"The end of Trotskyism ?"

[jplant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jj Plant)]

The following text is by Cyril Smith, who does not yet have net access.
Readers may know
Cyril's book "Marxist Theory & Socialist Society".

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                    THE END OF TROTSKYISM?

                       by Cyril Smith

Alan Wald's articles in Against the Current, (Nov/Dec '94,
Jan/Feb '95, and Mar/April '95), ask whether `American Trotsky-
ism' has come to an end. But before you can decide whether
something has reached its end, you must first say what it is or
was. To explore the meaning of `Trotskyism' is to raise a number
of questions of great importance for the world today. However,
Wald skims so lightly over the surface that he doesn't get near
these issues at all.

   This is how he measures the significance of his subject:

     Only in a very limited framework of `moments' when a
     campaign or strike was victorious or a political strategy
     appeared to win out...can one talk of `Trotskyism's
     achievements'.

He seems unable to go beyond to the horizons of today's
`political activists' in the US, a myriad tiny groups milling
around in a variety of campaigns.

   Now, I am far from blaming these people for their limited
influence, which may be due to objective causes beyond their
control. What does matter, however, is the way that they see
their own activity. At best, they think in terms of a few
improvements in the present social order, and protesting about
some of its defects. At worst, they regard radical politics as an
end in itself, a kind of spectatorless-sport, played within its
own set of rules. If `American Trotskyism' is seen in this
context, who cares whether it exists or not?

   I have little time for those who still read the history of the
Left Opposition and the Fourth International as a golden thread
of tradition, providing a set of instructions about what is to be
done today. Only small numbers of individuals participated, and
their ideas were often confused and mistaken. To discuss their
story is to face a series of difficult problems. Nonetheless, I
believe, these problems cannot be avoided, for they are precisely
those on which the future of humanity depends today.

   For what matters about Trotskyism are not the details of its
programme, but the very fact that it existed. The `Bolshevik-
Leninists' alone struggled, under the most difficult conditions,
to uphold the conceptions of the October Revolution and the
Communist International, and to bring them into the life of the
working class. This is the real `achievement' of the founders of
the SWP and their comrades throughout the world. Conversely,
their weaknesses can't be measured by counting the number of
people they influenced. What we are discussing here is quality,
not quantity.

   To speak of `American Trotskyism' is to talk about the world
social crisis which was expressed both in the Russian Revolution
and in the US workers movement. The revolution of 1917 and its
subsequent betrayals were not merely Russian events: they concer-
ned the future of humanity as a whole. To measure the outcome of
the history of Trotskyism we should ask: in the light of what has
happened since, did the way that the Trotskyists understood what
they were doing get to the heart of the matter?

   To discuss the period 1917-1960 - contrary to Wald, I think it
was downhill all the way after that - we might break it into
three sections, each raising a corresponding question.

 (1) From 1917, the task was to carry out the conception of the
Third International, that the world revolution had begun: were
these conceptions well-founded?

 (2) In 1929-1940, the movement was guided by Trotsky himself,
trying to understand and respond to the degeneration of the
Communist International and the Soviet state, within the frame-
work of Comintern thinking: did he get it right?

 (3) From 1940 to 1960, the central aim was to continue Trotsky's
fight for the Fourth International: to what extent was this
achieved?

   To each of these questions, the answer has to be a clear and
unequivocal - yes and no! Without the work done by the
`Bolshevik-Leninists', who insisted that the Russian Revolution
had been betrayed but not destroyed, the upholders of the old
world order would have erased all memories of 1917, or left them
to the mercy of Stalin's machine of lies and terror.

   As it was, in each period, the meaning of those memories was
progressively scaled down, and after 1960 they almost vanished.
In the immediate aftermath of the Russian revolution, its sup-
porters thought that the time had arrived for the world socialist
commonwealth. With the stabilisation of the 1920s, this prospect
seemed increasingly distant, and faded into the daily work of
`building the revolutionary party'. By the time of World War 2,
it had been nearly forgotten, while, in the world of `radical
politics' today, such ideas are generally considered to have no
meaning at all.

   In the earliest period, communism seemed so close that there
wasn't much need to discuss its meaning. Building the parties of
the Comintern to defend the Revolution took precedence over
questions about what this revolution was. Then, the urgent task
to defend the basic conceptions of the Comintern against Stalin-
ist distortion made it impossible to question these conceptions.
After Trotsky's assassination, the problem was how to continue
his work, in a world which had changed drastically. In the face
of Stalinist power, Trotsky's towering authority made it hard to
examine his work objectively. In a similar way, Trotsky had been
precluded from looking at the work of Lenin.

   It seems to me that now is the time to make good these
omissions. In particular, I think we should reconsider just what
the word `theory' came to mean in the FI. After all, did Trotsky
not describe the task of the revolutionaries as to be `the
conscious expression of an unconscious movement'? But just how
conscious were we? Using the categories and vocabulary of the
Comintern in its great days, some general conceptions about the
world in the twentieth century were elaborated. This was the
setting for an analysis of world politics and economics, used to
work out `strategy' and `tactics' for the revolutionaries, and
especially for the vital struggle against Stalinist politics.

   But it never went deeper than that. There was little or no
work which questioned or developed the fundamental framework
known as `Marxism'. It was simply taken for granted. Trotsky's
pleas for the study of philosophy received wild applause from his
followers: apart from some token `education classes', nothing was
done about them.

   Look at those New York Intellectuals studied by Wald. I wonder
how much they actually knew about the work of Marx? How many had
read Capital, for example, let alone begun to understand it? Of
course, they knew all about the Chinese revolution, Stalin's
betrayals in Spain, the tactical problems of `entry', and so on.
But, apart from the Old Man's own writings, the FI hardly
produced a book of any importance which went beyond immediate
politics. Wald mentions the interminable arguments about the
`Russian Question'. But the level of understanding of what was at
stake in these discussions was usually abysmal.

   And yet, with all these weaknesses, Trotskyism represented the
highest that could be reached at that time. There were certainly
academic thinkers outside its ranks who asked many important
questions about the outlook of Marx and his successors - I have
in mind, for instance, the work of the Frankfurt School - and I
don't want to ignore their contribution. But they were, in
general, outside the actual struggle, and therefore gripped by
the defeats and betrayals of the 1930s and 1940s. That is why, in
relation to some of the biggest issues of today, especially the
assessment of the Russian revolution, none of them has much to
say.

   In my opinion, the outlook we knew as `Marxism' actually
covered over the real contribution of Karl Marx. Although Trotsky
and the Trotskyists accepted many aspects of this cover-up, their
experiences in the objective struggle against Stalinism in which
they engaged provides us with the jumping-off point for resuming
that contribution.

   I believe that the work of the real live Karl Marx, if you
really look at it unencumbered by the prejudices of the `Marxist'
tradition, points to the real issues confronting world society
today. (I have tried to examine some of these questions in Marx
at the Millennium, (Pluto, 1995; EMail: pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
co.uk) (puff! puff!). In particular, I argue that Marx was never
really engaged in theory at all. [Greek theoreein=a spectator.]
But, right from the start, that was the framework into which he
was forced by his followers, including the Trotskyists.

   Those like Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, who fought to
maintain a revolutionary struggle, were unable to find their way
back to Marx's conceptions, hamstrung as they were by `theorists'
like Kautsky and Plekhanov. Lenin came closer than anyone, in
1914-17, but then the exigencies of civil war made it impossible
to maintain this work. Later, Trotsky attempted to find a way
through, but under the bitter conditions of isolation this was
not possible.

   Now, as the deadly impact of Stalinism recedes, the conditions
have returned for this work to be extended. The trouble is this:
while those who went through the experience of Trotskyism are
obviously the people to take on this job, at the same time, they
are the ones who find it the hardest. Either they have been worn
out by disappointment, and want to chuck the whole thing away. Or
they cling desperately to the empty forms of past dogma. (At
least, that covers most of the ones I know. Perhaps there are
some others out there.)

   Is there a future for Trotskyism? Yes, but only if those who
went through its attempt to take the framework of bolshevism as
far as it would go - or even farther! - examine afresh the whole
body of Marx's work. That is a hard job, not least because it
implies questioning ideas which we all thought were unquestion-
able. Is it worth the trouble? I'm certain it is, because the
task bolshevism attempted still remains for humankind, and above
all the working class, to accomplish.



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jplant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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