Young People Study Politics

[p039] YOUNG PEOPLE STUDY POLITICS! we have overthrown but which we are still far, far from having got rid of. It has bequeathed to us monstrous deposits of ignorance, inertness, crude- ness, vulgarity, and all this still surrounds us. And it is for you, young comrades, to sweep away these deposits. That is why it is very important that the work of mastering the hammer, the pincers and all the other tools and instruments of production must go hand in hand with the mastering of politics. Today you are celebrating the fifth anniversary of your hostel. This anniversary falls very closely upon the May Day festival of the international proletariat. Allow me to say a few words about this. This festival, comrades, was inaugurated 35 years ago, as a festival in honour of the eight-hour working day and the international brotherhood of the working people and an international demonstra- tion of the workers against militarism. And just now, as I was on my way here, I was looking, for lack of any papers to-day, through some recently received telegrams from our news agency. A great part of these telegrams, and a very significant part, so as not to exaggerate, deal with the preparations going on in Europe and in other parts of the world for the May Day festival. This preparation consists of the fact that in a number of bourgeois states, including the most democratic, all street processions, demonstrations and parades by the workers on May Day have been forbidden. There is an instructive example for you of present-day European politics. Our state, the state which was built under the leadership of the teacher of all of us, Vladimir Ilyich, this workers’ and peasants’ state does not call itself democratic in the sense in which France, Germany and a number of other states are called democratic. We are reproached because we have a regime of dictator- ship, an open one, i.e., the rule of the working people who have put down with mailed fist all resistance to the rule of labour. They have democracy over there, and universal freedom. Who rules Britain to-day? Menshevik Social-Democrats. Who plays a very big role in the political life of Germany? Menshevik Social-Democrats. In Saxony, one of the German states, there is a Social-Demo- crat government. The government of Berlin is in the hands of the Social-Democrats. This very day the Berlin authorities have forbidden the celebra- tion of May Day in the streets of that city. The Saxon Menshevik government has forbidden May Day to be celebrated in the streets throughout Saxony. In Britain it is exactly the same.* There is no need to speak of Poland, Hungary and Rumania, nor of France—in that democratic 33 republic proletarian street demonstrations have been forbidden for several decades. Here is a stark fact. Who inaugurated the celebration of May Day 35 years ago? The Social-Democrats. Who is at the head of the German Republic? The Social Democrat Ebert. What is the point? The point is that the new revolutionary generation of the working class in Europe is growing more and more thoroughly filled with hatred for the rule of the bourgeoisie, and that over there in Europe demo- cratic Menshevism is the last instrument the bour- geoisie has for keeping the working massés down. And we see that those very governments which reproached us Communists for openly saying that only the transfer of power into the hands of the working people could abolish the rule of capital, those very same governments which belong to the parties which inaugurated the May Day celebra- tions, are forbidding the workers to go into the streets with the slogans of international brother- hood and the eight-hour working day. And the same telegrams report that the German Young Com- munists, the young people of Germany and those of France too are nevertheless doing all they can to be able to go out into the streets of their cities with slogans of protest and struggle. What are these slogans? The slogan laid down for May Day 35 years ago—the eight-hour working day— was achieved almost everywhere in Europe after. the war, but in recent years the working day has been lengthened. If there were a country which had the right, if there were a working class which had the right to demand of itself and of its sons a working day longer than eight hours then it would be our country, exhausted and devastated, working not for the bourgeoisie but for itself—and yet in our country the eight-hour working day remains a pre-condition, based on the laws of the Republic, for the moral and sviritual advance and develop- ment of the working masses. And on May Day we hurl this fact in the face of Europe’s capitalist, lying, hypocritical through-and- through, bourgeois democracy. What sort of demo- cracy is it for the working people if they are merely promised the eight-hour working day? And the fraternity of the peoples, respect for the work- ing veople of other nationalities, who speak other languages, fraternal feelings which we must absorb from our earliest years, for national chauvinism and national hatred are the poison with which the * The TASS telegrams presumably misled Trotsky on this point. There was no ban on workers’ May Day demonstrations in Britain in 1924 and these duly took place. (Trans.) ,

[p040] 34 bourgeoisie pollutes the minds of the working people? I demand to know where this slogan of the May Day celebration has been put into effect more fully than in our country? I have been in Caucasia, that backward region. There are three main republics there and dozens of backward nationalities. That region was bled white by wars. But now the young generation there are learning to work and to create culture on the basis of co- operation between all the different nationalities. Have not we, the workers’ republic, the right to contrast, with justified pride, this backward Caucasia which has been restored and given new life by the Soviet power, to any of the cultured countries of Europe, where on every frontier there is hatred, enmity and danger of new armed conflicts? And the third slogan by which the Social- Democrats swore 35 years ago, the slogan of struggle against militarism? There is now in power in Britain the Menshevik Labour Government of MacDonald. What is it spending on arms? It is spending 1,150 million gold roubles a year. That is four or five times as much as we spend. Britain has 40 million people, we have 130 million. MacDonald may say that we are the poorer country and so, of course, we spend less. But, comrades, if we are the poorer, that means that we are threatened by greater danger, for throughout history it has always happened that rich peoples, led by their rich ruling classes, have conquered and sub- jected poorer and more backward ones. It is not China that will fall upon Britain and the United States, but the wealthy United States and Britain that may crush China. If we did not have Soviet power—the power of the workers and peasants, the Communist Party boldly marching onward to battle—our country, weakened and exhausted by the imperialist war, would long ago have been torn to pieces by the barbarians of world imperialism. And when those very same Mensheviks reproach us for giving military training to our young people, for building the Red Army, when they tell us: ‘You too are militarists’, then it is sufficient for us to contrast the states which surround us with the first republic of labour in the world, surrounded for the last seven years by irreconcilable and ruthless foes. If they are recognizing us now, and if we are carrying on negotiations in London today,* it must not be supposed that the world bourgeoisie has become better-disposed towards the republic of workers and peasants. A change of tactics does not do away with the hatred felt by the bourgeoisie of all countries for the republic where the rising FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY 1966 generation of working people is growing up in a new atmosphere, with new ideals—-for we are overthrowing the old ideals in so far as we are teaching the young generation to have confidence in the power of the world working class. The. world bourgeoisie will never reconcile itself to this. And is it surprising if we feel, and must feel, that we are the camp of emancipated labour? Study the technique of production, and remember that at any moment the workers’ and peasants’ government, threatened from outside, may call you to the colours of the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army. Comrades, you know what a frightful misfortune another war would be for our Soviet Republic, which has still not healed its wounds. And when in today’s news-telegrams J read about how we are supposed to be preparing to attack Rumania and Poland, I can only, like any of you, shrug my shoulders in contempt. The world revolution has been delayed. We are waiting patiently and con- fidently for the fate of Rumania and Poland to be settled along with the fate of the world revolu- tion. We are not inclined to launch into bloody enterprises for the purpose of deciding piecemeal the question of the liberation of all Europe, includ- ing Poland and Rumania. It will be decided sooner or later. Our task in this period is to strengthen our economy and to raise the level of our culture, holding on until emancipated Europe’s workers come to our aid. Certainly our situation would be ten times, a hundred times easier if in Britain there was a revolutionary workers’ government. It would grant us, on the basis of a comradely business-like agree- ment, a very substantial credit. We should be able immediately to increase our production, flood the market with all kinds of goods for the peasants’ use, and in five years raise the level of our agri- culture. What would that mean for Britain? It would mean abundant and cheap grain, timber, hides, flax and all kinds of raw material. The British people, the working people—that is to say nine-tenths of the total population of Britain —as also the people of the Soviet Union, would Denefit to an extraordinary degree from such business-like co-operation, and we, comrades, would be able in a few years to rise to the summit of economic well-being, to a height from which we are still very, very distant. Alas, I do not believe *Italy’s recognition of the USSR, in November 1923, began a series of recognitions by the Great Powers. At the time Trotsky was speaking, an Anglo-Soviet con- ference was in progress in London. (Trans.)

[p041] YOUNG PEOPLE STUDY POLITICS! that the present government of Britain, a Menshevik government, is capable of taking such a bold, deci- sive step. No, we shall have to learn, for several years yet before the coming to real victory of the proletariat, to stand, in the main, on our own feet. This means that we shall advance, but slowly. We shall be frank with ourselves about this. And when the bourgeois newspapers ask us, and me in particular: ‘Suppose our ruling classes don’t grant you a loan— what will that mean? The collapse of Russia? The collapse of the Soviet power?’—we shall answer them: ‘How can a gigantic country of 130 million people, who have been awakened for the first time by the revolution, where the young are learning to think critically—how can such a country collapse? A country with inexhaustible natural resources like ours cannot collapse and will not collapse.’ The bourgeois press of London, we are told by the latest news-telegrams, quotes our speeches, in particular my own, as evidence that by our sharp criticism we wish to break off negotiations. That is a slander. An agreement with the British people will be a good thing for us and for the British 35 people. But if the British bourgeoisie think that we shall say: ‘Help, we are collapsing!’—if the British bourgeoisie think that we shall agree to any conditions they care to impose, then the British bourgeoisie are wrong. We have already raised ourselves the two or three first steps and have already shown ourselves and others that we are able to work, to advance the economy and culture of our country. And, if I could, I would say to the City, that centre of London, to its banks and bankers, to the MacDonald Government, to all the ruling circles of Britain: here, take a look at these, our young generation, the flower of the working class. They are learning to work and to think. Our young generation has passed through the furnace of October, it has grown up in the great school of Lenin. We and our country, so rich in natural wealth, will not perish. With your aid we shall go forward faster, and that will be a great gain for you. Without you we shall go forward slower, but go forward we will, and the reign of labour will come to triumph in our country. THE AGE OF PERMANENT REVOLUTION rs =A TROTSKY ANTHOLOGY Co. Inc. writings. studying, Edited with an introduction by Isaac Deutscher (with the assistance of George Novak). Distributed in Britain by New Park Publications Published by Del: Pubitshing Ltd. Price 9s. 6d. A concise and invaluable collection of Trotsky’s The theoretical genius of one of the world’s great Marxists and co-leader of the first successful socialist revolution is brilliantly revealed in this book. library of all communists who are serious about It is an indispensable addition to the understanding and the grasping method and programme of contemporary Marxism. Orders to: NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD 186A CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, LONDON, S.W.4