Trotsky's Writings 1932-1933

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

the party apparatus and went on to make a major revision of Marxism with the theory still good grounds for expect and policy of socialism in one country. This struggle was continued over the question of the failure of the German revolution in 1923 and taken into the Communist International when Stalin's policy led to a series of disasters in China, Britain and other countries.

After the exile of Trotsky from the Soviet Union in February 1929, the forces of the Left Opposition began to grow, mainly by individual selection, under very special and extremely difficult conditions against the whole weight expressed before Hitler took national Socialists. power and while there were In the theoretical guidelines which he offered to the forthng that the German working coming conference, Trotsky class would fight, despite its pointed out that it was false rotten leadership, was that 'to to regard the evolution of the counterpose the adventuristic Comintern as merely a reslogan of a second party to flection of the factional the existing party, as the struggles within the Russian Stalinists accuse us, would mean to block our way to the "There were,' he insisted, communist workers themselves. 'reasons rooted in the developBut to blur our difference with ment of the international centrism in the name of facili- workers' movement which tating "unity" would mean not drove the young sections of only to commit political suicide, the Comintern to the Stalinist but also to cover up, strengthen bureaucracy In fact none of and nourish all the negative these sections had really been features of bureaucratic cen- parties of a Bolshevik type. trism, and by that fact alone The defeats and disappointhelp the reactionary currents ments which they suffered played great cordiality towards interviewer article containing Trotsky's criticism, the first item in this book, entitled "With Both Hands', was one of the reasons for a sharp conflict with two of the German members of the Secretariat of the International Left Opposition, one of whom went under the name of Roman Well. later to be unmasked as a GPU agent.

Well was one of the two Sobolevicious brothers. both of whom were Stalinist undercover men. Well, later to be known as Dr Robert Soblen, committed suicide after he was deported to the United States for trial as a Soviet agent.

But reflection on the consequences of Hitler's victory convinced Trotsky that there was no possibility of reforming the German Communist Party (KPD) and that it was necessary to call for the building of a new party in Germany which could 'seize the Comintern from the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy'.

The failure of the KPD to mobilize the working class against Hitler after he became Chancellor on January 30, 1933, leading to its own suppression without a fight on March 5 was, Trotsky said, the

party's August 4- the date on which, in 1914, the Social Democratic Party had voted for war credits in the Reichstag.

The KPD leadership remained blindly obedient to the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and, despite its 6 million votes, became isolated from the workiwhich class. The question of 'which factor would win out in the KPD—— the interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy or the logic of the class struggle' — had been settled.

Trotsky now had to fight for the policy of building a new party against resistance from the majority of the leadership of the German section. He also had to combat the BrandlerThalheimer which oi osed the ultra-left course the opportunist position. The Brandlerites refused to recognize that the Stalinist policy of the Comintern was based upon a struggle against Trotskyism which they accepted as being 'in and by itself correct. by the SAP (Socials a posed Another problem Party) which strongly German workers with the lever for overthrowing the Hitler regime. Trotsky's warnings, unfortunately, were to go as unheeded by • the Social Democracy, as they had been by the KPD leaders a few years before. Bauer's policy paved the way for the deteat in 1934 of the Viennese proletariat.

In reply to some Austrian Social Democrats who asked for his political advice, Trotsky said that the first thing that was necessary was uncompromising struggle against the Bauer leadership which had capitulated to the Dolfuss regime and had thus already betrayed the working class as surely as the German Social Democracy had done.

In March 1933, in a final appeal to the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he offered the co-operation of the Left Opposition in reviving the party. This required that it should be offered the possibility of normal work within the party as a recognized faction. No reply was received.

That is why attempts at 'economic reform', giving greater play for the operation market forces and more initiative to the plant managers have proved abortive, still leaving the economy a prey to chronic disproportions and imposing further burdens on the working class.

As this volume shows, Trotsky studied and wrote authoritatively upon a variety of political and theoretical questions. A few of his subjects may be picked out for special mention for the reader to look for.

He will find, for example, an article entitled Japan Heads for Disaster' which appeared originally in the 'Bulletin of the Russian Opposition' but was later reproduced in the bourgeois Press. At the time Japan had been pushed by enormous economic pressures into a programme of expansion on the Asiatic mainland, and, in line with the famous Tanaka Memorial of 1927, was preparing with all speed for an even greater confrontation with the Soviet Union and the United States.

Trotsky explains Japanese expansionism from the history task that he was to devote all his energies until his assassination in August 1940.

The German situation had provided the final and decisive test which exposed the betrayals of Stalinism. The Comintern had not only imposed a suicidal policy on the KPD, but it had stamped out all discussion of that policy.

It persisted, after Hitler's triumph, in maintaining that the policy had been correct. By its bankruptcy it had condemned to a colossal defeat the strongest and best-organized proletariat in Europe. The need to build new parties was not a question of personal disillusionment or dissatisfaction, but was imposed, as Trotsky put it, 'by the objective march of the class struggle'. It was the great lesson snatched from the German debacle.

The decision by the Left Opposition to break with the Comintern immediately brought forward the question of policy and programme, which had to be discussed openly with all revolutionary socialist organizations. This had to take place on the basis of 'principled irreconcilability' Monday June 4, 1973 PAGE 7 of the objective forces which determine historical development: which can only be done through an understanding of ground for documents and moral maxims. History is science no less objective thar physiology. It requires not hypocritical "impartiality" but scientific method. One can accept or reject the material. istic dialectic as the method of historical science, but one must reckon with it. Scientific objectivity can be and must be lodged in the very method itself.

In his own 'History of the Russian Revolution' published year before, Trotsky had given a brilliant example of this method in practice. We can say that in this still unsurpassed account of the most important historical turning point in the 20th century, he achieved what he set out to do, "to give the key to all the events of that revolution'.

•A historical work is scientific', Trotsky insists, 'when facts combine into one whole process which, as in life, lives according to its internal laws. And in his history 'he merel