BRITAIN GOINGS

Two Traditions:

PRICE: 7/6 17th-century Revolution and Chartism Trade Unions and Bol186 Clapham High St., shevism S.W.4 Prospects Fi}

grip of religious prejudices. And it is beyond doubt that, in spite of this, the coal miners will do what is needed. From some of their prejudices they will free themseves in the fire of struggle, and from others only after they have conquered. But we deny categorically that the Welsh coal miners and the British proletariat generally can be shown the correct path by people who themselves have not broken free from childish nonsense, who do not know how human society is constructed, who have not grasped its dynamics, who do not understand the part which religion plays in it and who are ready, to one extent or another, to subordinate their conduct to the decrees of the church morality, which unites oppressors and oppressed. Such leaders are not to be relied upon. The working class can always expect from them either surrender or direct betrayal—with references to the Sermon on the Mount—at the most crucial moment.’

Against the reformists One reason why the harrying of Trotsky by the Stalinist bureaucracy between 1927 and 1929 contributed its part to the demoralization of many British Communist workers during those difficult years was that these workers had learnt to respect and appreciate Trotsky through ‘Where Is Britain Going?’ and through two other little books of his which were published here a few years earlier-—‘The Defence of Terrorism’ and ‘Between Red and White’. These books helped to educate the vanguard of a generation—including the few who became the nucleus of the Left Opposition here in the early 1930s.

‘The Defence of Terrorism’ was a reply to slanders on Soviet Russia by the German Sociai-Democratic pundit Kautsky—a companion-piece to Lenin’s ‘Proletarian Revolution and Kautsky the Renegade’. Among many other matters, Trotsky in this book dealt with the abuse of the conception of workers’ control then. being fostered by the Mensheviks in order to disrupt Soviet industry. ‘No board of persons who do not know the given business,’ wrote Trotsky, ‘can replace one man who knows it. A board of patients will not replace the doctor.’

“Between Red and White’ was written as a reply to MacDonald, Kautsky and the whole gaggle of reformists who denounced as ‘Red imperialism’ the sovietization of Georgia with help from the Russian Red Army. This book contains a classic formulation of what was then standard Soviet doctrine on ‘export of revolution’ and remained to the end Trotsky’s view on this matter. It is an instance of the illiteracy in these things, which flourished here only five or six years ago in normally well-informed circles that Norman Mackenzie could write, in his book ‘Socialism’ (in the Hutchinson’s University Library series) that Trotsky wanted to spread the revolution by force of Soviet Russian arms. Here is what Trotsky himself wrote:

‘Soviet Russia does not by any means intend to make its military power take the place of the revolutionary efforts of the proletariats of other countries. The conquest of proletarian power must be an outcome of proletarian political experience. This does not mean that the revolutionary efforts of the workers of Georgia or any other country must not receive any military support from outside. It. is only essential that this support should come at a moment when the need for it has been created by the political development of the workers, and recognized by the class-conscious revolutionary vanguard, who have won the sympathy of the majority of the workers. These are questions of revolutionary strateey, and not a formal democratic ritual.’

BRIAN PEARCE.

LEON TROTSKY HE introduction Three prefaces The Decline of Britain hs Mr. Baldwin and...

Gradualism Certain ‘Peculiarities’ of British Labour Leaders The Fabian ‘Theory’ of The Question of Revolutionary Force