Trot on Britain

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which is already being used to jail trades unionists and Irish republiTruly, conflict is here subance. we wIke Kevolutonary rarty.

We cannot begin to clear this jungle in a single newspaper article (We intend to publish a lot of material on Healy's philosophical revision). But three essential points Trotsky The extracts and major works contained in these volumes cast numerous shafts of light on the nature and development of British capitalism, and thus contribute a great deal to understanding the methods necessary for its over throw and its replacement by socialism. They are essential reading for all members and supporters of the Workers Socialist League in our struggle to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class Though remote in both time and space from many aspects of what profound understanding of British describes, Trotsky showed economics and politics. This could only come from an application of the methods of dialectical matérialism as a part of a life-long commitment to the emancipation of the working class on a world scale.

In the first part of this review of the three volumes, we will cover the material contained in the first of them. This includes quotations from Trotsky's many speeches and writings dealing with British history and culture in general, and also with the development of British imperialism and the working class movement until the 1920s. By looking at the first capitalist nation in the light of the subsequent international developments, Trotsky was able to say much about British politics that remains important today.

The earliest extracts in the collection point to the slow tempo of British social and economic and political development, to the gradual decline of feudal institutions. and the build-up of industry and empire following the bourgeois revolution of the 1640's. Many of Trotsky's statements point to the profound effect of this history on all aspects of life in Britain, in particular on the British worker: *For him.....there was not the sudden catastrophic transition from the closed little world of the village to modern industry; he had devol. oped organically from his remote ancestors into gradually changing conditions of factory life and urban culture. In his mind there still to this day sit old, medieval craft ideas and prejudices, only modified in formn and adapted to the conditions of capitalism. "Pace 211 Trotsky also shows how the fact that Britain was (p.6) "the pioneer of bourgeois civilisation" and "exploited the whole world" during the nineteenth century, "softened the inner contradictions". by providing "the upper layer of the proletarait an economic interest in her dominion of the world" . Such workers developed the habit of "puttin, red of identity he with various , and of identifying with various imperialist interests. Ipp. 13-14].

These aspects of British historical development and their effect on the woking class had been emphasised by Marxists, even before the time that Trotsky wrote. However Trotsky added two important points to this analysis. In drawing attention to the effect of the former strength of British imperialism in the creation of reformism in the working ciass movement, Trotsky also pointed out how this was maintained and defended through the ideological weapons provided by the middle class "friends of labour" and transmitted to the working class itself by means of the labour bureaucracy. "Ideology, by its very essence, plays an enormous part in the socialist movement" wrote Trotsky (p.172). In the past such ideology had come from capitalism (sawmos Trotsky but in the tuture it had to develop through the struggle for Marxism in unity and conflict with the working class.

LEADERS In a striking passage (p.16) Trotsky points to the importance of the support given to the position of the trade union bureaucracy by the many forms of bourgeois ideology. "The mentality of the present-day British trade union leader is a mixture of the religious and social prejudices of the period of the restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral the practical skill of a trade union official at the height of capitalist development, the snobbishness of a petty bourgeois fighting to be respectable, and the uneasy conscience of a labour politician who has repeatedly betrayed the workers. To this must be added the influence of intellectuals, of professors and Fabians; of the Socialist moralisings of Sunday preachers. the rationalist schemes pacificists, the dilletantism of "Guild Socialists" and the stubborn and hauBritain Going? Trotsky extended his explanation of these phenomena and of how they should be overcome.

The second big contribution that Trotsky made to an understanding of the development of British capitalism was in his recognition of the significance of its decline and the social crisis which would inevitably follow. In the first World War the bloody contest for "the liberty of imperialist exploitation" brought about "a new imperialist division of Britain and germany adi chatted one another then, predicted Trotsky in 1918, "American capital will appear as the heir who will plunder the world". (p.67) It was to this changing balance of forces that Trotsky reterred, from a socialist point of view, in the only passage quoted a singularly philistine review fo these volumes which appeared in the Guardian of 20th February last. The author of the review seemed unaware that Trotsky was referring to developments which were not obvious on the surface at the time, but which were to be of considerable future importance.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION It is with the working out of these changes in the mperialist forces, and particularly heir relationship withthe Russian revolution of November 1917, that much of the latter part of this first volume is concerned. Trotsky make many important points about the desperate efforts of the political leaders of the chief imperialist powers to regulate their relations with one another and to strangle the first workers' state. They failed in hoth of these tasks, but there are many important explanations of this contained in the first volume that cannot be even summarised in this review.

As Commissar of the Red Army in conflict with an alliance of all the capitalist powers and various reactionary forces in Russia, Trotsk naturally took a deep interest in what had until then been the chief imperialist power. The British navy was still the world's mightiest armoured force with the task of policing the entire world. Trotsky constantly reminded the soldiers who fought under his command that they had to look beyond such "Alongside the Britain of profit, violence, corruption and bloodthirs. tiness there exists the Britain of labour, intellectual might, and inter national solidarity. Against us fights arrogant and dishonest stock exchange Britain. Labouring people's Britain is behind us."

This perspective was of considerable importance in the defence of the Russian Revolution from the armies of intervention. In July 1920 the London dockers refused to load munitions to Poland for use against the Soviet Union. In the following August all the main organisations of the Brilish working class set up a Council of Action and threatened a General Strike against any further intervention of the British army in the war. Trotsky greeted this latter event by asserting with some justice that "Great Britain has possibly not since the age of Chartism lived through such a period of working class reawakening of interests and strivings." (p.105)

ROLE Trotsky's emphasis on the international role of the British working class was of importance for the continued survival of the Russian Revolution. This was fought for despite and not because of the actions of the reformist trade unior and labour leaders of the type of Messrs Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald. These people were more concerned with the defence of the puppet regimes set up in Georgia Transcaucasia and elsewhere by the imperialists in a desperate attempt to present a buffer to the new workers regime.

With the lull in the class struggle after the betrayal fo the miners on "Black Friday' in April 1921, there followed the election of the first and perhaps the most cowardly of all Labour governments in 1924. In this period Trotsky was clear that the crisis of British capitalism had not been resolved, and so the British working class was "approach -ing that stage of its struggle before which the most heroic pages of Chartism will fade. (p.172) For the success of this struggle he was certain that the established Labour and trade union leaders would have to be "thrust aside and thrust out" (p.204). The method for this was through the construction of a Communist Party free from routine and sectarianism, and closely bound up with the mass organisations. lo.173 It is with the enormous class battles of May 1926 and of how the Communist Party failed to prepare for them that the second volume of this collection is concer ned. These issues will be taken up in the next part of this review.

Docherty

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