Against the Tide: a discussion with an English Fourth Internationalist (April 1939)

[p048] against the current. Our situation now is in- comparably more difficult than that of any other organization in any other time, because we have the terrible betrayal of the Communist International which arose from the betrayal of the Second International. The degeneration of the Third International developed so quickly and so unexpectedly that the same generation which heard its formation now hears us, and they say: ‘But we have already heard this once!’ Then there is the defeat of the Left Opposition in Russia. The Fourth International is connected genetically to the Left Opposition; the masses call us Trotskyists. ‘Trotsky wishes to conquer the power, but why did he lose power?’ It is an elementary question. We must begin to explain this by the dialectic of history, by the conflict of classes, that even a revolutionary produces a reaction. Max Eastman wrote that Trotsky places too much value on doctrine and if he had more common sense he would not have lost power. Nothing in the world is so convincing as success and nothing so repell- ing as defeat for the large masses. You have also the degenera- tion of the Third International on the one side and the terrible defeat of the Left Opposition with the extermination of the whole group. These facts are a thousand times more con- vincing for the working class than our poor paper with even the tremendous circulation of 5,000 like the ‘Socialist Appeal’. prin the stream We are in a small boat in a tremendous current. There are five or ten boats and one goes down and we say it was due to bad helmsmanship. But that was not the reason—it was because the current was too strong. It is the most general explanation and we should never forget this explanation in order not to become pessi- 46 Above : Trotsky. mistic—we, the vanguard of the vanguard. There are courageous ele- ments who do not like to swim with the current—it is their character. Then there are intelligent elements of bad character who were never dis- ciplined, who always looked for a more radical or more inde- pendent tendency and found our tendency, but all of them are more or less outsiders from the general current of the workers’ movement. Their value inevitably has its negative side. He who swims against the current is not connected with the masses. Also, the social composition of every revolutionary movement in the beginning is not of workers. It is the intellectuals, semi- intellectuals or workers con- nected with the intellectuals who are dissatisfied with the existing organizations. You find in every country a lot of foreigners who are not so easily involved in the labour movement of the country. A Czech in America or in Mexico would more easily become a member of the Fourth Inter- national than in Czecho- slovakia. The same for a Frenchman in the US. The national atmosphere has a tremendous power over in- dividuals. The Jews in many countries represent the semi-foreigners, not totally assimilated, and they adhere to any new critical, revolutionary or semi-revolu- tionary tendency in politics, in art, literature and so on. A new. radical tendency directed against the general current of history in this period crystallizes around the ele- ments more or less separated from the national life of any country and for them it is more difficult to penetrate into the masses. We are all very critical toward the social com- position of our organization and we must change, but we must understand that this Fourth International Winter 1972/73

[p049] social composition did not fall from heaven, but was deter- mined by the objective situ- ation and by our historic mission in this period. It does not signify that we must be satisfied with the situ- ation. Insofar as it concerns France it is a long tradition of the French movement con- nected with the social com- position of the country. Especially in the past the petty- bourgeois mentality—individu- alism on the one side, and on the other an elan, a tremendous capacity for improvising. If you compare in the classic time of the Second Inter- national you will find that the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democratic Party had the same number of representatives in parlia- ment. But if you compare the organizations, you will find they are incomparable. The French could only collect 25,000 francs with the greatest difficulty but in Germany to send half a million was no- thing. The Germans had in the trade unions some millions of workers and the French had some millions who did not pay their dues. Engels once wrote a letter in which he characterized the French organization and finished with ‘And as always, the dues do not arrive’. Our organization suffers from the same illness, the traditional French — sickness. This incapacity to organization and at the same time lack of conditions for improvization. Even so far as we now had a tide in France, it was con- nected with the Popular Front. In this situation the defeat of the People’s Front was the proof of the correctness of our conceptions just as was the extermination of the Chinese workers, But the defeat was a defeat and it is directed against revolutionary tendencies until a new tide on a higher level will appear in the new time. We must wait and prepare— a new element, a new factor, in this constellation. We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They Arsenal of Marxism appreciate very highly the correctness of their concep- tions and they can analyse, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it. There is a tre- mendous necessity to look at what the masses are doing. We have such people in France. I know much less about the British situation, but I believe that we have such people there also. Why have we lost people? After terrible international defeats we had in France a tide on a very primitive and a very low political level under the leadership of the People’s Front. The People’s Front—I think this whole period—is a kind of caricature of our February Revolution. It is shameful that in a country like France, which 150 years ago passed through the greatest bourgeois revolution in the world, that the workers’ move- ment should pass through a caricature of the Russian Revolution. Johnson: You would not throw the whole responsibility on the Communist Party? Trotsky: It is a tremendous factor in producing the men- tality of the masses. The active factor was the degeneration of the Com- munist Party. From Isolation to reinte- gration with the masses In 1914 the Bolsheviks were absolutely dominating the workers’ movement. It was on the threshold of the war. The most exact statistics show that the Bolsheviks represented not less than three-fourths of the proletarian vanguard. But be- ginning with the February Revolution, the most back- ward people, peasants, soldiers, even the former Bolshevik workers, were attracted to- ward this Popular Front cur- rent and the Bolshevik Party became isolated and very weak. The general current was on a very low level, but powerful, and moved toward the October Revolution. It is a question of tempo. In France, after all the defeats, the People’s Front attracted elements that sym- pathized with us theoretically, but were involved with the movement of the masses and we became for some time more isolated than before. You can Chiang Kai-shek who turned on the Communist Party and mur- dered its members in 1927. combine all these elements. I can even affirm that many (but not all) of our leading com- rades, especially in old sections, by a new turn of situation would be rejected by the revolutionary mass movement and new leaders, fresh leader- ship will arise in the revolu- tionary current. In France the regeneration began with the entry into the Socialist Party. The policy of the Socialist Party was not clear, but it won many new members. These new members were accustomed to a large milieu. After the split they became a little discouraged. They were not so steeled. Then they lost their not-so-steeled interest and were regained by the current of the People’s Front. It is regrettable, but it is explainable. In Spain the same reasons played the same role with the supplementary factory of the deplorable conduct of the Nin group. He was in Spain as representative of the Russian Left Opposition and during the first year we did not try to mobilize, to organize our in- dependent elements. We hoped that we would win Nin for the correct conception and so on. Publicly the Left Opposition gave him its support. In private correspondence we tried to win him and push him forward,” but without success. We lost time. Was it correct? It is difficult to say. If in Spain we had an experienced comrade our situation would be incom- parably more favourable, but we did not have one. We put all our hopes on Nin and his 47

[p050] policy consisted of personal manoeuvres in order to avoid responsibility. He played with the revolution. He was sin- cere, but his whole mentality was that of a Menshevik. It was a tremendous handicap, and to fight against this handi- cap only with correct formulas falsified by our own represen- tatives in the first period, the Nins, made it very difficult. Do not forget that we lost the first revolution in 1905. Before our first revolution we had the tradition of high courage, self-sacrifice, _etc. Then we were pushed back to a position of a miserable minority of 30 to 40 men. Then came the war. Johnson: How many were there in the Bolshevik Party? Trotsky: In 1910 in the whole country there were a few dozen people. Some were in Siberia. But they were not or- ganized. The people whom Lenin could reach by corres- pondence or by an agent num- bered about 30 or 40 at most. However, the tradition and the ideas among the more advanced workers was a tre- mendous capital which was used later during the revolu- tion, but practically, at this time we were absolutely isolated. Yes, history has its own laws which are very powerful —more powerful than our theoretical conceptions of his- tory. Now you have in Europe a catastrophe—the decline of Europe, the extermination of countries. It has a tremendous influence on the workers when they observe these movements of the diplomacy, of the armies and so on, and on the other side a small group with a small paper which makes explanations. But it is a. ques- tion of his being mobilized tomorrow and of his children being killed, There is a terrible disproportion between the task and the means. If the war begins now, and it seems that it will begin, then in the first month we will lose two-thirds of what we now have in France. They will be dispersed. They are young and will be mobilized. Subjectively many will remain true to our movement. Those who will not be arrested and who will re- main—there may be three or five—I do not know how many, but they will be abso- lutely isolated. Only after some months will the criticism and the disgust begin to show on a large scale and everywhere our isolated comrades, in a hospital, in a trench, a woman in a village, will find a changed atmosphere and will say a courageous word. And the same comrade who was unknown in some section of Paris will become a leader of a regiment, of a division, and will feel himself to be a powerful revolutionary leader. This change is in the character of our period. I do not wish to say that we must reconcile ourselves with the impotence of our French organization. I believe that with the help of the American comrades we can win the PSOP and make a great leap forward. The situation is ripen- ing and it says to us, ‘You must utilize this opportunity.’ And if our comrades turn their backs the situation will change. It is absolutely necessary that your American comrades go to Europe again and that they do not simply give advice, but together with the International Secretariat decide that our section should enter the PSOP. It has some thousands, From the point of view of a revolution it is not a big difference, but from the point of view of working it is a tremendous difference. With fresh elements we can make a tremendous leap forward. Now in the United States we have a new character of work and I believe we can be very optimistic without illu- sions and exaggerations. In the United States we have a larger credit of time. The situation is not so immediate, so acute. That is important. Then I agree with Comrade Stanley who writes that we can now have very important successes in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. We have a very important move- ment in Indo-China. I agree absolutely with Comrade John- son that we can have a very important Negro movement, because these people have not passed through the history of the last two decades so intim- ately. As a mass they did not know about the Russian Revo- lution and the Third Inter- national. They can begin the history as from the beginning. It is absolutely necessary tor us to have fresh blood. That is why we have more success among the youth in so far as we are capable of approaching them. In so far as we have been capable of approaching them, we have had good re- sults. They are very attentive to a clear and honest revolu- tionary programme. April 1939 48 Fourth international Winter 1972/73

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