Cuba: Marxism and the Revolution

[p017] CUBA Marxism and the Revolution By John Castle SINCE 1961 the recurrent theme of the Socialist Workers Party leadership has been that ‘Cuba is the acid test’. They claim that the Socialist Labour League and its allies in the International Committee have failed that test miserably while the Pabloites have come through with flying colours. Like the Pablo group inthe International Secretariat of the Fourth International, the SWP leaders characterised Cuba as a workers’ state, and gave uncritical support to Castro. This, said the SWP, justified reunification of the Fourth International. The latest contribution along this line is an article in the Winter 1965 International Socialist Review by Joseph Hansen, ‘The Test of the Cuban Revolution’. Hansen concentrates his attack on an article by Ed Stilwell which appeared in the July 18, 1964 issue of the Newsletter, weekly organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League. The Stilwell article dealt at length with the whole development of the Cuban Revolution from its origins and the great dangers which currently face Cuba because the revolu- tion continues to be led by the same petty-bourgeois Stratum which initiated it; this has meant that the revolution has failed to go over, under working-class leadership, to the creation of a workers’ state. Castro and Conciliation Hansen’s first major point deals with the quotations in Stilwell’s article from Richard Eder’s interview with Castro, published in the New York Times of July 6, 1964. While the Eder interview dealt with a number of questions related to Cuban developments, Hansen concentrates on Eder’s attributing to Castro a willing- ness to withhold aid to revolutionaries in Latin America if only the U.S. would stop its hostilities towards Cuba. It seems that Castro repudiated this section of the interview shortly after it appeared in the New York Times. The importance of the Eder interview is that it expressed extremely clearly an aspect of Cuban policy which has been evident for a long time and which has repeatedly found expression in interviews with Castro and in other ways. Essentially this policy is one of probing the possibility of coming to terms with American imperialism, even if it means a retreat on Cuba’s part from its support to anti-imperialist struggles in other countries. Let us see if this is really an aspect of the Cuban leadership’s policy, or simply a figment of the imagina- tion of a New York Times corresvondent. In the first place the seauence of events surrounding the Eder interview is not without significance. At the time of the interview the U.S. was planning to intensify its blockade of Cuba and thus to isolate Cuba as effec- tively as possible from the rest of the hemisphere. Castro was seeking through this interview to hold open to the U.S. another course—that of coming to terms with Cuba. Immediately after the interview, the U.S: State Department reacted with the greatest haste to turn down Castro’s overtures precisely because it recognised that they were real, and were not merely the product of the New York Times writing staff; ard also because it was not yet ready, for reasons we will shortly outline, to handle the Cuban revolution as Castro suggested. After this rebuff, Castro ten days later claimed he did not make the reported offer to withdraw aid to revolutionaries. He did not, however, repudiate related statements about coming to terms with the U.S., which included offers to pay indemnifi- cations for seizures of American property and to free most of the political prisoners held on the island. More recently Castro had an extensive interview with C. L. Sulzberger, one of the key policy makers of the New York Times, and a person who plays no small role in the process of formulating the inter- national line of American imperialism. During this interview Sulzberger referred to this Eder interview, which he felt expressed a much more conciliatory line towards the U.S. than the line Castro was putting forward in his current. interview. Sulzberger reports, ‘Castro admits the contrast, arguing “then there had been an improvement in relations between Washing- ton and Moscow. We set forth a position against that background. The suggestions I then made still stand. We are prepared to analyze our problems with the USA as a steno toward reducing tensions—but only within a world framework”.’ This statement was printed in the November 4 New York Times and so far neither the New York Times nor Fidel Castro nor Hansen has printed a statement retracting it. The logic of this position should be clear for all to see. The stand taken by Castro in his interview with Eder was partially changed only because the inter- national climate was not conducive to the kind of deal Castro had in mind. It logically follows, and Castro says as much to Sulzberger, that should the international climate change, the deal will be brought forward once again. Hansen, of course, makes much of the fact that the United States has not sought to come to terms wiht Cuba. He assumes that this is because Cuba is a workers’ state, and that, therefore, the only recourse for Washington is to crush it quickly before it spreads into other areas at present under U.S. imperialist domination. There is no doubt that U.S. imperialism is determined to roll back the conquests of the Cuban revolution as soon as possible, because the social and political crises which are recurrent in Latin America, as well as in the USA itself, make the Cuban

[p018] CuBA: MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTION revolution a highly dangerous ferment. Until a definite relation has been re-established between U.S. imperialism and the Cuban state the possibility is there that a new proletarian leadership will emerge in Cuba and take the revolution to the next, socialist, stage of development. An important factor in preventing this transition wherever this stage is reached in the national liberation struggle is the role of the Stalinist bureaucracy, including the Soviet state and its military resources. The U.S. imperialists recognise this full well, and they refuse to make any steps towards a reconciliation with Castro “because they take this general relationship of forces into account, and it is this consideration to which Castro refers in the Eder interview: the U.S. imperialists view Cuba in the context of their relations with the Stalinists on an international scale. Lacking a leadership with a truly internationalist line,* Cuba is left in a position where the withdrawal of Soviet sugar purchases and other economic assistance would mean inevitable collapse. The Soviet Union offers this aid to Cuba precisely as a method of keeping up direct pressure on the US. on the latter’s own doorstep and thus increasing Soviet bargaining power. The U.S. understands this and realises that ‘handling’ Cuba must be part of coming to terms with the USSR. Thus Stilwell’s emphasis on this interview in July was fully justified, for it showed that the Cuban revolution faces great dangers from its present petty-bourgeois leadership once an international climate conducive to real horse-trading between the U.S. and the USSR is established. This leads us to another of Hansen’s major points. He claims that Stilwell is mistaken in seeing the possibility that Johnson, following the election, may seek to make some deals with the USSR at the expense of revolution everywhere and possibly Cuba * Besides Castro’s and Guevara’s inclination to ‘leave out’ from their calls to revolutionary struggfe those countries with governments not unfriendly to Cuba, it is important to note the recent visit of Guevara to Algiers early this year. Addressing the Economic Seminar on Afro-Asian Solidarity he called for the sending of ‘messages of solidarity to the heroic peoples of Vietnam, of Laos, of so-called Portuguese Guinea, South Africa, Palestine (!), and all the exploited countries which are struggling for their emancipation. We must forward our friendly greetings to our brother peoples of Venezuela, Guatemala and Colombia, who today, arms in hand, are definitely saying no to the imperialist enemy.’ Speaking predominantly to Arab nationalists, Guevara has not a word to say about the repvressions of the bourgeois governments of any part of the Arab world, carefully selecting the people of Palestine for his message of solidarity! This is reminiscent of the fine anti-imperialist exposures of the Stalinists in 1939-40: these were all very good, but were exclusively concentrated on the evils of British and French imperialism, since German im- perialism somehow took on rosier hues because of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The consequences of this variety of internationalism are well known! 65 in particular. Hansen ignores this possibility al- together and sees from American imperialism only the danger of frontal military attack. Castro, however, does not share this view with Hansen. Sulzberger reports in the same November 4 article —and neither Hansen nor Castro contradicts— that Castro was rooting for Johnson to win the American elections. Castro tells Sulzberger: ‘Tf Johnson reassumes the Presidency with greater authority than any recent U.S. President he will be enabled to pursue a policy of moderation. Your government would be in a position to face serious problems: the stupid Vietnam war which is obviously lost: a nuclear China: and Cuba. Only a government coming to power with great popular support, seeking peace, can solve these problems.’ Again we express our concern for the way in which such ‘problems’ as Cuba may be ‘solved’. , This perspective of some serious deals between the USSR and the U.S. is not a matter of speculation. Already Johnson has made clear through his State cf the Union Address that special attention is to be paid to this in the coming year. An exchange visit with Brezhnev is already in preliminary planning stages and in one form or another at least preliminary talks between Johnson and Brezhnev will be held before this year is over. The policies of the Soviet leaders in this direction are well known. A Distorted Analogy The importance to us of any interest in reconcilia- tion between Cuba and the U.S. is directly related to our basic class analysis of Cuba itself. It is precisely through understanding what Cuba is in class terms that we deepen our own understanding of the dangers facing Cuba and thus are better equinved to defend the Cuban Revolution against the imoverialists. First of all, we must understand the essential nature of the Cuban economy as it has been historically determined, and the failure to date of the Cuban leadership to alter this. Cuba has to this day a subordinate colonial economy. That is, it produces a raw material, sugar, which it then sells to the industrialised countries to get its foreign exchange and thence its resources for economic development. In this respect, it is in much the same boat as Bolivia, which devend< on tin pro- duction. Ghana with its cocoa. Brazil with its coffee, etc. Thus its very economic backwardness, reliance on one main crop. makes it subordinate to the mono- polies and banks which dominate the world market. Cuba’s ability to develop its own economy and supply the wants of its peovle remains dependent on the world price of sugar. Even today. when it exnorts most of its sugar to the Soviet Bloc countries, the price these countries pay—with slight variations—is essentially related to the world price of sugar. If these countries pay over the world market price, then this is but another way of subsidising Cuba. Should these countries not wish to, or not be able to, continue subsidies, Cuba is then thrown back upon the vicissi- tudes of the international capitalist market. In this fundamental economic sense Cuba is extremely differ-

[p019] 66 ent from the early Soviet Russia, or even China. In Russia, economic backwardness brought severe problems to the Soviet state, but for Cuba any kind of autarchic economic development is excluded. In Eastern Europe voices have already been raised tc question the continuation of any form of sub- sidisation of Cuba. A permanent official of Comecon, the organisation for economic co-operation between countries of the Soviet bloc, reported to a meeting of that body early in February 1965 that Cuba was becoming a heavy liability without bringing any return, economical or political. The following figures were given of Cuba’s debts to member countries: Soviet Union 250m. dollars, East Germany 77m. dollars, Czechoslovakia 63m. dollars, Hungary 21m. dollars, Rumania 19m. dollars, Bulgaria 8m. dollars—a_ total debt of 443m. dollars. The official is reported to have commented: ‘All Cuba has produced in the past few years is a bigger and bigger police force, and a bigger and bigger army.’ When the question was first raised in Czechoslovakia some months earlier of the drain on Eastern European economies of aid to Cuba, the Communist Party’s organ in Prague suggested that the dependence of the Cuban economy upon sugar necessitated a normalisation of Cuba’s relations with the economy of the United States. There is not the slightest doubt that this Cuban dependence on Soviet purchases of raw materials poses even before the Cuban leaders the dangers of ‘peaceful co-existence’ and the impossibility of a solution of the economic problems of backward countries within the rotten framework of ‘Socialism in several countries’. ‘Che’ Guevara, in the speech we have already quoted, had this to say: ‘How can it be considered of mutual benefit to sell at the world market price raw materials which have cost such sweat and suffering to the masses of the backward countries and to buy at the world market price, the machine products of the big automated plants of today? ... ‘It is the duty of socialist countries to end their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.’* _ Proceeding from this relation of Cuba to the world economy, ignored by Hansen, Stilwell made an analogy between the Cuban economy, the great majority of which is nationalized, and the nationalized coal industry: in England. To the extent that. Cuba re- integrates into the world capitalist market, to that extent it plays the same role within the world capitalist structure as does the coal industry within the capitalist structure of England—the supplier of a cheap raw material needed: by industry. Thus Cuba can be com- pletely re-absorbed into the capitalist market without so much as the de-nationalization. of a single industry. * As we go to press, it is reported that Guevera has not made any public appearance since the Algerian visit during which he made these remarks, and that his ‘work in the government has been taken over by another Minister. “ Fourtu INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 There is no sense in pursuing Hansen’s invitation to ‘extend the analogy’ by asking what would happen if a workers’ revolution took over all of British industry. Would not the British economy, he asks, then stand in the same relation to world economy as does the nationalized coal industry to British capital- ism, and would we, therefore, be unable to say that a workers’ state existed in Britain? Here one might answer that the economic development of Britain would make easier an independent construction of socialism without awaiting the international com- pletion of the revolution. (As Lenin said, ‘In England the revolution will be harder to get, but easier to keep.’) But, of course, even Britain’s socialist deve- lopment would not be assured and cannot be con- sidered outside of the whole process of international Socialist revolution. The enormous relative weakness of the Cuban economy assures that a workers’ dictator- ship in Cuba would have a much more precarious existence in the interim between its own conquest of the national state and the completion of the world revolution. But Hansen’s case actually begs all these questions, since he asks us to assume a ‘workers’ revolution’ in Britain, and what remains to be proved in Cuba is precisely that a workers’ revolution has taken place! Having carefully avoided this question, Hansen easily asserts that for Stilwell the class character of states appears to be determined by their international trade relations. This is not the point. In Cuba, it would be possible for the imperialists to reintegrate production of sugar into the world market mechanism without a counter-revolutionary overturn, i.e, through the existing bureaucratic state, against the workers and peasants. Hansen and the ‘Fidelistas’ in the Unified Secretariat welcomed the recent sacking of Rodriguez, old-line Stalinist, from the central economic planning apparatus, as a sign of Castro’s independence from Moscow, seeing this in line with his speeches to the effect that Cuba abhorred the Sino-Soviet split and would be ‘a satellite of nobody’. Like Guevara’s statements on world market prices, these represent an empirical response to the consequences of dependence on the Stalinist bureaucracy, but outside of a world proletarian revolutionary perspective, they in fact. pave the way for a renewed approach to relations with U.S. imperialism as the only way out. Is Cuba then just another ‘bourgeois’ colonial coun- try, and is Castro identified with Nkhrumah, Ben Bella and Nasser? The answer is yes and no. There is a very real identity between Cuba and such countries as Algeria and Egypt and between Castro and the leader- ships of these countries. But there are also differ- ences. In the Stilwell article and elsewhere both the identity and the differences have been made crystal clear. Cuba represents the most radical of a whole series of petty-bourgeois-led national rebellions in the underdeveloped countries. Underlying these rebellions are similar factors—basically the inability of the imperialists or the domestic capitalists to supply the capital for the necessary economic development in the country and the related inability of the capitalists to

[p020] CuBA: MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTION destroy the primitive exploitative land relations which oppress the masses and hold back the interna! development of these countries. Because of this situation in all these countries petty-bourgeois elements come to the fore, seeking somehow to overcome their economic stagnation through heavy reliance on state nationalization measures. Even the Syrian government recently has announced extensive nationalizations, while in the same breath attacking Nasser’s nationali- zations as ‘state capitalist’. Cuba essentially differs from these countries in only one respect—the degree to which she has replaced direct dependence on the capitalist world market with dependence on the Soviet bloc. We do not view this as a difference which alters the nature of the state. Equally important, we do not see that this Cuban ‘solution’ is really open to countries like Algeria and Egypt. It requires first of all the willingness of the Soviet bloc countries to foot the bill, at least in part, for the economic development in the country, whether through direct subsidisation or by paying a price higher than the world market price for the products of the country. The Soviet bloc countries are increasingly con- fronted by their own economic problems. These in turn derive from the isolation of the workers’ states from the advanced countries, centres of the most important productive forces. This isolation is per- petuated by the counter-revolutionary policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is more interested in coming to terms with the imperialists for its own advantage than in subsidising even revolu- tion of the Cuban type. There is every danger tha‘ Cuba’s withdrawal from direct imperialist domination and her modest economic development plans will be scuttled as the price the USSR would be more than willing to pay for some more direct agreement with the imperialists. A constantly recurring trend among the revisionists is the insistence that the Soviet bureaucracy ‘can no longer betray’. As the Stilwell article pointed out, the Castro regime is more and more viewing itself as part of the ‘non- aligned camp’ rather than really as part of the Sovie+ camp. Recently when Sulzberger asked Castro why he didn’t take the course of such ‘non-aligned’ coun- tries as Egypt and Algeria, he responded: ‘I respect anyone else’s position and I feel that Nasser is an intelligent capable man. But it is not fair to say that he is non-aligned. He is aligned against imperialism and colonialism and in that sense we, too, are aligned. The so-called non-aligned countries have similar positions on a whole series of international problems.’ (November 8, 1964, New York Times). But when asked about any plan of Cuba’s to join with Comecon, the Soviet bloc countries’ basic economic integrating body, he stated: ‘The Comecon organisa- tion corresponds to the needs of its participating members. Cuba’s case is somewhat different. We try to co-operate with the countries in Comecon and to trade with them, but there is no formal link to the organisation.’ We add once again that these statements have yet to be repudiated by Castro or Hansen. 67 Cuba and Revolution It is not our contention that Castro is opposed to revolution. On the contrary it seems that he strives in his own way to develop and support revolution. But we must have an understanding of the kind of revolution he stands for and the limits he places upon his support. Castro is, in our opinion, a genuine advocate of petty-bourgeois-led peasant rebellion against the backward latifundist regimes in Latin America and elsewhere. He is thus an advocate of the bourgeois revolution which has been incomplete in so many of the underdeveloped countries of the world. It is his distinguishing thesis that the bour- geois revolution can be completed and economic deve- lopment spurred ahead through an essentially peasant struggle which storms the cities from the outside. Castro is not now, nor has he ever been, an advocate of proletarian revolution. It is not the proletariat his supporters seek to organise in Latin America. <A recent example of the outlook of the Castro leader- ship on this question can be found in an interview with ‘Che’ Guevara printed in the January 12 issue of Challenge, the weekly organ of the pro-Maoist Pro- gressive Labour Movement in the United States. Asked his assessment of the reasons for the failure of the FALN in Venezuela, he states: ‘There is too much stress on fighting in the cities. You lose too many cadres and there is not enough gain.’ ‘Thus he felt that the struggles failed in Venezuela because the revolutionaries paid too much attention to the urban centres where the proletariat resides. Such is the real orientation of Castro and his movement. Moreover, Castro does place certain limits on his support to even non-proletarian revolutions. It is those regimes with policies hostile to Cuba which Castro seeks to overturn through internal revolution. He is not interested in overthrowing the regime in countries like Mexico. This was pointed out in the Stilwell article, but Hansen has totally failed to come to grips with this, and gives us not a single example of where Castro has given assistance in the movement against bourgeois regimes in Latin America which are favourable to dealing with Cuba. The Need for a Working-Class Party Hansen is especially offended by the assertion that in order to establish a workers’ state there must be formed a revolutionary party ‘based on a Marxist theoretical understanding. This concept is dismissed as the result of an extreme ‘ultra-left binge’ on the part of the Socialist Labour League. No, Joseph Hansen is to big a man to waste his precious time on so mundane a task as creating a working-class party with a theoretical understanding. He will by-pass that task by grabbing hold of the ear of some petty- bourgeois leader in power somewhere who is being forced by ‘objective circumstances’ to create a workers’ state. So far, unfortunately, the efforts of Hansen and his friends have not been too encouraging. Despite the extensive mimeographed commentary which the United Secretariat pours out in English from Paris it has

[p021] 68 experienced nothing but splits and defeats since Hansen arrived on the European continent. The problem seems to be that United Secretariat sup- porters have had such success at getting the ear of people in power that the latter have had little need for the United Secretariat itself or for the expert guidance of Hansen. N. M. Perera, leader of the Ceylon section affiliated to the United Secretariat, not only got the ear of Mrs. Bandaranaike, but got a cabinet post to boot—so out he went. Michel Pablo didn’t do as well as his Ceylonese friend, but a government job in Algeria is better than nothing. Pablo is now under disciplinary suspension by the United Secretariat. The disintegration of the international Pabloite movement is directly related to their totally false and revisionist theory of the Cuban Revolution. This theory, rather than helping to build the Pabloite forces, has demoralised them and led to their further shrinkage. But how could it be otherwise? How can a Marxist revolutionary movement be built on the basis of a theorv that the working class and its conscious leadership, the Marxist movement, are no longer needed in the process of creating workers’ states? The logical end is voluntary liquidation. Hansen’s complete political bankruptcy is shown when he challenges us to state what we would do if revolutionaries with our political outlook were to become the leadership of the Cuban revolution: ‘If Healy succeeds in overthrowing the Castro govern- ment, what economic and social programme wili he put in effect?’ And later: ‘It would be well for him to inform the Cuban proletariat—and peasants, too— more specifically about how he proposes to accom- plish what has already been accomplished before he sets out from the London docks in a British Granma.’ The implications of these statements are enormous. If Hansen challenges Healy to make clear what he would do differently from Castro if he were in power in Cuba, it logically follows that if Hansen were in power he would do just as Castro has done. Let us look briefly at what Castro has done, and in this way we will perhaps get an insight into what Hansen advocates be done not only in Cuba but elsewhere. A useful addition to our knowledge of current Cuban internal developments is the article by Adolfo Gilly, ‘Inside the Cuban Revolution’, published in the October 1964 issue of ‘Monthly Review’, a U.S. publication which is extremely pro-Castro. Gilly holds that Cuba is a workers’ state. However, he at least takes a certain critical stance in relationship to the Cuban leadership, and thus is capable of painting a more accurate picture of Cuba than the panegyrics of a Hansen. First let us look at the real relations of the working class to the trade unions and the state. Gilly comments : ‘You have only to live for a time in Cuba, par- ticipate in the Revolution’s activities, and be in daily contact with the Cuban people to learn of one leader who enjoys the unanimous opposition of the FourTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 Cuban workers; he is today as much a part of the Cuban leadership as Escalante was just the other day, and he is no other than the general secretary of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba Revolu- tionaria (CTCR), Lazaro Pena.’ Gilly describes the role of unions in Cuba as follows: ‘The unions, then, serve to transmit to the rank and file the leaders’ point of view and to convince the workers that they should not raise such and such problems. A long stretch separates Lenin’s concept in which the union acts in the name of the workers, and this later one in which union repre- sents the administration to the workers.’ Exactly how this process works out in the daily lives of the working class is illustrated by Gilly: ‘Last September, Lazaro Pena personally went to a general meeting of construction workers in the heavy equipment sector (tractors, derricks, pneu- matic drills, bulldozers, etc.). He went to ask the meeting to approve the following: when equipment which a worker operates breaks down, the workers will agree to work at a lesser job and accept the wage for that category instead of the wage he had been receiving. This had already been proposed by Fidel Castro, but the workers were not in agreement: what with the deterioration of equipment and the lack of repiacement parts, the breakdown of a machine could mean a considerable loss of income. The union leaders in this sector were not eager to face the rank and file directly with these demands. The secretary general of the CTCR therefore had to go himself, and a scandal broke out at the meeting. A worker told him that when he gave up his auto- mobile and went to work with them, they would accept his proposition. Another reminded him of his old collaboration with Batista. Others accused him of enjoying privileges. The meeting was sus- pended in great confusion. The press denounced the incident, first as the work of “confusionists”. In subsequent meetings, better prepared by the leaders but much less well attended by the workers, the proposition brought by Lazaro Pena was carried.’ Such is the actual relationshin of the working class to the trade unions and the state. But Hansen can see no need to criticise, much less replace, the present leadership. We can only conclude that if Hansen were in charge of Cuba, he, too, would do as Castro and Pena do today in relation to the working class. Now let us look at another aspect of life in Cuba. Gilly comments: ‘The Cuban press is a national calamity. It is not just an information medium: it is a defensive wall against the pressure from below, a uniform medium which allows discussions of art criticism or films but never dissent or criticisms of proposals for change when it comes to a decision of the govern- ment.’ Directly related to this is the position of the POR, a small group of supporters of J. Posadas who split from the Pabloites a few years ago and who still

[p022] CusBa: MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTION follow many of their centrist policies. The POR, for all of its confusion, still has made limited criti- cisms of the Castro regime. As a result five members of that group have been tried in secret and sentenced to prison terms of up to nine years. Their sole ‘crime’ was the distribution of their publication in mimeo- graphed form. Earlier the state had stepped in to prevent them from printing the paper. Needless to say Hansen makes no mention of all this. We can only gather that should Hansen today be in the leadership of the Cuban government he, too, would suppress all discussion of political questions in the press and imprison independent working-class critics of his regime. We have noted the role of trade unions in Cuba and the role of the press, and the suppression of working-class critics. Perhaps despite all this there is some other way the working class exerts its control over this supposed workers’ state. This is how Gilly sums up the situation: ‘The masses not only lack political institutions through which to express their opinions and decide on the proportions and the structure of the econo- mic plan; they also have no means for correcting the plan while it is being applied, or for pointing out errors which have come to light, or disproportions in time.’ He notes that not even the limited councils that exist in Yugoslavia and in the countryside in Algeria exist in Cuba. We can only conclude that this is how Hansen, too, would have it were he the leadership of Cuba today. We, however, do have an alternative policy to that of Castro and we will be more than happy to spell it out. First and foremost we propose to bring the working class itself to power in Cuba. No more rule from on top by bureaucrats. Direct rule by the working class itself over every aspect of life in Cuba! For this the existing bureaucratic state inherited from the Batista regime must be smashed. Secondly, we would base the whole international line of the Cuban Revolution on the struggle for power of the working class everywhere in the world. We would not rely on such perfidious ‘allies’ as the so- called ‘non-aligned’ countries nor would we trust the Soviet bureaucrats who have demonstrated over and over again that they put the preservation of their own privileges through peace with the imperialists above the interests of the working class. We would view the Cuban Revolution as the advanced spearhead of revolution which must spread over Latin America and above all to the advanced capitalist countries if it is not to be destroyed. In other words, we would regard the work of revolutionaries in Cuba as a base for the spread of a world-wide working-class revolu- tion, much as Lenin and Trotsky regarded the con- quests of the Russian Revolution in the early days. There is no solution purely within Cuba to the problems confronting the Cuban Revolution. Cuba’s real problem is the existence of the United States and the other advanced capitalist countries. Capitalism 69 must be overthrown in these countries or there is no hope in the long run for the working class and peasantry in the colonial countries. It will only be successfully overthrown when the Fourth International of workers’ revolutionary parties has been rebuilt. Hansen and his international collaborators, by working against this rebuilding of the International, in fact thus work against the fundamental interests of the Cuban Revolution. Cuba and Marxist Method The objective conquests of the Cuban Revolution are obvious: mass struggles to overthrow landlordism and imperialist domination were strong enough to change the government; the new government of revolutionary nationalist leaders, in order to retain any control over the movement, has had to go farther in smashing landlordism and expropriating businesses, domestic and foreign, than they would have done on the basis of their own programme. But the future of all such revolutionary struggles in backward countries can only be understood and fought for in the context of the theory of permanent revolution. The bour- geoisie in such countries cannot have an independent economic development. Everything depends on the working class leading the peasant masses, being able to establish its dictatorship, hold the power and use it, not only for the control of the economy and as the instrument for expropriation of the old rulers, but also as the base for a revolutionary International, since only the world socialist revolution can assure the future of a workers’ regime in such a country. In the USSR after 1917, the isolation of the workers’ state eventually provided conditions where a bureau- cratic caste took control of the party, the state machine and the Comintern. By the 1930s ‘Socialism in One Country’ had become the cloak for a degene- ration of the workers’ state and the definitive going over of Stalinism to counter-revolution. But the basic social conquests of October remained intact, and defence of the USSR against imperialism remained, and is still, a primary duty of all Marxists. After the Second World War, the extension of this deformed type of workers’ power into Eastern Europe and China, with the process controlled from above by Stalinist parties, even where this was accompanied by revolutionary civil wars (China, Jugoslavia, Vietnam), was interpreted by revisionists as indicating a quali- tatively changed objective world situation. It was claimed, most explicitly by Michel Pablo, that Stalin- ism was now forced to renounce its counter- revolutionary character and lead the workers to power. It followed that the task of Trotskyists, of Marxists, was not to build independent leaderships against the bureaucracy, but to integrate themselves with the ‘progressive left sections’ of the bureaucracy who were affected by ‘mass pressure’ and ‘irreversible’ processes. By extension, the same attitude was extended to the Social-Democracy, and above all to the petty-bourgeois revolutionary nationalists in Algeria. Cuba and other colonial countries. It is this approach which lies behind the differences

[p023] 70 over Cuba. Hansen and his friends have rejected dialectical materialism, with its insistence on the role of revolutionary consciousness, and become advocates of objectivism and pragmatism. They are now making the mistake which the opponents of defence of the USSR, such as Burnham, made in the 1930s; although the form taken is apparently opposite. Trotsky drew attention to the wrong method of Burnham, Schacht- man and the petty-bourgeois opposition in the Socialist Workers Party in 1939-40. They looked at the degen- rated social and political forms in the USSR, and concluded that here was a new stage in socio-historical development—managerialism, bureaucratic collectiv- ism, state capitalism, or what you will. Trotsky pointed out that they had dissolved the concrete into the abstract. The USSR was a particular sector at a particular stage in a world revolution in the epoch of imperialist decay. Its political and social deforma- tions were not the expression of a new stage in mankind’s development, but expressed the particular refraction of these laws in the special circumstances of a backward, isolated workers’ state under par- ticular international conditions (see Trotsky ‘The Revolution Betrayed’ and ‘In Defence of Marxism’). When the modern Pabloite revisionists and Hansen look at the post-war events in Eastern Europe, China, and now at Cuba, Algeria, etc., they make the same mistake, even if this time it results in adaptation to the Soviet bureaucracy, rather than anti-Communism of Burnham’s type. In any case, subservience to the bureaucracy is only another, more insidious, form of response to imperialist pressure; defence of the USSR means defence against the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy, and not only against direct imperialist attack. When Burnham and his co-thinkers added together their impressions of the Soviet state and abstracted them from world conditions and from historical stages of development, they were able to present the image of a new social system, a new ‘objective’ reality. Many of the ‘Trotskyists’ who recognised the exten- sion of the October conquests to Eastern Europe and China in the shape of deformed workers’ states now made a similar error. The particular conditions under which this happened, the particular stage of develop- ment of world imperialism, of the Soviet system, of the relations between bureaucracy and imperialism, were abstracted from the products of the post-war struggles, and the absence of Marxist leadership in these conditions was raised to the level of a general historical law. Unable to oppose revolutionary con- sciousness and the dialectical analysis of contradictions to the apparently enormous strength of the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1945-53, the revisionists developed the theory that new inevitable and irreversible forces in the objective situation would force the bureaucrats to extend the proletarian revolution. The exceptional, one-sided product of the world revolution in special conditions was abstracted and raised to the level of a new universal stage of political development, to be applied in an unrelated and mechanical way to every situation. _FourtuH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 This method of thinking cut very deep into the international Trotskyist movement, and made neces- sary a stubborn fight for dialectical materialism and for the construction of a real revolutionary Inter- national, a fight which came into the open in 1952-53, against Pablo’s revisionism, and another stage of which is now in progress against the opportunist and anti- Marxist positions of Hansen and the SWP. This revisionist mode of thought gradually cast aside all dialectical conceptions of contradictory development and the class determination of political processes. History has become a broad sweep of favourable obiective conditions, and these conditions imperiously choose their representatives—Khrushchev, Kosygin, Ferhat Abbas, Ben Bella, Castro, and others yet to be selected. The Fourth International is reduced to the role of commentator and adviser, better equipped than anyone else for this role by its knowledge of quota- tions from Trotsky. When we differ with Hansen over the evolution of Cuban state, it is a question of all these differences in method, and not at all, as Hansen tries to make out, a question of the ‘criteria’ for appending the label ‘workers’ state’. When Hansen insists that we discuss Cuba in line with the previous Trotskyist discussions on the nature of workers’ states (he refers to the 1939-40 discussion with Burnham-Schachtman and the 1949-52 discussion on Eastern Europe and China), he really takes us to the root of his own wrong method. He sees these discussions as efforts to establish fixed and formal definition-criteria (nationalization), these criteria then to be applied in any circumstances. Some in the Pabloite camp have taken this to its ‘logical’ conclusion; they consider not only Cuba and Algeria, but also Syria, Egypt, Burma and Zanzibar to be workers’ states of a certain type. since large-scale nationalizations have taken place there. The relation of these nationalized industries to the world economy, the nature of the state apparatus, and the role of the working class, are completely ignored in this approach. ‘Socialism’, it appears, is asserting its historical destiny, over the heads of and even against the working class! Hansen argued in one of the earlier discussions that ‘consistent empiricism’ was equivalent to dialectical materialism. We see that, on the contrary, it has led the revisionists to a repeti- tion of the historical theories of absolute idealism! In the documents published in the last issue of FourTH INTERNATIONAL we have dealt thoroughly with the nature of the state in Cuba, pointing out that unless the bourgeois state is smashed, workers’ power estab- lished, and a Cuban revolutionary leadership built as part of the Fourth International, spreading the revolutionary struggle to the rest of America, then counter-revolution will triumph in Cuba, through the mechanism of the state itself, and with the help of the Stalinist betrayals, no matter what Castro wills or Hansen advises. Since these documents were written it has become even clearer that Russian support for sugar produc- tion, plus general guarantees of military and diplomatic support, are disastrously dangerous bases for the future

[p024] CuBA: MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTION of the Cuban revolution. The weakness and vulner- ability of the Cuban economy, together with the counter-revolutionary role of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its relations with U.S. imperialism, make the building of a working-class party in Cuba absolutely imperative. Rejecting this task, Hansen and his associates are in fact expressing that confidence in the Soviet bureaucracy and in non-working-class forces which Pabloism has always displayed. Hansen chooses to resolutely ignore the centralised, bureaucratic character of the Cuban state and of the one ‘political party’, the official ‘IRO’, and to characterise Cuba as a workers’ state. The duty of Trotskyists, and of all working- class internationalists, is to defend the Cuban Revolu- tion against imperialism, and also to defend it against the treacherous diplomatic and military sell-outs of Stalinism. This defence cannot be carried out by subservience to Castro and the petty-bourgeois leaders of the July 26th movement. The SWP and the Pabloites, in giving uncritical support to Castro, even baptising his leadership as that of ‘unconscious Marx- ism’, have connived at the repression of Cuban Marxists and the suppression of trade union rights. Their ‘objectivism’ turns into open support for counter-revolutionary measures. Their reaction to the missiles crisis of 1962 was exactly similar. Instead of condemning the adventurist phase of Stalinist opportunism which led to such grave dangers, Cannon pronounced that Khrushchev’s withdrawal of missiles was a great act for peace—‘what else could he have done under the circumstances?’ That is precisely the point! Our revisionists take ‘the circumstances’ as unalterable ‘objective’ facts, instead of as products of class struggle and political move- ments, of which the revolutionary party is part. Thus they are responsible to no one because their own pronouncements play no part in the struggle, only entering it after each stage as a commentary which then plays the role of justifying the class enemy’s agents who dominate the working class. Thus Castro now says that ‘everybody knows’ he was against Khrushchev’s withdrawal of missiles. But yet Cannon thought nothing else could be done—nevertheless Castro’s pronouncements are welcomed as the last word in ‘revolutionism’ and independence from Stalinism! When Hansen chooses to discuss on the basis of Cuba as ‘the acid test’ he seems to think he is on the strongest possible ground. On the contrary, it is on this question that the politics of the SWP come out most clearly as incapable of any con- sistency, determined as they are, not by a firm grasp of the objective laws of economic and class develop- ment, but by the actions and speeches of bureaucratic and petty-bourgeois leaders. We consider that these differences on Marxist method are the real points at issue in our dispute with Hansen, Germain, Pablo and the ‘Unified Secretariat’. Differences over Cuba are only one manifestation of this fundamental difference. The political essence of the difference is the role of revolutionary conscious- ness: the revisionists abandon the construction of 71 the revolutionary party, and now turn their attacks bitterly against those in the International Committee who insist on building the Party against the oppor- tunists. Hansen and his friends have invented all manner of non-Marxist formulations to justify this abandonment of the founding principles of the com- munist movement and of the Fourth International. Where Pablo talked about revolutionary leaderships with no determinate class basis (‘Jacobin leaderships sui generis’!) Hansen and the SWP invented inde- pendently the notion that revolutionary parties need not necessarily be built in order for a workers’ revolution to take place; they could be constructed ‘in the course of the revolution itself’. Of course, they unconditionally accept the leadership of Castro and do not advocate even now construction of a proletarian party of the Fourth International. Trotsky long ago said: ‘The dictatorship of the pro- letariat imperiously demands a single and united pro- tarian party as the leader of the working masses and the poor peasantry. Such unity, unweakened by factional strife, is unconditionally necessary to the proletariat in the fulfilment of its historic mission. This can be realised only upon the basis of the teachings of Marx and Lenin, undiluted with personal interpretations and undistorted by revisionism’ (The Platform of the Left Opposition (1927)). Hansen has never said just how, when and why this basic paragraph became outdated. The Permanent Revolution ‘Confirmed’ One of the ways in which the revisionists of the SWP have attempted to dress up the Cuban revolu- tion’s petty-bourgeois leaders in Marxist clothes is by talking about the ‘confirmation’ of the theory of Permanent Revolution in Cuba. The implication is that the existing state form and leadership of the Cuban revolution must receive the support of Trotsky- ists; and that anyone who refuses to see this is unable to recognise the reality through which the theory is confirmed, clinging instead to dogmatic versions of the theory, insisting on the construction of indepen- dent parties when the existing leaders are themselves carrying out the necessary historical tasks. This notion of the theory of permanent revolution being confirmed in the shape of the leadership given by the Castro government has the appearance of showing the ability of Hansen and his friends to take into account the actual development of events, rather than using theory to insist that the facts should be different. In reality, the exact opposite is the case. We have already seen that the SWP and Pabloite revisionists make the basic revision of substituting ‘objectivism’ for the outlook of dialectical materialism. For us Marxists, theory develops through the struggle to change the world; in politics, this unity of theory and practice is embodied in the revolutionary party, its strategy and tactics, its struggle against hostile tendencies and theoretical revisions. As against this, the revisionists take theory to be an abstract com- mentary, which is checked against the ‘facts’, to be confirmed or cast aside; as in the case of all non-

[p025] 72 Marxist philosophies, the ‘facts’ remain external and quite separate from the active intervention of the subject, the observer. This is what has happened to the theory of the permanent revolution in the outlook of Hansen. Properly understood, this theory is an instrument in the hands of the international workers’ movement. Except on the basis of this theory, there can be no victory for the international revolution; the parties of the Fourth International which start from this theory have the responsibility to develop it in practice, according to the concrete conditions of the struggle in each country and at each particular stage of imperialist development. The theory of permanent revolution indicates that the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution— break-up of the holdings of the old landlord class, national liberation and unification, laying down of the political and legal conditions for the development of capitalist private property and social relations— cannot in our epoch be carried out by the bourgeoisie or its petty-bourgeois political representatives. In the revolutionary struggle, resolute leadership for the peasant masses will be formed only in the party of the proletariat. But the proletariat will not remain at the level of solving the tasks of the bourgeois- democratic revolution; it will go forward to assert its own specific class demands, and the bourgeois revolution will grow over into the socialist revolution through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Further, the backward countries to which this theory applies cannot complete any of these socialist tasks except in the framework of the international revolution of the working class; this constitutes the second aspect in which the revolution is ‘permanent’ or ‘uninterrupted’. What has happened then in Cuba? The objective factors which motivate the theory of permanent revolution asserted themselves with great force. The ruling circles of the Cuban bourgeoisie were so tied to U.S. capital that they were unable to command any support whatsoever against the peasant war led by the Castro guerrillas. The latter force, starting from the traditional programme of the democratic revolution —land for the peasants, a democratic constitution, and national independence—conquered power. The defeat of the Batista regime and the expulsion of the U.S. imperialists from Cuba immediately posed the question of going beyond these tasks. The struggle against U.S. interests brought the Cuban leaders up sharply against the world counter-revolutionary strategy of U.S. imperialism. The U.S. leaders were determined to regain Cuba for the direct economic domination of imperialism but also as a guarantee of their own military security, fearing that Cuba might become a base for Soviet military and political pressure. This, together with the example of revolu- tion shown to the rest of America, was a major threat to imperialist control of the whole hemisphere. This enormous pressure from imperialism forced very rapidly a split among the petty-bourgeois leaders of the Castro movement. The very exigencies of national defence against the military and economic sanctions of Wall Street necessitated a thoroughgoing purge of the FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 Right in the July 26th movement and in government personnel, and all foreign holdings were expropriated. In this the Castro leadership called for and received the support of the Cuban masses. Soon the Castro group turned to the Stalinists, with whom their relations until then had been very bad, in order to strengthen the administrative apparatus of state, and also as part of the turn to Soviet assistance necessi- tated by the American blockade. It should be pointed out, however, that the democratic aims of the bour- geois revolution were never carried through in any way in Cuba. This is impossible in modern conditions. There is a continuous struggle up to the workers’ dictatorship. Thus the pressure of imperialism has created a very dangerous situation for the Cuban revolution, posing very sharply all the tasks of the permanent revolution. The necessary next steps—establishment of workers’ power, construction of a leading proletarian party in Cuba within a revolutionary international—require a leap in consciousness, an ability to take hold of the specific class relations in Cuba and in the world, starting from correct evaluations of the present crisis of imperialism and of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. Without this leap in con- sciousness, expressed in the strategy and tactics of a Marxist party, the next steps in the revolution cannot be taken and the existing gains cannot be preserved. To consecrate the existing, transitory, dangerous stage, to justify the existing petty-bourgeois leadership, with the formulae, ‘this confirms the theory of the perma- nent revolution’, ‘Castro is a natural Marxist’, etc., is a capitulation, an abdication from revolutionary leader- ship. Such ‘theorising’ helps the enemies of the revolution by exposing it to the dangers of internal degeneration through class differentiation and bureau- cratisation, as well as to isolation from the workers’ movement throughout the world, including the USA. Only those who fight to construct the Fourth Inter- national, in Cuba as well as in every other country, are consciously defending the future of the Cuban revolution. Those who oppose this construction, and for this purpose hide behind the formula, ‘Cuba is a workers’ state, and this shall be the dividing line’, are precisely those who threaten the future of the revolution by holding back the most crucial factor of all (as the theory of permanent revolution makes clear)—the conscious intervention of the revolutionary party. Every development of objective reality poses new and specific tasks to the revolutionary party of Marxism; theory is a guide to action in fighting for the interests of the working class at every stage. In Cuba, those ‘Marxists’ who subordinate the working class to the existing petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic leadership—a leadership and a state apparatus which stand between the working class and its victory—are using ‘Trotskyist? formulae for the purpose of liquidating the independent class interests of the proletariat, and behave in practice only as the left wing of the petty-bourgeois revolutionists. We thus have in the SWP attitude to Castro only one variety of the Pabloite adaptation to the bureaucratic and

[p026] CuBA: MARXISM AND THE REVOLUTION petty-bourgeois servants of imperialism in all sectors of the international class struggle. A Marxist analysis of revisionist theories must consider not only their relation to the history of Marxist theory, but also demonstrate the class interests which are served by the revisions. In general, it is clear that a revision of Marxism which destroys the concept of a necessary revolutionary party in every country serves the most decisive needs of modern imperialism: the crisis of working-class leadership continues unresolved, and so the main prop of im- perialism remains in existence. But it is necessary to be more specific, with reference to the theory of Permanent Revolution and the role of national- liberation movements in the international proletarian revolution. In writing about the ‘centrist’ socialists of the period of the First World War, Lenin differentiated them from the outright opportunist leaders of the Second International. The latter he considered to have passed to the side of capitalist counter- revolution; the centrists remained in the middle of the road, immobilised and paralysed by their rigid adherence to legal forms of work, organisational fetishism and doctrinal dogma. The theoretical ossification of almost the entire Trotskyist movement since 1940, the restriction of the activity of most of its sections to narrow propaganda circles unable to establish an independent programme and leadership in the working-class movement, long ago prepared the way for ‘Trotskyism’ of the variety peddled by Hansen and the Pabloite Secretariat becoming a ‘theoretical’ service to the agents of imperialism. The reality behind the theory that petty-bourgeois nationalist leaders can lead the proletarian revolution in the backward countries is a reality of dictatorship established against the proletariat of these countries, a reality where these bourgeois nationalist govern- ments retain their relations with imperialism. In these countries, the language of ‘Socialism’ is used to conceal the only possible capitalist path of develop- ment—state control of large sectors of the economy, state management of loans from international finance capital, either from private sources or from inter- national monetary organisations, and state control of trade unions and political life through the monopoly of a single political party. Fine words about ‘non- capitalist? paths of development which make ‘un- necessary’ the existence of democratic liberties, about ‘workers’ managemen:’ which make necessary the ‘integration’ of trade unions with the state, about the ‘socialist’ and ‘revolutionary’ character of heads of government, making it necessary to imprison inde- pendent working-class oppositionists—all these are rationalisations of the imposition of bourgeois rule over the working class and the peasantry. Stalinism has developed its own _ blundering, empiricist, ‘theoretical’ adaptation to this state of affairs, hailing the existence of a whole number of ‘independent’ powers standing on the side of ‘peace and progress’ and skipping over the orthodox stages of capitalist development. ‘African’ paths to Socialism, 73 ‘Arab’ socialism, ‘Islamic’ socialism, all of them dis- guises for consolidating the power of the national bourgeoisie and disciplining the working class, are hailed by the Stalinist bureaucracy as forces helping in the struggle against imperialism. The 1960 Moscow Declaration of the 81 Communist Parties, in which the Chinese were included, christened these countries as ‘independent states of national democracy’. There is supposed to be a pattern of ‘neutralism’, ‘non- alignment’ and ‘non-capitalist’ paths of development. In a whole number of cases (India, Egypt, Syria, Iraq) the Soviet bureaucracy’s concern to keep. these elements ‘non-aligned’ has involved effective colla- boration with the national bourgeois governments to the point of police repression, and in the case of Iraq the eventual consequence was physical liquidation of a whole Stalinist cadre. It is not difficult to understand the logical con- nection between Soviet attitudes on these questions and the whole strategy of the bureaucracy as it seeks ‘peaceful co-existence’ and ‘peaceful competition between the two systems’. The more sophisticated ‘theorists’ in the Soviet Union have arrived at formu- lations remarkably akin to those of the Pabloites, in that their firm purpose is to wipe out the factor of conscious revolutionary leadership. The method too is the same: the world struggle for socialism is seen as an addition of various national parts, each to be separately developed and then compared, rather than seeing the world revolution as an organic whole. Thus G. Mirski, a Soviet ‘expert’ on the United Arab Republic, writing in New Times (No. 18, 1964), con- cluded: ‘the socialist world system is performing the the function of proletarian vanguard in relation to the imperialist-oppressed nations’. The Soviet journal Mirovaia Ekonomika called a conference in the Spring of 1964, and reported that a number of participants saw the possibility of ‘petty- bourgeois and even bourgeois leaders of the national liberation movement going over to the positions of the working class’. A certain R. Avakov spoke of ‘a definite transition from the ideology of nationalism to the ideology of socialism of the national type’. When Khrushchev visited the United Arab Republic in May 1964 he said in one speech: ‘We have welcomed with satisfaction your decision to develop . . . through a socialist reconstruction of society’. This sort of thing has predominated in the USSR, even while some Arab Communists have expressed doubts about the consequences of characterising Nasser’s path as a ‘socialist’ one.* It must be said that the ‘Trotskyists’ of the Pablo and Hansen school are nothing but more sophisticated apologists of this temporary stabilisation of capitalist rule in the backward countries. Their knowledge of the texts written about the theory of the Permanent Revolution enables them to perform this task with * See quotations in ‘Moscow and the “Third World” ’ by Uri Ra’anan, Problems of Communism Jan./Feb. 1965, from which the above citations are taken.

[p027] 74 more agility than the rigid scribes of Stalinism, but it does not make them any the less guilty. This whole atmosphere of degeneration of theory provokes one explosion and split after another, as various groups take the ‘theory’ to its logical conclusion and adapt themselves completely to the national bour- geoisie in their own sphere of activity. Ceylon was the most disastrous example. The LSSP led by Perera marched into a bourgeois coalition with Mrs. Bandaranaike, providing an indispensable service to imperialism. Mrs. Bandaranaike had explicitly stated her desire to recruit a ‘socialist’ party to her govern- ment in order to discipline the working class. Eventu- ally, in classic style, the coalition fell to a more right- wing combination. In the course of their stay in the government, the LSSP traitors distinguished them- selves by attacking strikers and by supporting legis- lation to suppress freedom of the press, as well as collaborating in reactionary attacks on national minorities. Far from ‘the theory of permanent revolution being confirmed’, these ‘Trotskyists’ worked worked hard to disprove it by collaborating in the bourgeoisie’s attempt to prevent even the democratic revolution advancing, let alone fighting for workers’ power! Pablo, after faithfully serving Ben Bella during the establishment of one-party bourgeois rule in Algeria, has recently turned his attention to Ceylon, and found even in Mrs. Bandaranaike a future leader of the socialist revolution! Reporting a recent rally in Colombo, his journal writes: ‘Bandaranaike spoke to the masses at that demon- stration in a way that was particularly significant of her leftwards political evolution, and was answered by the frantic applause of the demonstrators who ended by singing the Internationale.’ The article goes on: ‘To continue in these circumstances to speak of the Coalition as a reactionary bourgeois alliance and of the government as a simple bourgeois or petty- bourgeois reactionary one, would of course be an unpardonably gross error.’ Pablo only takes to the logical extreme the position of Hansen and the SWP leaders. Their ‘Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International’ will continue to splinter so long as Trotskyist theory is used as a rationalisation for the leadership of petty-bourgeois reformists or nationalists. Only a movement deve- loping Marxist theory as the instrument of the work- ing class will find a soil for growth in the international class struggle today. In April 1917, Lenin had to wage a bitter struggle against almost the entire leadership of the Bolshevik Party. These leaders adapted to the forms taken by the bourgeois revolution in the first weeks after the March uprising. They looked at the Provisional Government, with its ministers nominated by the parties of the Soviets, they accepted the future promise of a representative assembly, and they saw FouRTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 the possibility of the government’s taking steps towards ending the war. To justify conditional support for this government, they argued that the traditional Bolshevik programme of ‘a revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry’ had now become a slogan with living actuality. Lenin waged a bitter struggle against this use of ‘theory’, so reminiscent of the theoretical pretensions of Hansen on the permanent revolution. He pointed out that as the class forces lined up in the actual struggles of 1917 there was revealed the contradictory nature of the class forces entering into the ‘democratic dictatorship’, What actually occurred was a Situation of ‘dual power’ in which the tendency of the peasantry was to hand over the political power to the bourgeoisie. Lenin proposed on the contrary the slogan of ‘All power to the Soviets’ with a struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘He who now speaks of “revolutionary-democratic dic- tatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” only is behind the times, is therefore in practice on the side of the petty-bourgeoisie and against the proletarian class struggle; such a one should be placed in the archive of “Bolshevik” pre-revolutionary antiques (it may be called the archive of “old Bolsheviks’’).’ Lenin was able to correct the course of the Bolshe- viks and prepare for the October insurrection, though not without further severe struggles and dangerous waverings in the Party leadership. In modern revi- sionism of the SWP variety we are not confronted with a temporary lapse which can be corrected in a short struggle within the same movement. History has already consigned to the museum of ‘old Trotsky- ists’ this international tendency which long since went over in practice to the side of the petty-bourgeoisie and thence to direct service for the imperialists (Ceylon), by abandoning the prime task of our time, the construction of independent revolutionary parties to lead the working class to its own power. Yes, the permanent revoluiion is being confirmed in Cuba, but in what direction this ‘confirmation’ takes the working class depends above all on conscious inter- vention and the development of Marxist theory through the revolutionary party. It is suitable to end with two quotations from Trotsky’s The Permenant Revolution, with which we think Hansen was once acquainted: & . . . to lead the masses of the people to victory over the bloc of the imperialists, the feudalists and the national bourgeoisie—this can be done only under the revolutionary hegemony of the proletariat, which transforms itself after the seizure of power into the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ and further: ‘No matter what the first episodic stages of the revolution may be in the individual countries, the realisation of the revolutionary alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry is conceivable only under the political leadership of the proletarian vanguard, organised in the Communist Party.’

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[p030] A. THE DIVISION OF THE FIRST FIVE YEARS of the American Trotskyist movement was a very difficult period, especially for the kind of people who made up the leadership and leading cadre of the movement. Cannon was a trained mass worker who was also very adept at organisational building work. Many of Cannon’s~ followers and collaborators were like him in training. But the first period of the movement was not a period where much mass work could be done and it was not even a period where much of an organisation could be built. It was a pericd which required intensive study of theory and a propagandistic struggle for programme in and around the Communist Party. Cannon’s two major collaborators, Max Shacht- man and Martin Abern, were a little better equipped for this kind of work. Shachtman’s abilities lay in the literary field. He could do a presentable job of putting forth even complex theoretical and political questions in a journalistic fashion—a very useful thing in a propagandistic period. Abern was an administrator like Cannon, but lacking Cannon’s background in mass work. He was always a small-time administrator, par- ticularly adept at working in the small circle-type existence forced upon the early movement. While Shachtman and Abern, both quite young men at the time, fared quite well under these adverse circumstances, it was all very demoralising for Cannon. He was very much like a fish out of water, and this feeling comes through very clearly in his History of American Trotskyism’! What a tremendous relief it must have been for him when a new kind of activity began to open up for the movement in 1933! In 1929 and 1930, however, Cannon played less and less of a role in the movement. In fact he simply disappeared from the organisation for close to a year during this time. Shachtman and Abern began to fashion their own regime without Cannon. But Cannon soon revived in spirits and came back into the organisation actively. This led to a big factional battle between Cannon, supported by the Minneapolis comrades and others, against Shachtman and Abern, who were not inclined to hand the regime back to Cannon voluntarily. It was necessary for Trotsky to intervene in this early dispute—which lacked completely any poli- tical or theoretical basis—in order to achieve a new working relationship between Cannon, 1. Cannon, James P. The History of American Trotskyism (Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1944). illustration overleaf: Detail from a mural by Diego Rivera. Trotsky supported by Marx and Engels points the way for the adherents of the Fourth International. To the right of Trotsky is Dunne and between the lens and the banner is Shachtman. Seated, second from left is Cannon. LABOUR EMERGES Shachtman and Abern. Shachtman and Cannon in particular were able to arrive at a working relationship which was to dominate the central leadership of the party until 1939 and which contributed a good deal to the stability and growth of the party. Abern on the other hand soon retreated into his oppositional clique politics, forming unprincipled blocs with every major opposition group for the next eight years or so. Trotsky’s role in this early but important factional struggle is of some interest. He adamantly refused to support any organisational struggle against Cannon based simply upon com- plaints about his ‘regime’. Shachtman himself testifies to this lack of support.2 This is not to say that Trotsky was uncritical of Cannon in those days nor that his goal was to defend Cannon against every adversary. Rather he sought to bring about as much as possible a collective leadership fusing the various forces which made up the early American Trotskyist movement. In particular Trotsky was critical of Cannon’s tendency to utilise organisational methods in dealing with political problems. Trotsky felt Cannon tended to respond too quickly in a factional way to oppositional formations rather than in a patient political way, seeking to educate the cadres. In a letter to Farrell Dobbs in 1940 he refers back to this old difference with Cannon and others in the movement: ‘... our own sections inherited some Comintern venom in the sense that many comrades are inclined to the abuse of such measures as expulsion, splits or threat of expul- sions and splits. In the case of Molinier and in the case of some American comrades (Field, Weisbord and some others) I was for a more patient attitude.’ Trotsky was also well aware of Cannon’s weak- nesses in the field of theoretical development. Shachtman reports in the following manner on Trotsky’s assessment of Cannon in this regard: ‘As he indicated to some of the critics, it was necessary to understand that Cannon was a product of the American labour and revolutionary move- ments as they have developed in their own social and historical environment; that if he had some of the shortcomings of these movements he also 2. Shachtman, Max. ‘Twenty-Five Years of American Trostkyism’ The New International (Vol. XX, No. 1, January-February 1954), p. 22. 3. Trotsky, Leon. In Defence of Marxism (Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1942), p. 97.

[p031] STRUGGLE FOR MARXISM IN THE U.S. had their virtues; and that he would be superseded by a superior leadership not as a result of a factional fight in which opponents would win a numerical majority, but only when the class struggle in the United States would lift the proletariat to a higher level and lift out of itself leaders who in turn stood on a higher level. These views, carefully reflected in some of his writings on the factional struggles in the American movement, were rather objective but somewhat philosophical.’4 Shachtman is, of course, anything but an unbiased observer as far as Cannon is concerned. That Trotsky took a critical approach toward Cannon in this period, especially on his organisational Operations, is generally known throughout the SWP today and no one denies this. Furthermore, as we Shall see, this assessment of Cannon in the early period is completely consistent with the kind of approach Trotsky was to take towards Cannon in later years. Above all it was a correct assess- ment of Cannon and not at all the kind of approach Shachtman was to take towards Cannon at a later period. By 1932 a clear national and international division of labour had been worked out by the American Trotskyists. This division of labour was to have a deep impact on the whole future evolution of the movement and shows very clearly the approach of the American Trotskyists to theory and method. First and foremost was the division of labour between the American party and Trotsky. Trotsky supplied the basic theoretical and strategic outlook for the organisation. It was Trotsky who assessed the developments within the USSR and within the Communist International. It was Trotsky who analysed the German events and other important international developments in the period. It was Trotsky who initiated the turn away from the Communist International and towards the formation of a Fourth International in 1933. But, even more striking, it was Trotsky who initiated the major tactical turns within the United States—such as a merger with the American Workers Party and the entry into the Socialist Party. The 1928-1933 period was a period where poli- tical and theoretical training was most important. No matter how hard the comrades may have tried to break out of isolation they could not have succeeded. But they could and should have developed themselves theoretically so as to prepare for future openings. In a sense they did do this. That is, they went to school with Trotsky and learned from Trotsky many things that were 4 Shachtman, Max. op. cit., p. 22. 77 useful to them in the next period. In this sense this international division of labour was extremely useful to the American Trotskyists. They learned from Trotsky much as the early American Com- munists had learned from the Comintern and the Russians. But the relationship never went beyond a teacher-pupil form. While the American Trotsky- ists learned from Trotsky they did not participate in the international theoretical development of the Trotskyist movement as contributors in their own right. But without this kind of relationship there is a very severe limit upon how much one can learn. This is because the inability to con- tribute to the teaching process itself is a sign that one has not really absorbed the method of Marxism itself—one has not internalised this method. Within the American organisation there was another division of labour paralleling in miniature the international division of labour. Cannon him- self describes it this way: ‘Shachtman and Burnham were by no means mere ornaments in the Political Committee. They were the editors of the magazine and of the paper, and they did practically all of the literary work. There was a division of labour between them and me, whereby I took care of the organizational and trade union direction, administration and finances—and all the rest of the chores that intellectuals don't like to bother with as a rule—and they did the writing, most of it. And when they were on the right line they wrote very well, as you know.’5 Cannon contributed nothing to the development of theory in this whole long period of essentially theoretical and propagandistic work, and in fact he contributed very little to putting theory forward in a propagandistic way. Just as in the Com- munist Party he left theory to others. In the late 20s it was Bittleman who wrote the basic political programmatic statements of the oppo- sition bloc; in the early thirties it was Shachtman and those close to him who wrote them for the American Trotskyists. As far as writing was concerned Cannon viewed himself as an ‘agitator’. In the field of popularis- ing socialist ideas in a way that they are readily understandable to workers Cannon had no equal. His book Notebook of an Agitator®is a testimony to this ability and deserves to be studied as a guide in this kind of writing, always needed in a move- >. Cannon, James P. ‘Factional Struggle and Party Leadership’ Fourth International (November-December 1953), p. 116. ‘6. Cannon, James P. Notebook of an Agitator {Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1958).

[p032] 78 ment which really seeks to reach workers. But there is almost nothing in this book, which covers the whole span of Cannon’s career from the CP until recent times, of a deeper, even propagandistic nature. Also absent from the book are any writings at all for this 1928-1933 period. This was not a period conducive to agitational writing and activity and therefore Cannon had little or nothing to say. But Shachtman and other intellectuals in the party did not develop beyond Cannon theoretic- ally. While they utilised their literary gifts to popularise Trotsky’s ideas in the United States, they too, simply took their ideas from Trotsky. They were never able to go beyond this task and eventually abandoned Marxism. Furthermore, they lacked Cannon’s deep working-class orienta- tion and perspective, based on his many years of experience and struggle in the American working class. It was this strength of Cannon’s which lay behind his actual break from Stalinism and the very birth of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. It was because of this strength that the working-class cadres of the movement always supported him. The history of the American Trotskyist movement was to be a test of whether this conviction in the revolutionary potentialities of the American working class by FourTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 itself was enough. The early American Trotskyist movement. was thus a composite of Trotsky, the creator of its theoretical and political outlook; Cannon, the con- tinuator of American revolutionary traditions and the administrator; and Shachtman, the skilled propagandist of Trotsky’s ideas. It was not simply Cannon’s party—it was also Trotsky’s party and to some extent Shachtman’s party. Most impor- tant of all there was no real fusion of these separate forces. Trotsky did his best to bring about such a fusion. He collaborated extensively with all the leaders of the party and learned much from them about American conditions. He inter- vened to bring about a collaboration between the two sections of the organisation represented by Cannon and Shachtman. But Cannon was content to take his basic political line as something given to him from abroad, and devoted his energies to building an organisation around that political line. Shachtman translated Trotsky from the Russian and propagated his ideas. Within the party Cannon left literary tasks to Shachtman, and Shachtman was content with this, involving him- self little in the work of the party in the class and learning little from this work. Collaboration is one thing and fusion is another. The early American party was essentially a series of blocs internally and externally. B. THE GREAT OPPORTUNIT Y—1933-1938 While the first five years of the Trotskyist movement were extremely difficult ones, with severe limits set by the objective situation, the next seven years were to be marked by continual and growing opportunities for the growth and development of the movement. Thus the objective conditions for the solution of the very deep problems of the movement were certainly present. It is one thing to struggle for Marxist clarity under conditions of deep isolation from the masses and quite another to struggle for Marxist clarity under conditions of serious involvement in the mass movement. The openings for the organisation began with the debacle of the Comintern’s policies in Germany in 1933 and with the rise of Hitler to power. Soon after this negative vindication of Trotsky’s line came a number of openings to our comrades in the mass movement. Combined with the growing involvement of the party in the mass movement were the serious leftward-moving trends in centrist circles in the United States. Thus the party had the opportunity to simultaneously deepen its work in the class and win over already radicalised forces. The winning over of these radical forces would both strengthen its trade union work and add new intellectual forces to the party. The most important development of all in the class struggle was the leadership given by Trotsky- ists to the great Minneapolis teamsters’ strike in 1934. This important class action played an important role in preparing the American working class for its next great step—the organisation of the industrial working class in the United States in the CIO. Just as importantly, it showed in the concrete the kind of leadership revolutionaries could give to the class struggle and raised the prestige of the Trotskyist movement in the eyes of the American workers and radicals. The ability of the American organisation to carry out this great action can be attributed to its heritage of American radicalism and what it learned from Trotsky in the preceding five years. It was a

[p033] STRUGGLE FOR MARXISM IN THE U.S. tribute to all that was healthy in American Trotskyism and in the Cannon section of the party in particular. The fusion with the Muste-ites (the American Workers Party) was of no less importance in the development of the organisation. The Muste-ites had led that other great class action in the period just prior to the birth of the ClO—the Toledo Autolite strike. This fusion brought additional working-class cadres into the organisation. It also brought intellectuals into the party, not the least talented being James Burnham. Thus in the case of the Muste-ite fusion a political move towards another radical organisation strengthened rather than detracted from the work of the party in the mass movement. In this case ‘regroupment’ was not a substitute for mass work but rather a way to deepen it. At the same time the work of the party among the youth was also developing. The youth organi- sation, called the Spartacist Youth League, had begun on a modest scale in 1932 and by 1934 was showing real signs of growth. In the beginning its orientation was almost totally towards the members of the Young Communist League. By 1934 it was devoting more attention to student. work and to centrist and social-democratic youth. Flushed with the success of the merger with the Muste-ites, and urged on by Trotsky, the American Trotskyists prepared their entry into the Socialist Party. However, in certain important respects the SP entry was carried out in a more confused way than the Muste-ite merger. In the first place little time had elapsed in order to assimilate the forces which had just entered the Organisation through the Muste-ite fusion. Thus a section of these forces joined with Oehler mn opposing the entry and finally broke with the movement over this question. Others who stayed with the organisation undoubtedly had a rather vague concept of exactly what revolutionary politics were. There is no doubt that this struggle against the Oehlerites assisted the development of the cadres, however, both those coming from the Trotskyist and those from the Muste-ite organisa- tion. Essentially the Oehlerite struggle was a rebellion of the propaganda circle ‘revolutionaries’ against the whole new dynamic politics of the Trotskyist movement. While it reflected itself in a sectarian opposition to entry it was in reality a fight against the turn of the Trotskyists towards real political intervention and growth in the class itself. But it was not a clean sweep—many ‘propagandists’ remained in the party. Most 79 notable were the Abernites, who first supported Oehler and then backed away as the split was carried through. But there were many others and there can be no doubt of the rather diffuse and immature nature of the Trotskyist forces at the time of the SP entry. In the second place, while the Muste-ite unity took place almost simultaneously with important work in the class and greatly strengthened that work, the SP entry became such a dominant aspect of the organisation’s work that the most important development in the American working class was virtually ignored by the American party. This is how Cannon himself later assessed it: ‘Except in a few localities, we let the great movement of the CIO pass over our heads.’”?7_ This was no minor error, for the CIO was the most fundamental step taken by the American working class in its modern history. It is true that the Trotskyist movement was later to develop considerable influence inside CIO unions. True, many workers were recruited out of the SP, which facilitated this. But there is still no getting around the fact that failure to be in on the ground floor of the creation of the CIO seriously hindered our work for many, many years to come and greatly facilitated the Stalinists’ gaining their stranglehold over such a large part of the CIO. The CIO, this not unimportant aspect of the American question, was simply not fully understood by the American Trotskyists at the time. In the third place, the entry was carried on in a manner which greatly facilitated adaptation to centrist currents within the SP. So much emphasis was put on reaching centrists within the SP that during the initial period of entry no factional organisation of Trotskyists was main- tained at all. After a while many comrades began to settle down to a more or less permanent existence as an oppositional current within the SP. Trotsky documents this in his important article ‘From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene’ in In Defence of Marxism. On May 25, 1937, he wrote: ‘I must cite two recent documents: (a) the private letter of “Max” about the convention, and (b) Shachtman’s article, “Towards a Revolu- tionary Socialist Party”. The title of this article alone characterises a false perspective. It seems to me established by the developments, including the last convention, that the party is evolving, not into a “revolutionary” party, but into a kind of ILP, that is, a miserable centrist political abortion ‘7. Cannon, James P. The Struggle For a Proletarian ‘Party (Pioneer Publishers, New York, 1943), p. 59.

[p034] 80 without any perspective.’® While this attack is directed specifically against Shachtman, there is no evidence that Cannon objected to Shachtman’s political position at the time. Cannon himself admits this in his History when he states: ‘There is no doubt at all that the leaders of our movement adapted themselves a little too much to the centrist officialdom of the Socialist Party.’? In fact there is every indicaticn that it was Trotsky’s initiative which hardened up the faction inside the SP to the point where it was able to resist disintegration and to split from the SP in one piece. Cannon reports that Trotsky rejected their suggestions that they bow before the right wing to gain time so as not to jeopardise the Dewey Commission work. He goes on to state: ‘Trotsky encouraged us and even incited us to go forward to meet their challenge and not permit them to push us any further for fear it might lead to disintegration of our own ranks, demoralisation of the people whom we had led that far along the road.’!0 Without this kind of intervention by Trotsky it is doubtful just how much of the American Trotskyist forces would have survived this entry tactic. The need for such intervention was a sign that the development of the American Trotskyist movement was far, far from complete in this period, that a tremen- dous educational task lay ahead of it. The American Trotskyist movement, when it emerged from the SP as the Socialist Workers Party, was in appearance a very impressive organisation. It had gained a sizeable trade union cadre and had important fractions in major unions. It had a number of qualified intellectuals and a very large intellectual periphery, particularly around the publication Partisan Review. It had a sizeable youth organisation, in fact the majority of the former Socialist Party youth. It had all the human elements needed for the creation of a real Marxist movement in the United States for the first time in history. Yet in less than two years from its emergence from the Socialist Party it was to enter into a deep crisis, a crisis which almost destroyed the organisation. While there is no doubt that the objective situation contributed to this crisis it is completely wrong to blame the objective situation for the depth of the crisis. The Socialist Workers Party of 1938 could not have been all it seemed. In actual fact there had been little qualitative development in the period since 1933. Each 8. Trotsky, Leon. op. cit., p. 107. 9. Cannon, James P. History, p. 238. 10. Ibid., p. 249. FourTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 component of the party had expanded quantita- tively, but no component had developed qualita- tively, and they still bore the same relationship to each other and to Trotsky. Cannon was joined by hundreds of working-class cadres, and his faith in the potential of the American workers was reinforced by constant day-to-day contact with the class. Shachtman was_ joined by intellectuals of the calibre of Burnham, people like Dwight McDonald, and many, many lesser- known younger intellectuals. The youth organisa- tion had expanded tremendously and was now an important factor in the party, though it remained largely a student youth. However, a qualitative fusion was far from occurring. The workers lacked any real theoretical development and, further, their native American hostility to theory was strengthened by the anti- intellectual prejudices which had long been deeply ingrained in the Cannon section of the party. They were all fine, class-conscious trade union militants, but they were far from being real Bolsheviks. The intellectuals in the party kept their distance from the workers and by and large travelled in their own circles. They felt them- selves a part of the general intellectual stratum— the most radical part thereof—rather than an integral part of a working-class party. The youth were largely young intellectuals recruited from the campuses or out of the SP, which in turn had recruited them from the campuses. These young people, no doubt very sincere in their revolution- ary convictions, had a political life separate from the workers in the party and made no real attempt to integrate themselves in a working-class party. As the party continued to be made up a series of blocs internally, so externally the basic bloc with Trotsky was maintained by all the con- stituents. The intellectuals promulgated his ideas in a literary fashion and Cannon built an organi- sation around them. But independent theoretical development was as absent in this period as it had been in the previous period. No one can point to a single theoretical contribution made by any member of the SWP in this period. There was also one important difference. Trotsky was now in Mexico. He was able to meet with a good cross-section of the party’s leading cadre and to devote a good deal of thought to the development of the party. From 1937 on Trotsky was to watch the party much, much more closely and to develop a critical attitude towards all sections of it. This struggle on Trotsky’s part to educate the SWP, to prepare it for serious qualitative development, was to continue right up to the time of his death.

[p035] STRUGGLE FOR MARXISM IN THE U.S. 81 C. THE GREAT CRISIS—1938-1940 The 1940 struggle with the Shachtman-Burnham- Abern minority was the most important internal struggle in which Trotsky participated in his battle to create the Fourth International. At stake was the very survival of the SWP. Considering the SWP’s prominent place in the Fourth International at that time, its survival was closely linked to the survival of the Fourth International itself. The 1940 struggle had been prepared by the previous twelve-year history of the American Trotskyist movement. The old internal blocs broke down and the groups turned on each other. Trotsky had to bloc with the healthiest force in the party and struggle against a bloc which could, and almost did, destroy the movement itself. The failures of the past 12 years created conditions in which such a crisis could occur. The Strengths of the movement over the past 12 years allowed for the beginnings of a progressive solution to that. crisis. It is important that we evaluate both the strengths and the failures. In late 1939 the Shachtman-Cannon bloc broke down. Shachtman was impressionistically caught up in a petty-bourgeois reaction to the Soviet ham and Abern. This faction rallied the bulk of the petty-bourgeois elements in the party and was in fact a reaction to the panic of the petty- bourgeoisie as a whole as the war approached. This was no small force in the party. As the convention approached, Cannon was not at all sure if he could carry the majority. As it was he carried only 60 per cent of the organisation, and if one counts the non-party youth the organisaticn was split right down the middle. The Shachtman- Burnham-A bern faction was the result of the failure of the party as a whole to absorb its petty-bourgeois elements organically into the party. In opposition to Shachtman-Burnham-Abern, Cannon mobilised the overwhelming bulk of the party’s working-class cadres. But these cadres by themselves were incapable of waging an effec- tive battle against the petty-bourgeois opposition. It was necessary for that other critical factor of the bloc that formed the SWP to intervene— Trotsky. This time Trotsky intervened as he had never intervened in an internal dispute before. The entire polemic on the majority side was waged by Trotsky himself. It was Trotsky who worked out the analysis of the Finnish and Polish events. It was Trotsky who analysed the very nature of the opposition and showed its class roots. And above all it was Trotsky who turned the discussion around the most fundamental of all axes—the question of method. Cannon delivered a speech on the Russian question but this was no more than a restatemert of Trotsky’s position. Cannon wrote a lengthy piece on the organisation question but this did not add anything new that could not be found in Trotsky’s own comments on that question during the polemics.!1 No, the political, theoretical and methodological struggle was conducted by Trotsky and by Trotsky alone. Cannon and his supporters simply advocated the positions initiated by Trotsky. Many have pictured the struggle in 1940 as essentially a struggle over the Russian question. Certainly the Shachtmanites always liked to lock at it that way. Many in the Trotskyist movement also see it in that light. However, even a cursory reading of In Defence of Marxism puts a different light on it. The struggle went far, far deeper than the Russian question. It was essentially a struggle in defence of the Marxist method itself. The defence of the Marxist method fell on the shoulders of Trotsky and Trotsky alone. No one else in the party saw this as the critical question in the beginning and no one else was in the least prepared to defend Marxist method. Viewed within this framework the real signifi- cance of the 1940 struggle can be seen. Essenti- ally the 1940 struggle was produced by the failure of the SWP as a whole to develop Marxist theory through an understanding of the Marxist method itself. This failure in method reflected itself in different ways through the different constituents which made up the party. One section of the party developed this failure of method into a factional programme pitted against the programme of the Fourth International. That was the petty- bourgeois section. Another section, the working- class section of the party, was instinctively re- pelled by the political course of the petty-bourgeois faction but was incapable itself of countering this course theoretically or really understanding it methodologically. This task fell to Trotsky. Trotsky made clear this distinction between the weaknesses and errors of the majority and the systematic revisionism of the minority. He wrote 11. Cannon, James P. Struggle for a Proletarian Party. 12. Trotsky, Leon. op. cit., p. 159.

[p036] 82 in a letter to Hansen: ‘In my article I admitted that on different questions the Majority comrades could have shared the errors of Shachtman but they never made a system of them, they never transformed them into a factional platform. And that is the whole question.’!2 Trotsky’s deep shock at the extent of the basic educational work he had to carry out on the ABC of Marxism comes through in much of his writings of this period. He wrote in ‘From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene’, explaining his raising of the question of method: ‘The character of the differences which have risen to the surface has only confirmed my former fears both in regard to the social composition of the party and in regard to the theoretical education of the cadres. There was nothing that required a change of mind or “artificial” introduction. This is how matters stand in actuality. Let me also add that I feel somewhat abashed over the fact that it is almost necessary to justify coming out in defence of Marxism within one of the sections of the Fourth International.’!3 In a letter to Cannon, the leader of the majority, he goes even further: ‘Yesterday I sent the Russian text of my new article written in the form of a letter to Burnham. Not all comrades possibly are content with the fact that I give such a prominent place in the discussion to the matter of dialectics. But I am sure it is now the only way to begin the theoretical education of the party, especially of the youth, and to inject a reversion (sic) to empiricism and eclectics.’!4 13. Ibid., p. 114. 14. Ibid., p. 95. ‘briefly here. FourTH INTERNATIONAL, AUGUST 1965 Note that Trotsky anticipates resistance to a dis- cussion on dialectics from the majority comrades (this is a private letter to the majority leader) and also note that he speaks of beginning the theore- tical education of the party—after 12 years of existence as a movement Trotsky must speak of beginning its theoretical education. In order to understand exactly how the SWP reached such a point as this we must go back and trace the relationship of the various con- stituents of the SWP with Trotsky during that critical period of Trotsky’s close collaboration with the SWP, starting with his coming to Mexico in 1937. We will try to learn both how Trotsky assessed these constituents and what he proposed should have been done to prevent the kind of situation which evolved in 1940. Trotsky’s analysis of his relationship with the petty- bourgeois section of the party is well documented in his article “From a Scratch to the Danger of Gangrene’, and we will therefore only sketch this Trotsky’s relationship with the Cannon group in the party is not as well known or as clearly put forward, and to this aspect we therefore devote more space. It will become clear that while one section of the party had developed ‘gangrene’ the rest of the party was far from unscratched. The sickness which necessitated the 1940 amputation was a sickness of the party’s body as a whole. However, it had developed by 1940 to a point in one part of the party where surgery was necessary so that one could continue to struggle to cure the body as a whole. (1) TROTSKY AND THE INTELLECTUALS The great crisis of 1940 was prepared by the previous history of the party—was the natural outgrowth of its weaknesses. Trotsky’s assessment of the petty-bourgeois elements in the party comes out clearly in In Defence of Marxism. Trotsky details his patient efforts over a span of three years to properly orient the intellectual elements in the party. This process began appropriately enough with his arrival in Mexico in 1937, would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with Comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently He reports: ‘It propagating dialectical materialism.’15 Seventeen years earlier Lenin had raised the same question with another revolutionary intellectual, Louis C. Fraina, with unfortunately similar results. Following this discussion there is no sign that either Warde, who ended up supporting Cannon, or Shachtman, did anything to educate the party on questions of method. In the 1937 and 1938 period Trotsky wrote to Shachtman repeatedly concerning the growing attention given by the SWP to petty-bourgeois intellectuals who were obviously not serious revolutionists. He urged the SWP to develop 15. Ibid., p. 114.