote city, of idealism. and finally deported from the USSR in January 1929. Politically, this meant that Trotsky was constantly trying to gain power, forming alliances with other prominent Bolsheviks rather than supporting the party’s line. Trotsky’s ‘Cult of Personality’ Utterly lacking in modesty and self-criticism, Trotsky Factionalism rationalized his factional activity by attributing his political defeats to dishonest maneuvers by his opponents During the 1920s the Bolsheviks had annual Conferences – “stacking the votes”, admitting “politically immature” and Congresses in which they open debated the future workers as members, and counter-factionalizing. He never course of the revolution. Trotsky’s positions were accepted that his ideas were, or could be, wrong. He had consistently defeated. Trotsky’s Menshevist ideas implied that, without further socialist revolutions in industrial countries, Russia’s own revolution was doomed. Capitalism, The Trotskyist movement Trotsky thought, was essential to industrializing Russia, which was too economically backward to do it alone. was a caricature of a Most working-class Bolsheviks recognized this as defeatist. Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders said the working class could industrialize the country by itself. “cult of personality.” This position won out in the great debates at the annual Party Conferences during the 1920s. Trotsky’s line was no faith in the collective discussions and struggles of the overwhelmingly defeated. Since his great ego could not Bolshevik party. He was out of touch with reality. In short, accept this, Trotsky continued to form secret alliances with he was an idealist. other dissident communists, even after such “factions” To account for his defeats Trotsky always complained 18 the COMMUNIST about a “lack of democracy” in the Party But within the Communists know that, even with a thorough grounding ranks of his own followers he tolerated no disagreement. in Marxism-Leninism, only devoted political practice in The Trotskyist movement was a caricature of a “cult of the working-class movement makes any kind of correct personality.” The “cult of Stalin” has long since been understanding of reality, and evaluation of theory, criticized – Stalin himself attacked it many times -- and is possible. The Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Tse- gone. But the “cult of Trotsky” has survived to the present tung discovered – not by “theory,” but through practice day. No Trotskyist group publicly criticizes The Master.