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“THE British bourgeoisie take unerring account of the fact that the chief danger threatens them from the trade unions, and that only under the pressure of these mass organizations will the Labour Party, after radically renewing its leadership, be transformed into a revolutionary force.’ So wrote Trotsky in 1925, in his book ‘Where Is Britain Going?’, now reissued by the Socialist Labour League after a long period out of print.

Much of what is written in the book about British politics reads as fresh today as when it was written. But in my opinion the main value of ‘Where Is Britain Going?’ is as an exercise in Marxist method which takes the form of a study of some of the peculiarities of British history. Trotsky revealed in this book an acute understanding of the special features of the setting in which British Marxists have to work, features often remote from those of the Russian and Continental scenes.

The Independent Labour Party publicist Brailsford, who wrote a rather patronizing preface for the original British edition (1926), claimed that Trotsky did not understand that religion here meant something very different from the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly in its relation to the working-class movement. Replying, in the pages of Pravda, Trotsky pointed out that he appreciated quite well that Protestantism had arisen as the banner not only of the bourgeoisie but also of the ‘lower orders’. ‘Naturally a Scottish woodcutter invested in the psalms he sang a different subjective content from that of the respectable Mr. Dombey, or his honourable great-grandson now sitting in the House of Commons, whether on the right or on the left of Mr. MacDonald. But the same is true of Liberalism (i.e., before the foundation of the Labour Party). The Liberal workers—not the trade union bureaucrats—understood the Liberal programme quite differently from Gladstone. They brought their class instinct into their Liberalism, though without effect. Would Brailsford be prepared, however, to disagree on this ground that Liberalism was the programme of the rising middle and petty bourgeoisie of commerce and industry, and of the bourgeois intelligentsia?’

Class struggle and Christianity Brailsford having triumphantly shown that in the early part of the 19th century there were petty-bourgeois radicals, opponents of class struggle, who inclined towards atheism, while the pioneers of trade unionism ‘stood at the same time for Christianity and for the class struggle’, Trotsky replied: “Marxism does not teach at all that every man receives his ration of religion and philosophical convictions in accordance with the size of his income or his wages. The question is more complicated than that. Hngendered on the soil of the material conditions of life, i.e., first and foremost on the soil of class contradictions, religious ideas, like other ideas, make their way in the world only gradually; also, they go on living, by force of conservatism, longer than the needs which first gave rise to them; and they are swept away only under the impact of serious blows and upheavals. The petty-bourgeois English radicals of the Utilitarian or Owenite schools could be militant atheists so long as they seriously believed they possessed a painless means of solving ali social - problems. But in proportion as class contradictions grew more acute, militant radicalism either faded away or migrated into the Labour Party, bringing with it into the latter its threadbare idealist arrogance and its political helplessness.

‘The organizers of the trade unions, raised up by workers’ strikes, could not repudiate the basis of their work and the source of their influence, the class struggle. But they re mained at the same time within the restricted limits of trade unionism, without carrying the struggle to the necessary revolutionary conclusions, and this enabled (and still enables) them to reconcile trade unionism with Christianity, i.e., with a discipline which imposes upon the proletariat the dogma and morality of another class.

‘It is absolutely beyond doubt that the revolution will find a substantial section of the Welsh coal miners still in the

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 Serron 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 Social-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 strategy, and not a formal democratic ritual.’

BRIAN PEARCE.

LEON TROTSKY Wo meoduction