Restoring Trotsky’s Place in History

[p030] Restoring Trotsky’s Place in History 1921-1929, by Isaac Deutscher. The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky: London, 1959. 420 pages. 38s. ONLY now, 20 years after his death at the hands of a Stalinist assassin, are Leon Trotsky’s real stature and his contributions to the theory of social development beginning to achieve wider recognition. Hitherto, buried under the sheer volume of falsification emanating from the Krem- lin, "Trotsky’s. ideas were the subiect of serious study only among small groups of his followers, for the most part outside the Soviet bloc. Since the death of Stalin, the heightened interest in the nature and. development: of Soviet society - has LABOUR REVIEW — June-July, 1960 In fact, his theoretical weaknesses and _politi- cal intentions are here revealed once again. In particular one of his crucial blind spots is pre- venting him from seeing the prospect clearly. His scheme leaves no room for the intervention of the people as a political force, much less for the clash of classes. Consequently he overlooks the fact that the challenge in Africa and Asia cannot be reduced to the intervention or example of the Soviet Union. Of course this is a factor but, as far as the struggle of social forces in these countries is concerned, the Soviet leadership are only inverted Rostowians. Both overlook the advance of the colonial revolution towards a phase where it challenges the dominance of the bourgeoisie; they fail to consider that this, especi- ally when linked with the resurgence of the working class in the advanced countries, will accelerate the demise of capitalism and topple the bureaucratic leadership in the Russian- Chinese bloc of non-capitalist States. . In the meantime. Rostow helps to adapt the ideology of capitalism to changing times, but still a distance behind the times. His sensitivity to Marxism. although he distorts it and fails to consider part of its case at all, is a significant testimony to its strength. If his attack stimulates Marxists to probe more fully into the kind of problem which he raises, test, and if necessarv. re-formulate their own interpretations, so. much — the better. Rostow’s work is among the best of its kind from the anti-Marxist camp. Oxford University Press, made it imperative for scholars.-to take. a new look at this historical figure.. Pioneers -in- this research are Professor E. H..Carr of Cambridge,! and, of course, Isaac Deutscher, whose many vears of study of the subject equip them to point the_way. Carr is preoccupied with the broade: canvas 1‘*The Interregnum’ and ‘Socialism: in One ‘Country’ ‘two vols.), Vols..4, 5 and 6 of his. History of - the © Soviet Union, published by Macmillan, - : a

[p031] RESTORING TROTSKY’S PLACE IN HISTORY 65 of the history of the Soviet Union and gives us a view of the real Trotsky only incidentally, as part of the whole picture, each part of which he reconstructs with meticulous devotion to fact, even if his reading of the facts often lays itself open to question. Deutscher confines his work more closely to the Trotsky-Stalin conflict and, while no less conscientious in the pursuit of the actual details, his work is more interpretative. His is the report of the involved observer who has a keen, first-hand, working knowledge of the action and the actors. In The Prophet Unarmed Deutscher gives us a living, throbbing, accurate account of the peak period in the Stalin-Trotsky conflict that evokes the time and the personalities as no other work has done up to the present. This alone would give the book permanent merit for the student and the active socialist. But Deutscher does much more. As in the first volume of his bio- graphy, he strives to fill in the portrait of Trotsky the man and the thinker, as well as the embattled politician. He quotes copiously from writings long out of print, from rare newspaper articles and from the Trotsky archives at Harvard University, to show us how persistently all-em- bracing were Trotsky’s intellectual interests and how penetrating his judgments. Among many other things, there is a remarkable forecast, in 1925, of the coming atomic age, on the one hand; on the other a practical size-up of the relations between the British Establishment and _ the Labour leaders in 1926 that could, with all its sharp wit, be taken as quite up-to-date in 1960. In addition, Deutscher’s analysis of the period, serious and documented as it is on the inter- relationship between the working class, the party and party cadre, stimulates and provokes critical thought on a subject that will bear increasingly more intensive study in the future. Khrushchev’s famous 20th Congress speech rudely ripped aside the veil of lies that covered the early Stalinist period. Deutscher’s work— and in some measure, Carr’s—reveal the whole intricate structure as never before. In so doing, they make laughable the approach of so many superficial students who saw in the Trotsky- Stalin conflict a pure and simple ‘struggle for power’ in the accepted banal political sense. What Deutscher shows with striking narrative lucidity is that this conflict was above all a clash between the revolutionary ideas that pro- moted the Bolshevik revolution and the conserva- tism of the social forces growing out of its isola- tion in a backward country in a period of inter- national reaction. The careful student will de- duce as much from Carr’s more general account. Whatever their criticism of Trotsky as a person may be—and no doubt human frailties had their role to play here as anywhere—there is one fact that stands out above others in this historical re- construction. Trotsky was not out for power for its own sake. He was not obsessed with any desire to rule the roost. He was imbued with a single ambition: to pursue a scientific approach to the problems confronting society, and more particularly to expound the development of the Soviet state in the light of the world-wide transformation begun in the Russian revolution October, 1917, in order the better to complete that transformation. Both Carr and Deutscher comment on the favourable ‘tactical’ opportunities that Trotsky missed; at the 13th Congress of the Bolshevik Party, when he not only had Lenin’s support but his actual warning against a compromise with Stalin: at the 14th Congress, when the Stalin- Zinoviev-Kamenev troika fell apart. Above all, both authors dwell on the fact that the initial advantage in the struggle was with Trotsky, as head of the Red Army, who then had the allegi- ance of its cadres and its men. In any serious historical study there is, of course, room for a critical appraisal of historic personalities, their character, individual traits, judgments and oppor- tunities. Deutscher finds fault with Trotsky’s sense of timing, Carr with his haughty character on the one hand, and with his ‘constitutional’ (psychosomatic?) decline in health at decisive moments. But if these were organic short- comings they should perhaps have revealed them- selves in the previous broader struggle with his adversaries in the revolution and the civil war as much as in the internal struggle with Stalin. In fact, the organization by Trotsky of the in- surrection that established Soviet power was an exemplary piece of timing. And, whatever his deficiencies in personality, they did not hinder Trotsky in the great effort of creating the Red Army, esvecially with the, at first, hostile former officers of the Tsar; nor did his generally robust health fail him in any of the crises of the civil war. No matter what his human failings were, and they may and probably will be scrutinized with greater accuracy by future historians, those mentioned offer verv little in explanation of the course of the Stalin-Trotsky conflict. If we want to grasp the full import of the Trotsky-Stalin con- flict we have to revert to the nature of the man as a scientist engaged in laving bare the main- springs of social action and acting upon his dis- coveries. And we have to bear in mind, there- fore, the great objective currents in the social ebb and flow that shaped the struggle. Deut- scher comes close enough to doing this in his brilliant biography, but the rounded conclusion,

[p032] 66 the complete account, still escapes him in my Opinion. The Prophet Unarmed makes it abundantly clear that Trotsky, aware that the period was one of reaction and exhaustion, following that of upsurge and revolution, rejected the short-cut of what might be called a physical victory over Stalin. He had no desire to assume command in an ebb-tide that could open the sluices of counter- revolution. He preferred to stick to the task of propagating the revolutionary idea, always hope- ful of a change in the trend, and to make his con- tribution to the exposure of the new bureaucratic dangers facing it; to put forward a concrete plan for the consolidation of Soviet power, and to link it with a firm perspective of international action. He persevered in this pursuit within the frame- work of the party, in which the levers of control were increasingly and obviously passing more and more completely into Stalin’s hands. Why Trot- sky adopted this long-term course is not altogether clear from Deutscher’s account, let alone Carr’s. In all fairness to Deutscher it must be said, how- ever, that both in his preface and at the end of this second volume of his biography, he does make plain the importance of Trotsky’s course for the future. The main stumbling block for Deutscher, and even more so for Carr, to an understanding of the complete nature of Trotsky’s role in the struggle with Stalin, lies in their self-imposed re- striction to view the Russian revolution as a national phenomenon, despite their awareness of its international roots and aims. Summing up the great dispute over ‘socialism in one country’, Carr finds that this theory ‘stumbled upon’ by Stalin, ‘was a synthesis between socialist and national loyalties. It was the point at which Russian destiny and Marxism joined hands.’ Although the phrase ‘Russian destiny’ is no doubt alien to Deutscher’s Marxist vocabulary, the thought behind it, developed in a much more sharply ciitical fashion, does in fact strongly per- vade Deutscher’s general conclusions. He sug- gests that against the background of Tsarist bar- barism, Russia required a tyrant like Stalin to push through ruthlessly the ‘primitive socialist accumulation’ implied in the Trotskyist pro- gramme, a progressive task in spite of the bloody abominations that accompanied it. (Carr in his own way, is not grudging either in recognizing that Stalin eventually had to ‘spear-head’ policies ‘that Trotsky himself had been most concerned to advocate.) What both fail to appreciate adequately is that the prosressive side of the accomplishments of the Stalin era was a by-product of the Russian revolution in its Leninist (that is, internationalist) LABOUR REVIEW — June-July, 1960 phase and of the defence of its concepts by Trot- sky and the Opposition in the ensuing period. Conversely, that since Stalinism proved to be a tremendous brake on the progress of the revo- lution internationally it could not consequently act otherwise in Russia itself. To seize this truth, it is necessary to return to the basic propositions on which Trotsky, along with Lenin and all other Bolsheviks at the time, based their programme of revolution in 1917. To recapitulate, these . were : Socialism is the logical need for mankind if a relapse into barbarism is to be avoided and the continued conquest of nature assured. The establishment of socialism can only be guaranteed on an international scale, with its triumph in at least several of the more ad- vanced capitalist countries. The Russian revolution was only the open- ing battle of an international action, taking place at the ‘weakest link in the chain’ of capitalism. ~ Capitalism would continue to have its ups and downs—its booms and crises—until over- come by an international working-class con- quest of power. The task of the Communists was to consoli- date the Russian revolution and to utilize it as a base for the international operation. It is in this light ‘hat the whole Trotsky-Stalin struggle must be seen and judged, if a truly objective and rounded view of its protagonists, its outcome and its lessons is to be gained. We can readily see that Trotsky was concerned with maintaining a long-term strategy, called for by the Marxist analysis, and shared at first by alf the Bolsheviks. His ‘tactical’ performance, and that of his adversaries, have to be weighed within this frame of reference. Was he correct in these assumptions, which the others abandoned? The danger of a relapse into barbarism, fore- shadowed by World War I, was gruesomely emphasised by the rise of Fascism and by the Second World War which ended with the display of the power of nuclear weapons to wreak havoc of universal proportions on the attainments of mankind. Can the need for a socialist reorgan- ization of society—for ‘one world’—be regarded in any sense as premature? Reason should tell us that it is long overdue. Capitalism is at pre- sent undergoing a boom which gives rise to the illusion of the ‘affluent society’, of a ‘people’s capitalism’, etc. But looking over the last 40 vears in their totality, the organic crisis of capi- talism—most acutely underlined by the long,

[p033] RESTORING TROTSKY’S PLACE IN HISTORY 67 world-wide depression of 1929 from which only its transtormation into a war economy could rescue it—has taken on not. less but more expio- sive form than ever before. in turn, the econo- mic crisis is being brougnt to a boil by the awakening of Asia, Africa and Latin America to anti-imperialist consciousness. él Trotsky put forward his programme of planned industrialization for the Soviet Union combined with an active international policy in the context of a universal perspective such as this, which we have seen materialize. The bureaucracy, which found its head in Stalin, fought and in the end defeated Trotsky, his programme and policy. But at every crisis in its own development it had to borrow irom Trotsky and continues to do so up to tne present. The bureaucracy discovered, empiricaily, from its own experience, that even its own existence as a privileged caste was wedded to the maintenance of the new property forms established by the revolution; and that the pre- servation of the nationalized economy required rapid industrialization and planning; that in the conflict with the capitalist environment the Soviet Union had to expand or shrink; that expansion meant the spread of the same property forms; that a growing economy and an increasingly strong working class inevitably threatened bureaucratic control. All these were implied in Trotsky’s theoretical analysis. Stalin and_ his successors could only stumble empirically upon these truths, but never grasp them in their total- ity. This was because their concern was to preserve themselves as a new privileged social formation, not to destroy privilege and build society anew at the international level. Trotsky, the man of action par excellence of the Russian revolution, opted for the power of the idea rather than for the idea of power. This is What puzzles so many commentators, particu- larly those whose understanding of Marxism is severely limited. Deutscher’s understanding is more profound. Yet he, too, seems to be puzzled by one aspect in particular of Trotsky’s choice. He sees something akin to the fates of Greek tragedy overtaking the prophet he first conceived in terms of Hebraic folklore. There is Trotsky foreseeing decades ahead the degeneration of the centralism of the Bolshevik Party into the dicta- torship of a single tyrant--yet he himself ap- parently contributes to this process and in the end becomes its victim! To me this seems to be a case of Deutscher’s literary imagery getting the better of his political analysis. Here, indeed, was an opportunity for the biographer to present a timely critical and realistic analysis of his subject, his real strength as well as his real weaknesses.” . What caused Trotsky, if we stick to realities .and get away from poetic allusion, to ‘forget’ his early prophecy’ on the tate ot the Leninist party? Hie certainiy was not a man who easily formed and shed ideas, concepts, analyses of social phenomena. ‘The truth is that Trotsky had dis- covered in the course of time that his original view oi Lenin’s organizational system was wrong. For ali his perspicacity, Trotsky had not grasped the importance of the role of the. combat organ- ization in the proletarian revolution before i917. Oniy through his own experience with Bolshevism in the course of 1917 and _ there- after did he finally come to realize how in- dispensable this factor was to victory in the revolutionary struggle. This is what accounts tor his unflinching defence of the party against the ulira-left oppositions in the years up to Lenin’s death. 1t also explains his continued reluctance to break party discipline after the struggle with Stalin had begun. And, to antici- pate the third volume of the biography, it gives a clue to Trotsky’s whole course subsequent to his becoming convinced that the Stalinized party had degenerated beyond reform. ‘he conception of the revclutionary socialist party as a combat organization, developed and perfected by Lenin, was something Trotsky in his younger years had never mastered, despite his otherwise rich intellect. But the revolution itself convinced him that the necessity of the combat party far outweighed the dangers of its possible degeneration. The flowering and decline of poli- tical organizations, he had reason to deduce from the experience of the war-years with social democracy, was conditioned by a multiplicity of objective historical influences, and was hardly inherent in their organizational form as _ such. But, without such a centralized, democratic party as Lenin had built, a successful revolution against capitalism was impossible. That was the lesson he learned in 1917-21 and nevei forgot. It was learnt positively in Russia. Negatively, the lesson was brought home to him by the fate of the revoluiion in Germany—where the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg were no less powerful in their general revolutionary aspect than Lenin’s or Trotsky’s, but where their concept of the party was missing. And this was true of Western Europe generally, at that time in a state of social collapse and ripe for revolution. Both Deutscher and Carr fail to grasp this attitude of Trotsky to the combat party. At 2JIndeed, the chapter ‘At the Door of History’ in ‘The Prophet Armed’ led me to believe that Deutscher might do this.

[p034] 68 an early stage of historical research and scholar- ship this is hardly astonishing in the case of the academician. It is perhaps less so in the case of... the Marxist biographer. It is, of course, possible that Deutscher will tackle this problem in his concluding volume. Meanwhile, his account of the 1921-1929 period suffers in consequence. For it is difficult to give a comprehensive explana- tion of Trotsky’s ‘errors’ in the factional struggle against Stalin without bearing in mind on the one hand his belated conversion to this Leninist concept, and on the other, his relative lack of experience—as against the Old Guard—in the mechanics of the party’s functioning. Trotsky’s years ‘in the wilderness’, outside the ranks of Bolshevism (and Menshevism) made themselves felt here. He was to express regret over this years later, when he was preoccupied with the practical problem of building the proletarian party anew. (See his In Defence of Marxism.) One critic,? reviewing Deutscher’s second volume, has taken issue with Deutscher’s ‘tradi- tional Trotskyist explanation’ of the failure of the Communist International. According to this critic, the attempt to extend the centralized com- bat party to international proportions was fore- doomed to failure even regardless of the ebb-tide which was to transform it into a Stalinized ad- junct of the Kremlin bureaucracy. All kinds of national peculiarities, he tells us, make anything more than a loose international federation of revolutionary parties ‘utopian’. It is odd that this kind of wisdom—treally a rationalization of the frustrations consequent on the limited possi- bilities of the moment—should be dispensed just as. Sir Anthony Eden tells in his memoirs that the statesmen of capitalism are groping for some co-ordinated international form of organization in combating the revolution of our time. In truth, the international combat party, as Trotsky and Lenin foresaw, is a necessary logical step from the character of the task the Marxists set them- selves. If it has not yet become a reality, this is a result of the combined and reciprocal effects of the period of reaction following the Russian revolution and the Stalinist bureaucracy itself. But this only means that its realization has been postponed. Such a postponement of socially necessary organizational developments is not un- known in the history of feudalism and of capital- ism. Local languages, cultures, geographic barriers did not in the end prevent the formation of kingdoms or of national states. Is there really any reason why they should not be transcended on a larger historical scale by a proletarian revolutionary organization? A genuinely Lenin- 3B. Cochrane, ‘American Socialist’, October, 1959. LABOUR REVIEW — June-July, 1960 ist international combat organization will, of course, take full account of national peculiarities and provide for the widest latitude in tactics as well as appropriate forms of organization. To his dying day Trotsky’s main contention was that the international conditions for socialist revolution were over-ripe. The real crisis of humanity, he concluded, was a crisis in working- class leadership. By this he meant that the element for victory that was lacking was the proletarian combat organization, whose proto- - type he saw in Bolshevism. Was he wrong? Or was this idea of Trotsky’s as correct as those others which Deutscher and Carr have confirmed? There are many new thinkers who regard this problem as dated. Capitalism has developed a new era of progress and prosperity, it is no longer the capitalism that Marx analyzed, they say. The working class in the West has come to terms with this new capitalism in the welfare state. Besides, add others, the threat of nu- clear annihilation in the stalemated cold war blurs the lines of class division. Consequently revolu- tionary socialism has become obsolete, and the idea of the proletarian combat party belongs to the museum. Is this so very modern and fashion- able view borne out by the true state of the world today? We need a deeper and_ wider analysis than that provided by the apostles of the affluent society, of the take-off economy, of the waist-high culture. Their affluent society is a house of cards propped up by the stimulant of war production and the never-never chase for comforts of a population fed up with war-time and post-war austerity. The limit of both these phenomena is clearly visible, if only in the fluctuations of the stock-exchanges. All the gadgetry blown up by the advertising racket will not help maintain the equilibrium for very long, based as it is on arti- ficial and not real human need. The post-war recessions were storm signals warning of the hurricane to come which will bring this house of cards crashing down as the rate of profit resumes its historic downward trend. The welfare state is in reality nothing more than the external expression of the stalemate that exists between the capitalist class and the work- ing class within national boundaries. It is itself conditioned by that international stalemate be- tween the major social classes that finds its ex- pression in the cold war. But the conditions for this stalemate are occasionally interrupted; nationally, despite the labour bureaucracies, by such outbreaks as the recent steel strike in the United States, and the threatened railway strike in Britain; internationally, regardless of the Soviet bureaucracy’s longing for ‘peaceful co-

[p035] RESTORING TROTSKY’S PLACE IN HISTORY 69 existence’, by the upsurge in China, Indo-China, the Arab world, Algeria, Cuba and Negro Africa. Can anyone reaily doubt that such colossal events, reverberating throughout the world from year to year, could shake oif capitalist rule alto- gether if combat parties of the working class existed in five or six countries—let alone a power- tul international party in place of the degenerated Communist Parties and the flabby social democ- racies? A sober view of present-day reality only con- firms Trotsky’s contention anew. Anxious to preserve his scholarly objectivity, Deutscher appeared in his first volume, as in his biography of Stalin, to lay undue stress on the ‘progressive’ features of Stalinism and to dis- parage Trotskyism as a ‘cult’. It is hardly to be wondered at if Trotskyists counter-attacked sharply, although perhaps with too much heat and polemical exaggeration. In this second volume of the Trotsky biography there seems to me to be a much greater balance of real objectiv- ity. The Khrushchev revelations and the Polish and Hungarian risings of 1956 undoubtedly, and possibly the author’s further researches into the Trotsky archives at Harvard, made their contri- butions to a new assessment. Still, Deutscher tinds it necessary to write in his preface: ‘Yet I do not imagine that the future of Communism lies in Trotskyism’. Very well, he is entitled to his opinion. However, he continues : ‘lL am inciined to think that the historic develop- meni is transcending both Stalinism and Trotsky- ism and is tending toward something broader than either of them. But each one of them will be “transcended” in a different manner. What the Soviet Union and communism take over from Stalinism is mainly its practical achievements; in other respects, as regards methods of government and political action, ideas and “moral climate’, the legacy of the Stalin era is worse than empty; the sooner it is disposed of the better. But pre- cisely in these respecis Trotsky has still much to offer; and the poiitical deveiopment can hardly transcend him otherwise than by absorbing all that is vital in his thought and applying it to reali- ties which are far more advanced, varied and com- plex than those he knew.’ One can hardly quarrel with this view. That is indeed what Trotskyism is about; it expresses the essence of its purpose. Meanwhile, Deut- scher is to be congratulated on making a major contribution in this second volume to the politi- cal education of the new generation of socialists. His is a vital, living text-book for the period of the Trotsky-Stalin conflict. It is to be hoped that in his final volume he will continue to deepen our knowledge of this great fighter and teacher of mankind in the struggle for human emanci- pation. LEON TROTSKY WHERE IS BRITAIN GOING? PRICE: 7/6 186 Clapham High St., S.W.4 SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE - LONDON UCU UCLA CUOUEQEC EEUU QUNTTNUQUELLUQQQQIQQQUUEEUCEEUUCQCQQUUQEUREEEEGUELLLUUUUUUCUTETEEEUUUUUUQUUUEUT

[p036] 70 LABOUR REVIEW — June-July, 1960