Trotskyism Today no. 1

TROTSKYISM

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL -

PROBLEMS AND TASKS

Stalinist tanks liberate Da Nang from imperialism March 1975

PART ONE

This document, adopted at the Founding Conference of the WL on the 19th October, is intended to form the basis of a discussion within the world Trotskyist movement on the theoretical problems and tasks which need to be confronted in rebuilding the Fourth International. By beginning an analysis of the history of the post-war Trotskyist movement, and centrally, of the problems posed by the development of post-war Stalinism, the document attempts to focus discussion on some of the fundamental questions of method and principle which in the view of the WSL have to be clarified before a firm basis can be estab- lished for a reconstructed International.

previous revolutionary classes the Unlike all working class is necessarily a self-conscious class.

sentence of the the opening This is why Transitional Programme - "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat® - is as objective and essential now as it was at the of the FI in 1938. As the founding conference unfolding of the Portuguese revolution - prelude and catalyst to revolutionary struggles in the whole of Europe - shows, the essential obstacle to the proletarian revolution is not any 'weakness' class as a material force within of the working and of treacherous history. but the grip cowardly political leadership upon it.

The revolution of the working class is different from social revolutions in this: that its purpose is all previous not to establish a new form of class society and new forms for the exploitation of one class by another, but to end mankind free to and for all, setting class society once consciously and collectively control its activity.

The working class revolution, therefore, has no need to political and ideological fictions, disguise its aims in as those of the religious or 'democratic formulae, such great bourgeois revolutions, which pretend to stand above classes and unite society. On the contrary such ideas, and the politics which they express, form the greatest brake international the political development of the upon working class and upon the independence and resolution of its leadership, the revolutionary party.

Stalinist tanks enforce Kremlin bureaucratic control of Czechosl bitterest hostility to all forms of class- must the go one country, of Popular of socialism in compromise, 'peaceful co-existence' and between class Frontism, of class. This standpoint requires the severest struggle within the working class movement itself for the material organ of revolutionary consciousness, the revolutionary party. This standpoint lies at the basis of the Transitional Programme of the FI, drafted to express the highest point in the historical experience of the world working class, and to expound clearly to the advanced sections of workers the historical need for a new revolutionary international, and policies of break with the counter-revolutionary for a Stalinism. It is not by chance that the nature and method of the Programme been thrown into Transitional has now question within the International Committee. The forces driving on the discussion and factional struggle are material ones. They are those of the international working class and other oppressed classes on the offensive in Europe, in the Middle East, in Indochina, in the United States itself - in fact in every continent of the globe.

The offensive of the working class is itself a response to the economic crisis of the imperialist system, in which the productive forces stagnate, the accumulation of capital is held back and disrupted. Deeper and deeper splits are forced open in the complex of arrangements - monetary and trade agreements, diplomatic and military alliances, "socialist" coalitions and other working agreements with leaderships - which were built up during the post-war boom. The economic crisis propels imperialism into world- wide attacks upon the working class, attempting to weaken and crush the workers and so create the political conditions and regimes necessary to restore profitability to the great banks, and to the national capitals monopolies and themselves. for this is the sharpening global framework The competition between national capitals now polarised in the three main capitalist blocs of Western Europe, Japan and From the necessity to increase productivity and the USA. to secure markets and raw material sources in a situation of intensifying internatioanl competition the bourgeoisie is increase the working class to its attack on driven internationally and increase the threat of imperialist war.

But the present period differs from the thirties in that the working class enters the struggle internationally from a defeats inflicted of strength. The on position savage workers must be seen in the context of a the Chilean movement of the working class which, on a world scale, presses forward undefeated.

of the USA to protect, in the The determination domination of the Latin American Chilean coup, its continent, to secure its markets and raw materials, in a situation of gathering economic crisis only succeeded in imposing the military junta on the Chilean workers - as a

NUMBER 1

12th NOVEMBER, 1975. f Czechoslovakia, 1968 result of the popular front demagogy of the Stalinists who, at every step, disarmed the working class and refused power in the face of American to consolidate workers' imperialism and its agents in the Chilean state machine.

has to be seen in the context of the Chile, however, victories in Indochina, the overthrow of the fascist regime the massive movements of the French and in Portugal, Italian workers in 1968-69. The French general strike in 1968 showed the undiminished revolutionary strength of the European working class. What began as a defensive action against inflation rapidly posed the question of state The continuation of bourgeois rule was only power. through the deliberate betrayals of the CP secured indicating clearly the unaltered character of Stalinism.

In Portugal - enfeebled and buffetted by brutal colonial wars on three fronts - fascism proved unable to hold back the working class and continue to impose a stable state structure. Portugal acts as the ante-chamber to the Spanish demonstrating the impossibuity and European revolutions, *smooth of return' to bourgeois parliamentary any democracy (a political regime which in any case never had better than a shaky presence in Portugal).

nature of the underlines the permanent Portugal international revolution, the inseparability of the struggle for democratic rights from that for working class power over the state and the economy. And in doing so - 10 a of Portuguese native situation where the profitability capital can only be restored through a massive defeat of the working class by the right - it places on the agenda all the questions of political leadership facing the Buropean working class. In the workers' states the distinct tasks of the political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy are posed. But the struggles are, fundamentally, one. The acute crisis of capitalist states both the Stalinist bureaucracies in the reflects and aggravates the antagonism between the class and national aspirations of the workers in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union itself.

same time the first forms taken by the At the political revolution - as in Czechoslovakia in 1968 * draw momentum from the offensive of and the strength proletariat under capitalism. The invasion or Frague was, in this sense, the necessary sequel to Stalinism's betrayal of the French working class in 1968.

Yet, on a world scale, defeats such as that in Chile are the exception, not the rule. Against Chile must be set the debacle of Kissinger and Zionist diplomacy, unable to contain the revolutionary movements in the Middie East misled though they are by bourgeois nationalists.

And above all against Chile must be set the victories ir the US puppet regimes, producing Indochina against a matter of weeks - radically within changed politica states of South East Asia. Ir alignments throughout the Vietnam and Cambodia the inability of the US ruling clas to continue support for Thieu and Lon Nol reflected th económic, political and military paralysis of the mos powerful Their inability te capitalist class in the world.

retrieve the situation in South East Asia reflected also th gathering social crisis within the USA itself.

In February, 300,000 workers, led by UAW delegation from Detroit, (a fact buried by the majority of the world press), marched in Washington against unemployment. The fact that Democratic politicians placed themselves at to head of the demonstration indicates not their strength but their weakness. Watergate was only the opener in a series

Lenin addresses the 3rd Congress of the Communist International formed in 1919 to provide revolutionary leadership Page 2 Lenin addresses the 3rd Congress of the Communist International fo for the international working class of scandals and revelations, almost unthinkable five years ago, which have gone right into the entrails of the most powerful capitalist state machine on earth, and its world- wide operations through the CIA and sister organisations.

While virtually every class struggle in the world comes home to roost in Washington, the US capitalist politicians are more deeply divided among themselves and mutually suspicious than ever before in the post-war period; and of the independent movement of the above all afraid American working class, both the organised workers and the youth and the blacks, on whom unemployment falls savagely. The inability of US imperialism to hold most even its own working class within capitalist political limits provides the conditions for building a party in the US with unprecedented strength within the working class itself.

offensive of the workers which It is this world-wide forms the material basis of the discussion and splits on the meaning and method of the Transitional Programme and build the Fourth International which have the struggle to the International Committee.

erupted within recently Within this basis defeats such as Chile are the exception not the rule. This offensive explains why, almost from the word go, Pinochet and the Chilean junta have been under pressure from the US and the other imperialist powers to present as respectable' a face as possible to the world.

Chile: right wing demonstrate against Allende's Popular Unity government. Faced with a working class which is, on a world scale, undefeated, Kissinger, Franco and the Kremlin are at one in disguise the essential lessons of Chile - the their desire to bankrupt and lethal nature of Popular Front politics and the treacherous role of Stalinism.

The offensive of the working class is the essential and specific element for understanding the split in the WRP.

At the point where one of the strongest sections of the WRP, and the only one with solid roots and work within the trade unions, faced the need to carry a fight for revolutionary programme into a major section of the working class, accumulated they came up against the limits, weaknesses and conservatism within the IC and the WRP. These limits and this conservatism, which within a space of months openly revealed themselves in the most blatant bureaucratism and as an obstacle to the building of a British section actually rooted in were themselves the of a complex product series battles within struggles, splits, theoretical and practical the world Trotskvist movement since the Second World War. ational formed in 1919 to provide revolutionary leadership For the most part the post-war development of the world movement took place in isolation from the masses, nd from experience of the cadre in revolutionary struggle Thus the • founded in 1953 in opposition to Pablo's attempt to liquidate the cadres of the FI into the Stalinist until recently isolated from the mass parties, was obliged to use the Transitional Programme movement, cut off from any as a propaganda instrument, mainly decisive leadership or influence within the mass movement.

The series of struggles, by and within the IC, to defend the Transitional Programme, to establish and develop the independence of the party, and to develop the world-view with its insistence on the antagonistic and of Marxism, crisis-ridden nature of imperialism, therefore had in general "theoretical' They abstract and apparently character. an involved relatively few comrades, only a handful of whom had any lengthy experience as members of a Trotskyist They were unable, with rare exceptions, to organisation. bring the 'abstract' issues over which they struggled and split, into living practice within the body of the working outcome of This isolation of the movement, material control, conditions impossibility to build an International which was truly democratic and centralist, with national sections effectively class, and struggling for the leadership of the working directed by a tested, experienced and stable politically international centre which they themselves had produced and elected. These conditions at the same time made almost impossible an objective study of the post-war history of the world movement, and of the main developments which had taken place in class relations on a world scale.

Worse, these conditions strengthened all those tend encies within the world movement which reflected the indirect influence of the enemy class and the bureaucracy: the resort to "timeless" generalities on the nature of imperialism which submerged the concrete situation and tasks of the sections, initiatives towards the bureaucracy which sometimes veered towards opportunism, the tend- ency towards clique politics, individual alliances and bureaucratism, theoretical instability and one-sidedness. coubled with a propaganda orientation to most political effective operation of the IC (the activities and the agreed) as a 'federation' because only tacitly worse, agreement international stage only by acting on the between the leaderships of the national sections, and without bringing the membership of the sections into the discussion on international differences.

But these conditions have now changed. The objective situation is now ripe for building sections of the FI in many countries, for renewing the theoretical equipment of Trotskyism, and for taking up the study of the move- to draw from it and weld post-war period, ment in the together all its strengths, and to break from its ossification and weaknesses. This task is a material one. It cannot be achieved in an orderly or 'rational' way.

of national cadres, In particular the development struggling for existence and leadership within their own of the international working class, cannot await sections the clarification of all theoretical questions, or the exist- ence of even a rudimentary international centre based on the struggle for the continuity of Trotskyism.

This is no accidental matter It exoresses the fact that an effective.

stable and democratic International can only be built on the hasis of a theoretical rearming of the Trotskyist move- TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 12th November 1975 ment, and with human, material and financial resources which can only be provided by the development of national sections. This theoretical rearming can itself only take place through carrving the existing theoretical and programmatic streneths of Trotskyism into the body of the working class, in the building of the national sections, and testing the 'theoretical' positions developed, in the practice of the class struggle itself. In confronting this task the WL occupies a crucially important pesition. It has been born from a briet, but extremely rich, struggle against the liquidationism, sect- arianism and bureaucratic methods of the WRP leadership This struggle was only possible because the WRP opposition was based on experienced roots, narrow but nonetheless real and tempered, within the organised working class. And the WSL, in breaking from the WRP, expresses the practical offensive of the international working and theoretical class. That is why we are able and determined to confront and answer the essential questions of post-war develop- ments and the history of the Trotskyist movement which for decades were neglected or buried within the IC. We be able to resolve or even recognise all shall not, initially, the essential problems. possess the material and But we theoretical basis to look the world in the eye.

This document, adopted by the Founding Conference of the WSL, on October 18th - 19th, 1975, is intended to form the basis for discussions on an international level both with political groupings and with individuals, as an for the initial towards agreement on perspectives step rebuilding of the Fourth International as the World Party of the Proletarian Revolution.

has therefore, a wholly practical purpose, and it takes up theoretical questions only insofar as they appear necessary to this. For this reason it is necessary for the detail the introduction to spell out in Isightly more objectives and methods of the document, and the discussion which it is intended to open.

The political task facing us in this discussion is not to describe but actively to reconstruct the continuity of Trotskyism. This means starting from the concrete problems of completing the of building and developing the WSL, break with the methods of the WRP leadership, and of carrying the methods of the Transitional Programme most advanced layers of the British working into the class. But this itself requires a strudy of the main develop- ments and turning-points in the history of the FI since the war. This study is no contemplation: it is the study of our will appear, in large and weaknesses. It own strenghts part, as the story of small, isolated cadres arguing and splitting over events on which they had little or no direct influence, seeking a road to the working class from which historical development itself isolated them, and engaged sometimes in Byzantine manoeuvres against one another.

But what gives unity and continuity to this struggle Trotskyism: the only political is the theoretical basis of tendency in the world which fights for the leadership of the working class as a revolutionary force, and which class analysis of the main bases itself upon a materialist, world workers force within the counter-revolutionary movement - Stalinism. This is what makes Trotskyism - of political tendency - the continuity and other no This is why the betrayal of the Marxism in our epoch. German working class to Hitler by the Stalinists represented a turning point for Trotsky, and why from it he began the struggle to establish a new, revolutionary international - the Fourth International.

defeat provided living proof, visible to The German the most advanced sections of workers internationally, that degenerated Third International had Stalinism and the gone over definitively to class-collaboration and counter- is to consciously base ourselves on, revolution. Our task and develop, the theoretical basis from which the struggle for the FI began. At the same time this discussion must recognise that the majority of comrades within the WSL (and internation- ally) are not familiar with even the main outlines of the post-war history of the FI. (The recent publication of past and WRP

SWP

documents and correspondence by the case the problem slightly, but neither is intended to open a living discussion on the matter, and both are - to say the least - extremely partial.)

part of this document. The Fourth Inter The main aational 1944-75, therefore has the task of outlining this in an intelligible way, and it therefore takes the history form of a more or less chronological narrative. At each of the critical points of development, the document draws a "balance sheet' of the essential gains and retreats, not from the standpoint of 'passing judgment' in retrospect, but in order to extract every possible strength from the history of the movement. The need for intelligibility also dictates the basic form of the account. In general, the positions and activities of France May-June 1968 - showed undiminished strength of European working class

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 12th November 1975 the sections and tendencies involved are summarised, rather than quoted as extracts from the original documents.

Most essential referred in footnotes, quotations are together with references to the documents in their most accessible form of publication. The document ends with Conclusions. This section has the main purpose of setting out the elements of our political basis for international discussion towards the building of the Fourth International. It also sets out the political and organisational initiatives which the WSL will take to promote discussion on this political basis in the world movement. The document, therefore necessarily takes an outline position on the present state of world politics and the main tasks of Trotskyism within this. It is important that the discussion focus on this overall assessment and the international perspectives flowing from it, rather than on the details of organisational proposals internationally. Once there is agreement on the essential content of our political perspectives, a good deal of flexibility will be both necessary and possible in carrying the discussion into the world movement.

The most important political element is Stalinism - the main vehicle for bourgeois ideology and the strangulation of revolutionary movements on a world scale.

As the account shows, the main of the FI since the CrIses Second Worls War have turned, often in an explicit way, on this question. This reflects the fact that the struggle of Trotskyism for leadership within the international labour movement is, first and foremost, a struggle against Stalinism and its influence.

Stalinism is a new form of bureaucracy within the labout movement, parasitic upon the conquest of state power by the working class. On a world scale it reflects and reinforces the limitation and betrayal of the struggle to take and hold onto state power. The Stalinist bureaucracy.

which usurped the Soviet working class in the name of 'socialism in country, is the material, social one crystalisation of class-compromise on a world scale. This and remains. the was, central plank in the theoretical equipment of Trotskyism. But world Stalinism has undergone enormous changes since the foundation of the FI. Under Stalinist regimes capitalist social relations have been overthrown in Eastern Europe, mainland China and other countries of South East Asia. This was a development not anticipated by Trotsky before his assassination in 1940. Trotsky foresaw that the war would result either in the destruction of the workers' (and, state in the Soviet Union with that, of the bureaucratic caste in the form in which it had gtown up), Athens, December 1944 - members of the workers militia or in the political revolution in the Soviet Union, with the working class cleansing its own state of the bureaucracy which had politically expropriated it.

In the neither of event, these things happened. Stalinism retained its hold on the Soviet Union and. from 1948 on, overthrew the coalitions with bourgeois parties and reformists in Eastern Europe (apart from Yugoslavia), expropriated the main means of production and brought the land under state control.

Simultaneously the Chinese Communist Party, leading the People's Army and the mass movements of thre peasantry, and going in practice beyond Stalin's wishes and advanced southwards during 1947-49, driving instructions. Chiang Kai-shek's forces before them. By the summer of 1949 they held effective military and political power in the whole of mainland China. Only somewhat later, in the early 1950's did they undertake an uneven process of expropriation of the capitalists, completing the native abolition capitalist and pre-capitalist relations of production. These social overturns were one side of international developments in the immediate post-war period. But they took place largely within the framework of an international settlement between Stalinism and imperialism, the kernel of which was Stalin's agreement to tise the Communist Parties to strangle the proletarian revolution in Western Europe, to partition Europe as a whole and to dismember Germany and its working class.

In France, Italy and Greece the working class stood in a position, from 1945 onwards, to launch struggles for state power under extremely favourable conditions.

Stalinism was the key force in decapitating these struggles. In France Stalin's political servants formed and Italy the essential 'anti-fascist' of coalitions props with the bourgeois politicians and the reformists, and in Greece Stalin abandoned the Communist-led resistance fighters to the mercies of the monarchists, backed by the US and British Armies. The precondition of the social overturns in Eastern Europe therefore, was the destruction of the revolution in Western and Southern Europe, and the wholly deliberate collaboration of Stalin with Churchill Roosevelt, and Truman in restoring bourgeois rule where it was in a state of collapse. And the later social overturns in Eastern Europe, when they were carried out, were not at all part of a coherent Stalinist strategy, but an empirical response to the Cold War, coupled with the impossibility of maintain- ing stable military and political control in Eastern Europe without abolishing capitalist property relations and the coalitions which defended them.

In fact, in an uneven and ad hoc way, Stalin turned directly from the reconstruction of bourgeois states in Eastern Europe - as he had promised the imperialist Yalta and powers Potsdam - to the eradication of bourgeois property and parties.

These complex developments between the end of the war and the early 1950's demanded - and still demand - of the Trotskyist movement a major theoretical development.

What was essentially new in the contours of world Stalinism, and how could the fight for movement independent parties which could wrest the political lead- ership from Stalinism and reformism? Under conditions of from isolation the masses, and deprived by Stalin's assassin of Trotsky's theoretical leadership, this challenge was not easy to meet or even, sometimes, to recognise.

The weaknesses of the movement in face of the new conditions express themselves in two main forms. On the one hand there was a tendency to succumb to impressions of the events in Eastern Europe and, later, in China and liquidate Asia, and to the basis of Trotskyism by attributing to Stalinism a new revolutionary role.

This tendency erupted, in 1952-53, in Michel Pablo's attempt to liquidate the Trotskyist sections themselves into the Stalinist parties, and it continues into our own time in the tail-ending and opportunism of the Pabloite organisa- tions in relation to Stalinism. If Pablo's attempt had succeeded, there would be no Trotskyist movement today.

The weakness of the movement expressed itself also ers militia fight using captured weapons and helmets.

opposite in apparently falling back way - upon "Trotskyist orthodoxy', and an inability to qualitatively develop the perspectives of the movement to grasp the new conditions. This was, from its inception, the weakness of the International Committee.

Its principled resistance to Pablo's liquidationism was based upon the correct - insistence that Pablo's conclusions in effect (and in practice) denied that the Fourth International had an objective, historical reason for and were in contradiction with the founding existing, positions of the movement.

defence of 'orthodoxy" also expressed But the the inability to make the necessary theoretical and political - to break with orthodoxy' developments through its objective development. This weakness lay at the basis of the SWP's unprincipled reunification' with the Pabloites in 1962. and. the subsequent degeneration of the WR and OCI. But for all these weaknesses, it is essential to realise that it was only within the Trotskyist movement that a of dialectical materialist analysis of the developments world Stalinism could be, and was, fought for. The 'Russian question', over which Trotsky and Cannon fought Burnham and Schachtman in 1939-40, had now become the Polish question, the Yugoslav question, the Chinese question. Those who departed from Lenin's analysis of imperial- and who credited the Stalinist ruling a new form of class society, have been forced to the crudest Page 3 Stalin toasts Churchill in Moseow 1944, one of the meetings to divide Europe into peaceful 'spheres of influence. and most ramshackle empiricism. A recent example fron the British state capitalists demonstrates the point. In par one of the History of the International Socialists, leadin IS member lan Birchall poses the question as follows: Up to his death Trotsky had always argued tha Russia, despite Stalin's crimes, remained a worker though a degenerate one; he rejected the vie state, that Russia had reverted to capitalism, or that a ne form of class society had grown up there. By th however, a new element entered th late forties, debate. Following the great carve-up of the world a the end of the Second World War, Russia had take over a number of countries in Eastern Europe an established regimes there which were becoming mor or-less identical to the set-up in Russia. The questio that arose was - were these too workers states?

not, how come they seemed to function in exactl same way as Russia? If they were, then didn the that mean you could have a workers' state withou a workers' revolution and without an independer revolutionary party? It was in this situation that a grouping within th British Trotskyist movement developed the theor that Russia, and the East European states wei "state capitalist. The main theoretical elaboratio was the work of Tony Cliff.' (International Socialis March 1975, pp. 16-17) The logic of this position, as we well know, is that th working class is not the fundamental revolutionary class o modern society, and that the struggle for a revolutionar of the working class party is premature by an entir historical epoch. The conclusion of this logic - a rejectio of the basis of everything Marx, Lenin and Trotsky fough for - is every day practically expressed in the existence an activity of IS. Ironically, it is only the openly counter-revolutionar role of Stalinism that prevents the IS leadership givin explicit theoretical expression to this logic and convertin themselves into a 'jacobin' faction at the flank of the nei Stalinist 'ruling class'.

But what is most striking about Birchall's passage is it "worship of the accomplished fact crass empiricism, its and its unswerving adhesion to formal logic. In fairness to the Pabloites it should be said that they have seldom - i ever - stooped to such a theoretical level. This reflects naturally, not any inherent theoretical strength of th Pabloites - they have always been over-ready to curtsey ir the direction of the 'facts' - but on the contrary, the fac that they have remained formally and verbally tied to th fundamental Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism as a bureau cratic caste, not a new class within world history.

Let us look again at Birchall's logic. It goes as follows "The Stalinists have abolished capitalist social relations i Eastern Europe. Only a new ruling class can overthrow given set of property relations. Therefore, the Stalinists ar ruling class' . One fact, one assumption, and th a new syllogism is complete. By taking one element of develop ments after the Second World War, wrenching it out of it material forcing it into the straightjacket o context, formal logic, and then generalising from his conclusion Birchall arrives at a wholly false and reactionary position which only congenital divorce between theory and the as IS prevents hin practice in centrist groupings such carrying to its 'logical' conclusion.

Applying the same "logic' to the events which followe the failed coup of March 11th. in Portugal, Birchall coul with equal plausibility as follows: The have argued Socialist Party supports the expropriation of the banks which is a revolutionary step. Counter-revolutionary politicians are opposed to the revolutionary moves of th working class. Therefore, the Portuguese Socialist Party i not a counter-revolutionary leadership.

Very IS will, in the future possibly the group Bolshevik on the Secon explicitly revise the position But that is not our main concern here International. The point of introducing Birchall's 'theory' is to highligh the crucial importance of method, of the struggle fo theoretical development on the basis of the world-view o dialectical materialism, in the post-war history of th Fourth International. The continuity of this struggle run through the Trotskyist movement, and nowhere else. An

Page 4 within this theoretical struggle the biggest problem has been that of the development of world Stalinism - the major counter-revolutionary force within the world labour movement.® At this point, to end the Introduction, we should set out in outline the standpoint from which, in our view, the post-war developments in Stalinism should be judged.

Stalinism is a new form of labour bureaucracy in two essential respects: it rests upon the international movement of the working class, and upon the conquest of power by the class in Russia in 1917, and the smashing there of the the dictatorship of the capitalist state, replacing it by proletariat which only later tell victim to bureaucratic degeneration. In both these ways it differs from the bureaucracy of the Second International.

It is not a new social class, and cannot act indepen- dently of the movement of the international social classes.

It is, on the contrary, the main vehicle of mediation, conciliation and compromise between the social classes internationally, It is an international political formation to a much higher degree than the parties of the old Second International have ever been.

Even in its worst degeneration Stalinism retains this inverted internationalism reflecting the fact that the October Revolution was first and foremost a huge qualit tive gain for the international working class, and that Stalinism is historically tied to the social relations first set up by October, and later extended to other nation states.

internationalism' But this very of Stalinism, together with the fact that it rests on the gains of a successful revolution the conquest of state power - can give Stalinism a measure of independence of the social classes within a particular nation state. Unlike the social democracy, Stalinism settles its relations with imperialism on a world scale, not within the confines of the national society These relations with imperialism are dialectical to the core - relations both of compromise and betrayal, and of the harshest antagonism, in that Stalinism is tied to the existence and the limitation - of socialised relations of and to permit their desturction would be to production. destrov Stalinism itself. Only insofar as this dialectical and international social basis of Stalinism is consciously grasped -tis fundamental to Trotsky's own analysis of and Soviet development in The Revolution Betrayed - is it possible to analyse post war history objectively and concretely. From this standpoint the fact that in some countries - where the capitalist state machine was greatly weakened or collapsing - the Stalinists have overturned capitalist social their general relations, is no more inconsistent with character as a counter-revolutionary political formation than is the fact that social democratic leaders will on fight for reforms or claims within occasion wage particular state or industry, or against the destruction of the basic rights of the working class.

Thus the social overturns in Eastern Europe - whether carried out with active support from the working class Yugoslavia) or solely by the Stalinist (as in apparatus backed by the Red Army (as in Hungary) - formed part of a Europe-wide settlement between Stalinism and imperial- ism which was counter-revolutionary to the core. At its heart lay the decapitation of the revolution in Western Europe on Stalin's orders. And far from helping, the European settlement and Stalinist policy as a whole, formed a hindrance to the Chinese revolution.

The theoretical standpoint set out above is only a sketch. As we shall see, it is not one plucked out of the air, but one which attempts to distil, build on and develop the theoretical gains of the Trotskyist movement's history.

We shall return to it; it is set out here so that comrades may bear it in mind in reading the document as a whole.

of state capitalism mentioned by The alternative "theory" Birchall that of the restoration of the capitalist class rather than the emergence of a new "state-capitalist' class - is not dealt with here, Birchall's argument is quoted here to illustrate a methodolog ical point rather than as a prelude to a detailed refutation of all the variants of state canitalism.

Within a year of the founding conference (Paris, September 1938) at which it adopted the Transitional Programme, the Fourth International faced the severest tests of both its policies and its organisational and human resources - the Second World War. And, less than a year after the outbreak of war (September 1939), the International had its main theoretical and political leader, Leon Trotsky, murdered by Stalin's agent (August 1940). But though its cadre was not large, and was almost everywhere subject to harrassment by the police or the GPU, the Inter- national entered the war with great political strengths: In the last months of his life Trotsky had led the majority of the largest section - the American SWP - in a deep-going struggle with the revisionist tendency led by James Burnham and Max Schachtman. What was at issue was the class character of the Soviet Union, the political nature of Stalinism and, beneath these, the method and world-view of Marxism. The factional struggle in the SWP, which lasted from September 1939 to April 1940, was precipitated by the speedily followed by Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939, the partition of Poland and Stalin's invasion of Finland (December 1939). These events unleashed a tidal wave of "patriotic" and anti-Soviet hysteria throughout the bour- "democracies"" geois and. of course. a massive disorien- tation of the membership of their Stalinist parties.

Politically, the SWP minority reflected what was apitulation to bourgeois public opinion, and a refusal to Trotsky opposition abandoned any struggle for a dialectical under- of class antagonisms on an international scale, standing enduring gains of the October reflécted both in the Revolution and the treacherous zig zags of Soviet foreign policy. Trotsky took the lead in fighting them patiently 'to the and answering fully each of the roots (1), taking up theoretical and political points raised, and independently same time the complex and readily- analysing at the developing world situation. The lessons of the SWP were taken into the international leadership and the other sections, and as a result the International was equipped politically to fight for the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union, and - what became especially important after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, with the consequent turn of all the Stalinist parties of the 'Allied' states to the most open class-collaboration with their 'own' bourgeoisie - for independent, revolutionary policies of the working class within the labour movement.

The struggle was no easy one. It is important for the to grasp under what harsh the 1970's Trotskyists of conditions the founding cadres of our movement were fight for internationalism and how well, in obliged to general, they stood up to the test.

In occupied Europe the French Trotskyists publishe a total of 73 issues of their clandestine paper La Verit of their theoretical several issues (Truth), as well as journal. This took place under the noses of the Gestapo, Communist partisans were welcomed into Italian towns with the def revolution. with the constant threat of treachery from the Stalinist leaderships of the main resistance organisations. Many lives were lost in the struggle for Trotskyist international- ism during the war. Nine leaders were executed in Holland in April 1942, others in Austria and Germany itself.

In Belgium a group including Abraham Leon, the young author of the only comprehensive. Marxist work on the Jewish question, was arrested in 1941, and died in the concentration camps. In Greece, dozens of comrades were arrested by the fascists and many of them executed in 1943. The veteran dying of tuberculosis, Trotskyist Pantelis Pouliopaulos, appealed to the Italian soldiers of the firing squad, so that they mutinied and refused to fire, forcing the officers to carry out the executions themselves. (2) In France, also, dozens of Trotskyists were arrested and many of them They included the leader of the French section died. Marcel Hic, who died in Buchenwald. (3) Despite the persecutions, the French section played a central role in drawing together a European Secretariat in and in organising in February 1944 a conference of 1943, in occupied France itself, with sections the European representatives from France, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Spain. (4) They also published in collaboration with German France in German Trotskyists in propaganda papers including Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier), aimed forces. with the German occupation at fraternisation German servicemen and an unknown At least thirty TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday 12th November 1975 the capitalists and Stalinists alike for supporting the strike war, and for their the latter part of the movement in opposition to the bureaucrats' policy of 'national unity'; several were jailed. In the USA, eighteen leaders of the SWP were jailed in 1941 for their opposition to the war policy. In India and Ceylon groups sympathetic to Trotskyism opposed the Stalinist policies of collaboration with British imperialism, and several of their leaders were imprisoned.

In the South of Vietnam, the Trotskyists commanded In August 1945, following the a considerable following.

collapse of Japan over a hundred workers' and farmers' committees held power in and around Saigon. But in September, the Vietnamese section was almost destroyed members and dozens of its leading killed on the insturctions of the Stalinists. (6) In China, during and after the war, the Trotskyists were persecuted both by the Kuomintang and the Stalinist forces In the labour camps of the Soviet Union itself, supporters of the Left Opposition who had survived the terror continued their opposition to Stalin's policies and methods. In occupied Palestine Trotskyists maintained their opposition to the creation of a Zionist state, and for a united Arab revolutionary socialist movement.

It might be thought that under these severe conditions 'theoretical questions would get pushed into the back- ground. But the opposite was the case. In occupied "How Europe the main questions that to arose was clearly pose the need for a working class struggle for socialism; while the resistance movements supporting German: imperialism, which had generally a against nationalist and 'democratic! political line?"

Unity of the French movement was only achieved at in February 1944. At it was the European conference thrashed out agreement between the two main grotipings?

the POI (International Workers' Party), which had begun to adapt politically to French nationalism and de Gaulle, and the CCI (International Communist Committee) which position in relation to the had adopted sectarian nationalism-dominated resistance movements. Out of their unity was formed the PCI, forerunner of the OCI.

"Theses" adopted explicitly pointed out that The "The POI leadership deemed progressive the struggle of its did not, right from the start, separate own bourgeoisie; itself from Gaullism; and was satisfied to clothe the latter "revolutionary' phraseology" "under , whereas in more guise of safeguarding the heritage of Marxism-Leninism, the CCI obstinately refused to make any distinction between the nationalism of the bourgeoisie and the mass resistance movement." It was on this basis that the European Secretariat was 'Appeal' to the European working class able to launch an in July 1944 (immediately after the Normandy landings) which pointed prophetically to the dangers arising from ith the defeat of fascism - but Stalinist policy opposed between Stalinism and the great the collaboration imperialist powers: today, at the decisive moment when the power of the bourgeoisie in Europe, undermined by five vears of war, is crumbling, the Communist of the Parties enter the bourgeois governments Gaulles and Bonomis, putting their authority at the service of the exploiters The 'allied" imperialists, the Appeal warned, *propose Europe in a new Versailles Treaty, dis- to Balkanise drawing more artificial frontiers.

membering Germany, opposing all friendship between peoples, whipping up antagonisms and national hatreds". (7)

CONTINUED IN NEXT EDITION

See In Defence of Marxism, and J.P. Cannon Struggle for the 1. Proletarian Party. See Quatrime Internationale, June-July 1946, and memorte in Qi, May-July, 1950, pp.12-13.

See memorie in QI, August-October 1950.

3. See Fourth International March and May 1945 for accounts in the Theses of the Conference: Theses on Liquidation of World War Il and the Revolutionary Upsurge.

5. For details of the work of the Trotskvists in occupied Europe see FI. September-October 1945, and Lutte des Trotskyates Terreur Nazi"

PCI.

1945, Report on the FT since the Outbreak: See Lucien, Quelques etapes de la revolution au Nam-Bo du 6. no.41 et sep) Nouvelle Vietnam (OL September October 1947, Dp.41 et seg.), Noelle etone de contre-revolution et de Indochine, (Resolution du Comite central du- groupe communiste internationaliste vietnamten en France) in QI, Nov-Dee 1947. For the fate of the Trotskyists in Tonkin, see Qi brief newe son! Tan-For 1049