C IALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

'Tories workers on their knees beg for work' John is a driver in London and a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union. He said:

days it was a struggle for a living. There were 12 of us and we were very poor: the big cities if you had a big family, you had such small accommodation that you either went in the army or into service. I went into service.

I started off as a kitchen boy and worked my way up to butler working for rich people and even Royalty. It was just slavery when I first started. I used to get 7s 6d (37łp) a week and I had to sleep in the kitchen.

I used to visit back to my parents and see how they lived. They never had anything. My father was a taxi driver and I remember he gave my mother 4s (20p) a day. was very young in the early hours of the morning-say one or two o'clock-to the local bakers, catch the night shift and buy six penny worth of stale bread. That was for the family and it really opened my eyes.

Later on, working for people you could really the difference in the people had to live.

I used to say to myself 'Is this fair?' That's how I came into politics. And politics came into the whole family. Any spare money we had went to educate the eldest boy. That happened in most families. He went into politics and was a Labour councillor for 25 years.

We all had to do our bit and go on the streets canvassing for the Labour Party. This saw was in the early 1930s. But In those days Labour was lent the party for the workers. The old leaders in those days were erntrue socialists. But it's miles was different today. This is what hen shocks us. I0S1When I was 16, I went on ing, a march from Fulham to meet the hunger marchers from OUT. Jarrow. That was another our. turning point to see all those aink people coming • towards you 1, if with pieces of old rags on their feet and covered in blood. nger But Then, another thing, we used : it. to have miners coming into find London. Anywhere you went you could see groups of them own singing and even though I was young I said to myself This rike, isn't right. Good strong men it it having to go begging'.

Now the Tories have unsing, leashed a vendetta against the ionworkers. There was always eise talk before the Tories got in that all the workers were 300d doing was playing bingo, buye to ing televisions and wanting Hoptwo cars. Tories said workers ther were getting too much and lon't they said they would put a gree stop to it.

It's the old vendetta against orm the workers- the Industrial i on Or knees to 1110 I came from a very big family and from the early In those days, especially in I used to go out when I Relations Act, rents and everything else. There was a period when they obviously felt the workers were taking too big a see way Jarrow hunger march That was another turning point to see all those people coming towards you with pieces of old rags on their feet slice of their cake. Now they've This is where I get disgot a policy to make them poor illusioned with these people again, to divide them and to calling themselves socialists break up the unions. because they're not socialists They want the workers down at all. If they were, they'd on their knees so that they can have got this government out go back to the 1930s and have before now. workers begging for work so The TUC leaders are the that they can state their own same as the Labour Party.

You've got these right wingers If they can get the unions who I call traitors to the workwhere they want them, which ing class. These are the people they're trying to do now, who are letting us down. they'll be wage-cutting and I think these officials have sacking men just like in the been spoiled so much with old days.

I've been a Labour man all high salaries that the money has gone to their heads. They appointed in the labour leaders. my life and I am very dis- couldn't care less about other people. They're way above They are the people. If they had stood together like true to lose their jobs. them and they are frightened socialists they could have stopped this government be- That is the reason why I fore now. support the League. It's the If Jenkins and his crowd only alternative. With these hadn't voted with the Tories right wingers holding the after the House of Commons power, we're never going to debate on the Common Market get anywhere. They've got to they would have been out now. be chucked.out. They would have been out a The League has got to organize to get these right year.

CRUSA wingers out and put a Labour If it came to it that workers' government in that will be rights were being taken away truly socialist. all the time and living standards If Labour doesn't follow the going down those people who League's policies, then there do not understand now will will be a break with them. understand then that there will There will have to be an alter- have to be drastic measures taken. native party come in and lead the working class. Nobody wants force, but if If these right wingers your standards are so low that you're starving, then you've half capitalist and support system, they might as well got to fight to live. The workers be whole capitalists. have got to organize. There's no doubt about that. They I've read the documents can't rely on the right wingers about the crisis and transin the Labour Party and the forming the League into a TUC. revolutionary party and I agree If we rely on them our something drastic has got to standards will be so low in be done. the end we won't have anyThere's only one thing I thing left to fight with. disagree with and that's prob- These people will do nothing ably because I don't under- for us. In my opinion the stand. That's when it mentions League is definitely the only 'revolution'. party which can.

A lot of people would be Somebody's got to organize worried by that because they the working class, especially think it means get up in armed the youth. If the Lories get struggle and start shooting. away with what they're doing, They think there's violence the future for coming all the time. youth is finished.

Press 1973 of the bureaucratic of the Stalinists and •WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY Democracy. (1932-33): Edited by George Breitman and Sarah Lovell. Path- Trotsky followed very closely finder Press, New York, pp. 364. the internal life of these groups, Paper £1.45. giving them constant counsel This volume of Trotsky's and advice, from his immense writings spans the period store of experience, in •vIcoming their problems. He was of the historic defeat of well aware of the shortcomings the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler which porters. made necessary a fresh assessment of the tasks of the Left Opposition.

It was one which furnished further evidence of the de- he reviewed its problems in generation of the Stalinist ome detail. At this time the bureaucracy and the disastrous Left Opposition still considered consequences of the working itself to be an organized faction out of the policy of 'socialism in one country'. At the same time, the capitalist world was plunged into its worst slump and the drive to fascism and war was proceeding at full speed.

Trotsky was aware that a new internationale call for a heavy responsibility lay on his shoulders as the only surviving leader of the Bolshevik Revolution able to make use of all its experience to resist the Stalinist tide and rally the cadres for rebuilding the international communist movement.

The struggle of the Left Opposition had begun in the Soviet Union in 1923-1924 when, in the closing stages of trade unions and establishing Lenin's life, Stalin, as representative of the rising class. bureaucracy, took command of apparatus within it against the Social- tionary tendencies'.

By bureaucratic centrism, From his exile in Turkey, Trotsky meant the policy of the Stalinized communist parties. In a document which he prepared for the pre-conference of the International Left Opposition, published in December 1932, he made a lengthy analysis of what he of many of those who pro- meant in applying this term to claimed themselves his sup- the Soviet bureaucracy at that time. He insisted that while In an article written in 'bureaucratic centrism signifies December 1932 'On the State the worst degeneration of the of the Left Opposition after workers' state • even in his visit to Copenhagen where its bureaucratically degenerated he had the opportunity of form the Soviet Union remains meeting many Oppositionists, a workers' state' From this followed a basic programmatic principle of the movement: 'Unconditional defence of within the official Communist the Soviet Union against world Parties and the Communist imperialism is such an elemenInternational working to oust tary task of every revolutionary the Stalinist leadership and worker that the Left Oppobring them back to a Leninist sition tolerates no vacillations course. Trotsky was firmly or doubts on this question in opposed to the formation of its ranks.' It was rejection of the principle of unconditional The sections of the Inter- defence of the gains of the national Left Opposition faced October Revolution which reconsiderable internal difficulties sulted in splits with a number which arose largely from their of groups and individuals who composition and isolation from had been attracted towards the the mass movement. The task Left Opposition. This same facing Trotsky was to select rejection made the split with and train the most promising Shachtman and Burnham in cadres and confront them with the Socialist Workers' Party the task of penetrating the in the United States irrevocable in 1940, as it did a decade solid links with the working later with the adherents of the so-called "state capitalist The view which Trotsky theory, the present-day InterLeft: Trotsky wearing deep-sea fishermen's harness on the waters of the Sea of Marmara. when the post-war revolutionary wave receded in the early 1920s prepared the way for a new political orientation.

'When the Soviet bureaucracy, exploiting the disappointment of the Russian workers in the delay of the European revolution, set forth the national-reformist theory of socialism in country, the young bureaucrats of the other sections breathed a sigh of relief; the new perspective offered them a road to socialism independent of the process of international revolution.' The not-so-young bureaucrats of a later generation, handpicked for their fidelity to the bureaucracy, who head the Communist Parties today have gone still further in establishing a national base for policies class collaboration and reform. Their interests as bureaucracy coincide on all the main issues with the men in the Kremlin.

In his statement to the International Left Opposition Trotsky made it clear that it 'stands on the ground of the first four Congresses of the Comintern' and rejects the revisionist decisions of the Fifth and Sixth World Congresses. He went on to outline a number of basic principles the essence of which has passed into the heritage of the Fourth International: in particular, 'irreconcilable hostility to the Stalin faction'.

Readers of this volume will note that right up until the German defeat Trotsky sharply rejected the idea of setting up parallel Communist Parties which, in the Soviet Union would, he said, mean a policy of armed insurrection and new revolution. At the same time: 'In contradistinction to Stalinism, the Left Opposition is the bearer of the theory of Marxism and of the strategic achievements of Leninism in the world labour movement.' therefore. that rhile trosay, It would be right did not think that the time was ripe for the proclamation of new parties and a new Interpolicy might be required if national, such change objective conditions changed. Until the German defeat, however, all the possibilities of the original tactic of the Leit Opposition had not been exhausted and still promised to yield fruit Trotsky had to intervene ir a nume intal te in one International Left Opposition and its sections. In particular, part of the German leadership had become bitterly opposed to his uncompromising criticism Stalin's economic policy made in the course of a comment on a book by an American businessman who had worked as a technical adviser in the USSR and reported the extended conversation which he had had with Stalin.

In this, foreshadowing recent deals, Stalin made it clear that he was not interested in the spread of revolution and did not intend to interfere with the form of government in the United States.

In this conversation Stalin sharply contrasted his policy towards the capitalist world with that of Trotsky and disWell expressed disagreement with the position of the Left Opposition on a whole series of issues and Trotsky proposed that he should be expelled. The factional dispute blew up at a critical time, and no doubt not by accident, almost on the eve of Hitler's coming to power. Trotsky devoted a short but important article to the Well case which showed that the GPU was specially concerned with the disintegration of the Left Opposition from within, utilizing people like the Sogolevicious brothers.

Since this volume is compiled in such a way as to exclude writings which are otherwise accessible, it may appear that Trotsky gave insufficient attention to the developments in Germany at the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933. This, of course, was not so, and the reader should take into account that simultaneously with following the developments in the Soviet Union and the other parts of the capitalist world Trotsky was especially concerned with Germany. (See 'Germany 1931-1932'. New Park Publications.)

While alerting class to the consequences "third period, policies the suicidal of the cism' in Germany, Trotsky also raised a cry of alarm about the dangers threatening the workers' state from Stalin's internal as well as foreign policy. The First Five-Year Plan had only. been completed at the price of incredible sacrifices on the part of the working class.

Trotsky pointed to the great dangers facing the Soviet economy as a result of the forcing through of collectivization against the opposition of the mass of the peasantry and the tremendous disproportions resulting from forced draught industrialization, with its rapid building up of heavy industry at the expense of consumer goods production. The result had been to destroy all incentive to work on the part of the peasantry, shortages of food and consumer goods, high labour turnover, careless work and malingering in the factories.

'In the midst of newly-constructed factories, plants, mines, electric stations, collective and Soviet farms, the workers and peasants begin to feel more and more as if they are in the midst of gigantic phantoms indifferent to the fate of humans. The populace, consumers, can no "longer understand to what end they strain their energies as producers.' Under Stalin repression had become the chief method of economic management. Exaggerated claims of economic successes went side by side with isolation and the dangers of capitalist encirclement. The disastrous mistakes and crimes of the Comintern had culminated in the German defeat.

In putting forward a Marxist alternative to the Stalinist course, Trotsky was still firmly of the opinion at this time that 'No new revolution necessary to save and strengthen the dictatorship. Profound and allsided and fully thought out reform will completely suffice. The whole question lies in who will carry it through. This or cliques but the partypersons question touches not