Trotskyism Today no. 2

TROTSKYISM

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL -

PROBLEMS AND TASKS

Chinese troops going into action in support of North Korea This document, adopted at the Founding Conference of the WS 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 Fourth International. By confronted in rebuilding the of the history of the post-war beginning an analysis Trotsk vist movement, and centrally, of the problems posed the document by the development of post-war Stalinism, 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.

PART TWO

At the end of the war the European Secretariat ioined vith the International Secretariat (which had been trans ferred to the United States at the outbreak of war) to the spring of organise an International Conference, in 1946, from which it elected new international leadership bodies charged with preparations for the Second World Congress (which took place in 1948). In Europe Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel (Germain) were two of the leading figures. The International Conference of 1946 was shortly Convention followed National the SWP's 12th. by (November 1946), which adopted Cannon's "Theses on the and Revolution'. (8) Both these bodies American especially the SWP convention while formally insisting of character the continued counter-revolutionary on in retrospect can be seen to have seriously Stalinism, Stalinism's extent which underestimated the to the collaboration with imperialism was already creating conditions for the lengthy post-war economic boom in Europe and America. The SWP "Theses' in particular, themselves on basing the militancy of the US working class in the immediate post-war period (SWP membership doubled in less than a year, to just over 2000), and on the assumption of an incipient economic crisis and revolutionary struggles in class as taking the Europe. saw the American working lead in revolutionary struggles in the immediate future. (9) But those - such as Michael Banda in his obituary of Cannon (Workers Press, October 1974) - who retrospect- and "mystical "hodge-podge" denigrate them ively as a should recall that conception of the US working class the situation in Europe was not finally "stabilised' until, at the earliest 1948, with the betrayal of the Italian the hands of the Stalinists, and the general strike at "boom' did not really get under way until the economic the Cold War and the early 1950's. And, from 1946 on, nuclear arms build-up took over from we short post-war honeymoon between the USSR and the imperialist powers.

The post-war development of the International, up to the split with Pablo in 1953, must be treated as a whole. It is wholly false to pick out, as the latter-day historians of the WRP do, certain weaknesses of a particular moment in order to blame Cannon as being responsible for Pabloism from the beginning, and to leave the present WRP leadership with a reputation as infallible, consistently struggling for Marxism all the time.

Such an approach, seeing the development of revision- ism in the International as the consequence of this or that particular form of bourgeois outlook, or as the result of the fixedly reactionary character of this or that individual leader, leaves out the active side of all consciousness, and especially of Marxist theory. It overlooks the fact that an and theoretically unseasoned isolated, partly immature, international leadership was struggling - with an inadequate grasp of Marxism - to understand and develop a strategy for events of enormous complexity and novelty, which to this day have not been properly grasped from a Marxist

SLE BOOL.

FIGHT

theoretically, politically and They had to fight, anything at all. To approach mategies as though Marxism and revisionism (or, as in the "truth' were ready-made and WRP's version outset bury the very stage from the is to on the from the of making theoretical gains today possibility, history of the International, and to make it impossible either to present the main factual developments truthfully or to arrive at any accurate assessment of the politica groupings and tendencies that have come out of those struggles. "history", Trotskyism and is why the WRP's This apart from its numerous incidental falsities, Revisionism, starting the with the bathwater by throws out the baby. when (after the Third World Congress in account only 1951) the International was in an acute state of theoretical and organisational crisis and paralysis. Only by tracing the roots of that crisis is it possible to resolve it and overcome its results. 'vices of Cannon' theory of Pabloism, now The espoused by the WRP leadership, is the sour and reaction- of the weak side of the International ary oftspring from its very start - the tendency to return to Committee was something that 'orthodoxy" as though Marxist theory could be put in a pot and 'preserved" against revisionism, world simultaneously changes round our ears.

while the From the very end of the war, the International was in a state of more-or-less continual theoretical disorientation, being overthrown in major continually its perspectives need for reorganisation, the events, and the respects by building of the sections and the need to turn to major new continually cutting across the developments, reassess and renew its positions.

Thus, in the discussion on economic prospects immed- 5p

NUMBER 2

26th NOVEMBER, 1975

THEORETICAL SUPPLEMENT

TO SOCIALIST PRESS

iately after the war, underconsumptionist positions were about some of the - leading American widely put theoreticians (10) and had even found their way into the "Theses'. These, like the incorrect political SWP's 1946 assessments of both Europe and America, are not taken up before a new area of discussion took up the energies of movement; the problem of the Eastern European "buffer' countries occupied by the Red Army.

There was, of course, a degree of "pragmatism" in the way that some Trotskyists approached developments in these states, and the theoretical problems raised by them from the. very beginning. But the main fountain-head of 'pragmatism' was in the policies pursued by Joseph Stalin Soviet bureaucracy. They behaved just and the pragmatically - and, when seen in detail, just as erratically - as they did when Stalin signed his ill-fated 'non-agression pact with Hitler just before the war

'NEXT STEP'

When Stalin agreed the partition of the European with imperialism at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences he did not (as numerous subsequent revelations testify) proceed on the basis of any prepared plan for the social reorganisation of Eastern On the contrary, Europe his goals were strictly limited to the next step, arising immediately from the near destruction of the Soviet Union (and the Stalin bureaucracy with it) in the war. Trusting none of the imperialist states, the bureaucracy resolved to position by placing Eastern protect their own military and placing it out of Europe under the Red Army bounds' to imperialist armies.

A secondary, but important aim was to use th introl of Eastern Europe - together with some reparations rom the part of Germany reserved to the western allies economic recon to extract part of the means for Soviet or tenth, but Class interests came not third struction. nowhere at all in Stalin's calculations at the end of the war. The Red Army became the vehicle for reconstructing bourgeois states, with governments formed by coalitions of Stalinists and bourgeois politicians. In a number of cases Hungary where adequate and acceptable East Germany, bourgeois political formations could not be found, Stalinist agents operated in disguise to form and build such parties to act as their partners in the coalitions.

As the Red Army advanced through Eastern Europe 1 was met (or anticipated) in many areas by mass uprising of workers and peasants. In some areas this reached the general revolutionary upsurge - in Czecho- point ola slovakia as the Red Army approached, in Rumania and Bulgaria in the summer of 1944, in the strongest working class concentrations of Germany and Austria even.

In all cases, Stalinist policy was to contain and put down these movements, never to ally with them or to The reconstruction of the bourgeois states.

build them. and the armed power of the Red Army were the two these instruments which Stalin used to deal with main and props on which he revolutionary movements rested in the early period, up to 1947 important nationalisations took In this period, too, but not as part of a systematic plan. The reasons Por them were various. In soyse plants, occupied by the part of the was immediately workers, 'nationalisation" drive against revolution, taking the economic and political power out of the hands of the workers and transferring it - where the owners were cases to the state. either German or had fled to the west - production could only be continued by a state take-over.

Backing up both these factors was the need for the state to intervene widely to ensure that large amounts of In some cases esources got shipped to the Soviet Unior specially in East Germany, whole plants were contiscate and their nationalised, moveable equipment shipped off wholesale to the Soviet Union This period of stabilisation in East Europe continues right into of capitalist regimes 1947 - i.e. until well after the opening of the Cold War by American and British imperialism, in late 1946.

of the regimes The definitely bourgeois character highlighted by the fact that the monarchy was retained in Rumania, where Stalinists drank a daily toast to Michael and the 'radical' leader of a peasant party was even jailed for anti-monarchical "activities". (11) The 1948 World Congress of the Fourth Internationa continued to regard the Eastern European states as capital on a basis that ruled out the bureaucratic ist, though 'the then overturns that were even under way: destruction of capitalism (in the "buffer' states) can take place only as a result of the revolutionary mobilisation ol the elimination the special forms o masses, and exploitation introduced the bureaucracy in these by countries. (12)

NATIONALISATION

As the nationalisations were driven through and th bourgeois coalitions overthrown in Hastern Hurope me prompted a search for 'criteria' of when a state was or wa not a workers' state: according to whether or not politic frontiers with the Soviet Union were abolished; accordin to the level of nationalisation; the capacity for planning the nationalisation of agriculture Mandel was the leading theoretician who kept insistin continued overlea

Page 2 Mandel that while on the road to 'structural assimilation', these states were not yet workers' states. Mandel's most central objection, though, lay not in any of the particular set of "criteria' he put forward at a particular time, but in the fact that it appeared from the events as they developed that to designate them "workers' states' would contradict Lenin's theory of the bourgeois state - that capitalism be abolished by the working class, under could only revolutionary leadership, forcibly destroying the existing state apparatus and replacing it by its own.

In due course, though, an empirical recognition of 'the facts' was forced on the movement in the resolutions of the Third World Congress (1951) which admitted that It has turned out that the revolutionary action of the masses needed by the bureau- is not an indispensible condition cracy to be able to destroy capitalism in exceptional...

circumstances. (13) In such an admission, though hemmed 'exceptional circum- round with qualifications about stances' one can already see the seeds of the disorientation that was to lead, within two years, to Pablo's liquidation- the independent ism, the to subordinate pressure policies and organisations of the working revolutionary class to Stalinism. One can see too why the SWP, in justifying its going over to the Pabloites in 1962-3, was forced to explicitly defend the resolutions of the Third World Congress and the discussion leading up to them. After all, the empirical recognition of the 'fact that Castro's Cuba had become a workers' state was to play essentially the same role in the SWP's passage over to Pabloism.

sharply attacked For this reason, the SWP leadership Tim Wolforth - supporting the general line of the British and French sections of the IC in 1963 - when he attempted to go back to the methodological premises put forward in the 'buffer zone' discussion, identify in the the crystalisation of Pablo's World Congress resolutions essential direction. (14) specific, factor which another, But there was the Third discussion which led up to intervened in the Congress - though in the light of 25 years of World experience it can seem less important than it appeared at the time. Hardly had the delegates from the Second World Congress returned home in April 1948 than came Tito's with Stalin (June 1948). This was to be the main element on which Pablo seized in developing his line that "under pressure of the masses' Stalinist parties could cease to be Stalinist and lead revolutions.

Immediately, the Fourth International responded by sending an open letter (15) appealing for fraternal ties with Yugoslav CP, and the French section, in particular, the organising young people to go to Yugo- became active in slavia to help in economic reconstruction. Much as the SWP was to encourage trips to Cuba in the 1960's.

Pablo received more-or-less free political rein on the During 1949 and 1950 numerous question of Yugoslavia. under his name (and that of public articles appeared Pierre Frank) sympathetically analysing the the main evolution of Tito. In the summer of political resolution adopted by the International Executive of April was published. It contained the Committee following astonishing passages: the greatest interest in the XI. But what presents Yugoslav affair is the progressive evolution of the Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) itself, which has resulted from the split - an evolution which potent- ially contains the greatest opportunity for the world workers' movement to be reborn on the platform of revolutionary Marxism since the Russian Revolution'.

*Confirming the assessment made our International since the Yugoslav affair broke that the split of a Stalinist party with the Kremlin with it a differentiation with necessarily brings respect to Stalinism, which in certain conditions can the YCP has show itself as eminently progressive, followed a course which, barely two years after the break, surpasses the most optimistic prognosis.

achieved by the YCP, *The ideological progress achievements in Yugoslavia, and the corresponding of revolutionary demonstrate the depth the movement which has carried this party to power, 'XI. The general direction of the evolution of the YCP and of Yugoslavia is a more and more clear and powerful affirmation (in the realm of ideas and political and economic organisation of the in the country of the eminently democratic essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which carries with it bureaucratic determined struggle against degeneration. the extent that the CP perseveres on this *To itself of ridding the last ideological vestiges of Stalinism. rediscovers the organic link between the development of the Yugoslav revolution and the world revolution which requires the re- grouping of revolutionary forces on a world scale, it will become the most powertul springboard from which the decisive assault against Stalinism in crisis will set out. would also favour the *Such evolution an organisation of the new communist opposition which is mounting in the Stalinist parties and with which it is possible to envisage at this time the construction in the future, of Marxist-revolutionary near formations in a whole series of countries.

"Resolution on the crisis of Stalinism and the revolution", Yugoslav developments of the in Quatrieme Internationale, May-June 1950.

A special article in the same issue drew the attention of the cadre internationally to the fact that the IEC had: 'voted.. a resolution, according to which, following the of the proletarian revolution, there exists in victory Yugoslavia a workers' state and a regime of the dictatorship of the proletariat'. (ibid, p.68) At the same time the sections were organising 'united defend Yugoslavia, front' distributing the campaigns to of leading literature Titoists, the French section was organising 'work brigades' to Zagreb, and so on. But above all it is clear, from the passage quoted, that all the essential which Pablo, was within two years, political ingredients by to demand the liquidation of the Trotskyist cadres into the Stalinist ranks, are already present and being publicly put forward as the line of the International in early 1950.

Third World One outcome of all this was that the Congress resolutions separated the analysis of Yugoslavia from the rest of the 'buffer zone' even going as far as to have two separate resolutions. While, in the rest of Europe the overturns had been carried out bureaucratically, the Yugoslav CP credited (very retrospectively) with was having 'ceased to be a semi-Stalinist party and evolved as a the revolutionary masses, party goslavia was described as having undergary carried to power a 'victorious proletarian revolution', of which the first key formation of the provisional watershed in the came go3nment by the Communist-led partisans, in November The main resolutions of the Third World Congress were adopted almost unanimously: most importantly they had the full support of both the American and British leader- The French leadership did mount some political ships. opposition to Pablo and those who supported him, but it focussed on the liquidationist conclusions which he was in his discussion document already beginning to draw, amendments and We Going? French Where Are The of the road Ten Theses (which Mandel's 'middle the French had adopted as their own, against Mandel's wishes) were refused a vote by the Congress on the grounds that they had not been properly discussed. (19) Yugoslav partisans drove out the Nazis - along with many of their "own" bourgeoisie after the Congress (early in 1952) Very shortly Pablo bean to push hat cone ren headers in a practil that the French leadership form, demanding their section into the Communist Party, in the expect- ation that in the impending war-revolution in Europe Yugoslavia would those in similar mass pressures to propel the mass CP's on a revolutionary road, and that the need for an independent political organisation of the Trotskyists was therefore indefinitely postponed.

refused liquidate their The French leadership to and section - at least without a full discussion, were expelled with the full support of Mandel (who had by Pablo's line), the over to completely this time gone American leadership under Cannon, and the British lead- ership under Healy. TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday November 26th 1975 that Pablo intended to back those supporting liquidation into the Stalinist parties in other countries - notably the Cochran-Clarke tendency in the SWP - did the main split with the SWP's Open Letter, of November 1953 conch spitt the world mOpment, terming like a bolt from the blue.

'ORTHODOXY

It is important to understand that neither before, at, did the sections which came together or after the split to form the IC attempt any proper reply to Pablo's posit- Third World Congress. ions or the resolutions of the They were unable to go beyond an 'orthodox' reply to the central political conclusion which he drew - the need entry ('deep entry, 'entry sui generis') into the 101 Stalinist parties. even when the SWP faction-fight with the In fact Cochran-Clarke tendency was in full swing, with the that they minority claiming, with a good deal of justice, only consistently applying the line of the Third

WOLD

reiterate his World Congress, Cannon support for the positions of the Congress "as they were written". Healy Cannon My Palit Wade They tenounce, the happi it a denounced the Cannonite wholly idealist way. as expressing the pressure not of social forces but of tradition, routine and conservatism and they "explained" the split with analogies so broad as to be meaningless: "What has happened with Trotskyism is waht has in history often happened with ine continatore some transforming the of doctrines and schools, of the Master into a dead, or mis old writings outmoded schemas, understood, set the others holding abere all to into passed analyses, the spirit of his thought and continuing to work, to analyse the new moving reality, that is to say, with his method and in the framework of his principles. relatively only examples which are *10 take recent in history and familiar to Marxists, let us tendencies which emerged from recall the two Hegel after his death; revolutionary Marxism and the emasculated Marxism taken from Marx's work after his death; the struggle of Trotsky after Lenin's epigone twisting death against the "traditional the profound revolutionary spirit of Leninism" (The Situation in the International, QI, Jan-Feb 54, pб2)

IMPRESSIONS

There was a grain of truth in the Pabloites' attacks upon orthodoxy. But it is true to say that scarcely a single element in their 'new' themes has survived even the impressions of the period since then.

There has, in fact, been only one attempt to go back to this period and set out an overall reply to Pablo from Wolforth's within the International Committee - Tim The Theory of Structural Assimilation. This was prepared Wolforth led a pro-SLL group against the SWP while reunification' with Pabloism in the early 1960's. But Wolforth's positions were never adopted by the IC, systematically discussed among the sections, and his later works on the history of the SWP and of the Inter- national do not refer to them.

For similar reasons, the WRP leadership last year dropped its plans republish the main documents the whole post war period of the International, from and issued instead the distorted Trotskyism v Revision- artificially begins the ism, account round the Third World Congress (though without publishing a single one of the main resolutions of that Congress). The defence of orthodoxy' where orthodoxy inadequate, has now turned into its opposite, the falsification of history.

These limitations of the IC also explain why their - very cautious - analysis of the Chinese revolution, in the mid 1950's also amounted to little more than a broadening of the 'orthodox' positions it had earlier defended and which it had never re-examined. It will be essential to bear these factors in mind when we consider the later crises of the IC, and the theoretical positions on which the participants said they were basing them- selves.

THE POST WAR WORLD

AND THE THEORY OF

PERMANENT

REVOLUTION

But before we go on to these developments it is necessary to say very strongly that in our opinion the International can only be principled way rebuilt in a

TROTSK YISM TODAY, Wednesday November 26th 1975 Delegates to the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1 the positions which were 'closed' at the transcending Third World Congress, and were re-opened only slightly in relation to China in the mid-1950s.

Pablo used phrases like 'new world reality' as the lubricant for adaptation to Stalinism. But this should not be used to obscure fact that post-war reality was and is in essential the 'new - i.e. different from pre-war reality.

the world in which we live, The essential shape of and the political contours in which the boom has turned to crisis, were essentially formed in the first decade after the war by: 1. The restabilisation of capitalism over most of collaboration between the world's surface by the Stalinists and the great imperialist powers.

Europe and their 2. The social overturns in Eastern transformation into workers' states most of - which continue to be directly and indirectly policed to this day by Soviet military inter- vention, or the threat of it.

3. The Chinese social revolution.

grasped simply by These huge cannot be events repeating the analysis of 'world reality' hammered out Second of the World War, by Trotsky on the eve introducing the important changes merely as 'exceptions or secondary modifications.

We have, at this time, several important advantages over those who struggled to understand these developments as they went on: more than twenty years have shown that the counter- role of Stalinism on a world scale is in revolutionary of time has provided no way diminished; the passage many additional sources of evidence on what, factually, or developments; above all, the occurred in the post-war international offensive the working class, directly the rule of capitalism and undermining confronting the basis of Stalinist political leadership, has produced discussions and splits within the world important movement. In particular the split within the WRP revolved on a grasp of the method of the Transitional Programme Marxism itself, under "theoretica), conditions where was and positions against action possible to test which was not limited but involved to propaganda, intervention among large numbers or organised workers.

We must therefore indicate standpoint from the which we consider post-war history should be grasped and the perspectives and organisation of the FI recon- But to do this we must return not only to the structed. with the International itself, together history of the main turning-points of post-wer histori, stus also to the conception of out by and later defended and accepted by Lenin its Stalinist opponents Trotsky against the theory of permanent revolution.

The theory of permanent revolution was first put forward by Trotsky to prepare for the Russian revolution.

idea - far from there being a It defended the that necessary series of distinct "stages' in social development: first a bourgeois-democratic revolution against the Czarist autocracy and feudalism and only later, after a con- siderable period of capitalist development, the struggle - the bourgeois revo- for the proletarian revolution lution would be forced, especially in order to solve the of the problem and the demands agrarian answer "pass over' directly into the revolution peasantry, to against bourgeois property relations.

Trotsky set out this aspect of the theory in Results and Prospects', written immediately after his experience in the Leadership of the Petrograd Soviet during the 1905 revolution - in the event, under the leadership t Party, 1920 of Lenin himself, it became an essential element in the February Bolsheviks' preparation for power between Later, and October 1917. 1928, Trotsky was to in defend and develop the theory in polemic against the it to justify Stalinists, who were obliged to attack theory of 'stages behind which they subordinated the to the savageries of revolution in China socialist the the bourgeois Kuomintang In The Permanent Revolution (1928) Trotsky makes was not a question of one particular it clear that it 'theory' of social development against The another. book ends: "The struggle of the Communist Left Opposition for a correct policy and a healthy regime in the Communist International is inseparably bound up with question the struggle for the Marxist programme.

The inseparable from the of programme is in the turn two mutually exclusive theories: the question of the theory of permanent revolution and the theory of permanent socialism in one country.

The theory episodic differ- revolution has long ago outgrown the between Lenin and Trotsky, which ences of opinion The struggle were completely exhausted by history. is between the basic ideas of Marx and Lenin on the one side and the eclecticism of the centrists on the other.?

(The Permanent Revolution, New Park Edition, p. 157) out the theory In originally setting of permanent revolution, one of the main things which Trotsky insisted on was the great variety of political forms, of aims and limits, taken by the bourgeois revolutions - revolutions from which the proletariat was not absent, but in which able to reach for the helm of political it was not In particular he compared leadership on its own account.

the French revolution of 1789 with the revolutions of History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter. The 19th century has not passed in vain. The year 1848 already differs tremendously from 1789. In comparison with the Great Revolution, the Prussian and Austrian Revolutions surprise one with their insignificant sweep. In one way they took place too early and in another too late. That gigantic exertion of strength which is necessary for bourgeois society to settle radically with the lords of the past can only be attained either by the power of a unanimous nation rising against feudal despotism, or by the mighty devel- opment of the class struggle within this nation striving to emancipate itself. In the first case, which was what happened in 1789-93, the national energy, compressed by the fierce resistance of the old order, was wholly expended in the struggle against reaction; in the second case, which has never yet occurred in history, and which are considering merely as a possibility, the actual we the dark forces of for overcoming energy. necessary history is generated within the bourgeois nation by means of an 'internecine' class war. The severe internal friction, absorbing a great deal of energy and depriving the bour- geoisie of the possibility of playing the chief role, urges its antagonist the proletariat to the forefront, gives the proletariat ten years' experience in a month, places it at the head of affaits, and hands it the tightly-drawn reins of power. This class, determined, knowing no doubts, imparts a mighty sweep to events. Revolution can be achieved either by a nation gathering itself together like a lion preparing to spring, or by a nation in the process of struggle becoming conclusively divided in order to free the best part of itself for the execution of those tasks which the nation as a whole is unable to carry out.

of historical conditions, These are two opposite sets which in their pure form are, of course, possible only in logical contraposition. A middle course in this, as in so Page 3 many cases, is worst of all, but it was this middle course that developed in 1848". (Results and Prospects, NP ed., p 184f) He goes on to explain: "In 1848 the bougeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power. We know now why that was so. Itsaim was - and of this it was perfectly conscious - to introduce into the old system the necessary guarantees, not for its political dommation, but merely for a sharing of power with the forces of the past. It was wise through the experience of the French meanly bourgeoisie, corrupted by its treachery and frightened by its failures. It not only failed to lead the masses in storming the old order, but placed its back against this order so as to repulse the masses who were pressing it forward." (Results and Prospects, NP edition, p 187f) It was this 'sweep' of the 1789-93 revolution which led Trotsky to use it, in 1906, as an analogy for the devel- opment oi the Kussian revolution, and later to go back to the counter-revolutionary Thermidor of 1993 in his attempt to grasp the basis and nature of the Stalinist usurpation in the Soviet Union and the Comintern.

And we should note carefully that what Trotsky was "merely as a possibility" which had "never considering yet occurred in history" was precisely what happened in Russia between February and October 1917, giving the experience in a month™ "ten years' proletariat and handing it "the tightly-drawn reins 6f power" When Trotsky brought together the struggle for the Fourth International against Stalinism in writing the Transitional Programme, he did not exclude the possibil- ity that state power could be taken under the leadership of the bureaucracy: "Is the creation of such a government by the traditional workers organisations possible? Past experience shows, as has already been stated, that this is to say the least highly improbable. However, one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, ete.), the petty-bourgeois parties including the Stalinists may go further than they themselves wish to go along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie. In any case one thing is not to be doubted: even if this highly improbable variant somewhere at some time becomes a reality and "workers' and farmers' government" in the above-ment- ioned sense is established in fact, it would represent merely a short episode on the road to the actual dictator- ship of the proletariat. However, there is no need to indulge in guesswork.

The agitation around the slogan of a workers'-farmers government preserves under all conditions a tremendous educational value. And not accidentally. This generalised along the line of the political slogan proceeds entirely development of our epoch (the bankruptcy and decom- position of the old bourgeois parties, the downfall toward more active and aggressive politics). Each of the transit- ional demaids should, therefore, lead to one and the same political conclusion: the workers need to break with all traditional parties of the bourgeoisie in order, jointly with the farmers, to establish their own power.

It is impossible in advance to foresee what will be the concrete stages of the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses. The sections of the Fourth International should critically orient themselves at each new stage and advance such slogans as will aide the striving of the workers for independent politics, deepen the class character of these politics, destroy reformist and pacificist illusions, streng- then the connection of the vanguard with the masses, and prepare the revolutionary conquest of power."

(Transitional Programme, SWP edition, p95).

We quote these passages to highlight the fact that Trotsky fought, throughout the huge events and changes which divided 1905 from 1940, not on the basis of fixed formulae, but on the basis of the world view of dialectical materialism, struggling always to forge that programme slogans which could weld together, give and those direction to, and make victorious the distinct but com bined revolutionary tasks of the proletariat and the other Hungary 1956 - Stalinist tanks enforce Kremlin bureaucratic rule oppressed classes on a world scale. This is why the part- icular sogans of the Transitional Programme cannot be and fought for among the masses, if they are grasped, abstracted from its overall method Internationally, in the periodafter the Second World War, the struggle against imperialism is expressed in three distinct forms, which combine on a world scale, and with- continued overleaf

Page 4 Trotsky addressing the Congress of the Communist International in particular national societies: The social revolution in the capitalist countries, the construction of Marxist parties requiring which will wrest the leadership of the working class from the bureaucrats and fight for the sole political power to be based in the bodies of the working class. 2. The political revolution in the deformed and workers degenerated never visible -in states, Trotsky's lifetime, but breaking out after the war in Berlin, Budapest, Prague and China, and equally to seize from the requiring Marxist parties bureaucracy and place in the hands of democratic bodies of the working class their monopoly of state and political power; and, historically subord- inate to these, 3. The democratic revolution against imperialist especially in the oppression and dictatorship, colonial and semi-colonial states.

These revolutions combine in a single, complex and contradictory process. They cannot be regarded as form- ing, in time or geographically, necessarily separate "stages'.

The unifying historical task is the revolutionary overthrow of imperialism, and of all the archaic and reactionary pol- itical and social formations preserved with it and which, at a given moment, protect it.

In this sense the essential elements of the theory of ermanent revolution remain fully valid- but they must e developed to embrace the demands of the political Soviet Union. revolution in many states, not just the And, for this development, it is essential to point up which Trotsky insisted on, features of world society but which have considerably advanced since he wrote.

Following the 1953 Open Letter the sections of the IC had a number of exchanges with the Pabloite Inter- national Secretariat, seeking reopen and pursue to political differences within an organisational framework which would allow eventual reunification. Early in 1954, through the intermediate role of the Ceylonese section, negotiations were conducted for both sides to attend the "Fourth World Congress' being organised by the Pablo- ites. Cannon proposed two essential conditions for such attendance - that Pablo's international centre should unconditionally withdraw the expulsions of the sections and individuals supporting the Open Letter, and that the Congress should be postponed to allow full discussion in the national sections beforehand. Pablo, in effect, refused to do either of these things and the IC sections did not attend the Congress. (20) After the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, at which Krushcher made his "secret speech, and Hunvarian uprising in the autumn of that year, the Pabloites made an apparent turn against Stalinism. At the beginning of 1957 Cannon again responded to an of approach by Leslie Goonewardene, leader the Çeylonese section, proposing discussions towards a joint March world congress, and in exchanged informal organisational proposals with a representative of Pablo.

In the event Pablo refused to provide the organisational guarantees sought, and the negotiations collapsed. (21) from 1960 on, the SWP leadership began a Then. political shift, which resulted in 1963 in the reunifica- tion of the SWP with the Pabloites (by now led by Mandel) in the United Secretariat, without discussion.

and on the basis that the 1953 split would be taken up in due course. It never has been, and in the last two years 11. TanT t publish unilaterally many of the SWP leadership to documents relating to 1953. (22) In writing their account of the split, and commenting upon the documents published, the present SWP leader- ship are obliged to tread the straight and narrow line between justifying the Open Letter, which declared an the politics of Pabloisi:., and irrevocable break with their reunification with the Pabloites in 1963. Naturally, this allows them to say little of substance. (23) The main political issue at stake between the SWP on the one hand, and the SLL and the OCI on the other, in the 1961-3 reunification and split in the International Committee, was the character of the Cuban revolution.

Essentially, the SLL and OCI leaderships quite were correct in refusing reunification on the basis that it was carried out in describing the conduct of the

SWP

leadership as one of the inanoeuvres to short-circuit discussion and obtain an unprincipled bloc, and in insisting that the issue of the Cuban revolution and the class character of the Cuban state was dragged in and made the sole important question in order to facilitate this. Castro with Chile's Allende SWP leadership with which the The document effectively consummated the split with the other main IC sections in the autumn of 1962 - Hansen's Cuba - The Acid Test (24) - is (especially in the context of the reunificiation negotiations then underway) a monument of empiricism dressed in the phraseology of Marxism. In the interests of la supreme sensitivity to facts Hansen as a 'revolution that is hastened to greet Castro's Cuba Western Hemisphere', to link it with the shaking the bourgeois-nationalist movements in, for example, Algeria and Guinea, and to use it to swamp all prior discussion on the 1952-3 split. From this he went on to denounce the British and for British) French leaderships (especially the "sectarianism', "metaphysics' and 'dogmatism', and on these grounds to rush into reunification with the Pablo- ites. The British and French leaderships were not at one in their view of the Cuban state, or of the processes of the Cuban revolution. The French regarded the capitalist state in Cuba as being a 'shadow' of a state. In any case, on neither part did they regard their positions on Cuba as final, not open to further discussion within the Interna- tional Committee, nor did they attempt to make the *Cuban question' the central touchstone for future political collaboration within the IC The use of Cuba as an 'ultimatum' came from the SWP leadership. And it was, and is, false for the SWP and Dallaitoe to or thot the oTT ana pot nationa on the TROTSKYISM TODAY, Wednesday November 26th 1975 character of the Cuban state led to a refusal to defend it against US imperialism - ie, a crossing of class lines to the political support or toleration of attempts at invasion or subversion by the US. The struggle of the SWP was, for the leadership of the SLL, one of the main impulses for and subsequent emphasis on, the philoophical ideas of dial- ectical materialism and their relation to the Hegelian philosophy. One of Hansen's main targets in Cuba - The Labour Review Acid Test is a series of articles in the SLL changed into the (theoretical journal of theoretical journal of the IC in 1963, and renamed as the present Fourth International during 1962. The articles, by Cliff Slaughter, take the form of an extended review Works. of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks (Collected containing an extended defence of dialectical Vol.38) its worship of materialism against empiticism and 'accomplished facts' this is an attack - such Part of on those as the Pabloites - who in effect liquidate the historical need "recognition' for Trotskyist parties behind the that by petty-bourgeois capitalism can be overthrown such as Castro's July 26th movement. formations Without being explicit about it, the articles are also attack on the positions of the SWP quite clearly an leadership, and this is why they replied to them so vitriolically. This attention to the study and development of the materialism fundamentals of dialectical philosophical element for the SLI and been a central nas. subsequently the WRP leadership since that time. It represented a considerable strengthening of the move- Pabloites, and it is true to say that ment against the neither the Pabloites nor the SWP ahve been able to take up the questions of method raised, and the subsequent polemic by the SWP leader- attempts at "philosophical principally George Novack, allegedly a supporter ship of Pablo in 1953, although in fact he stayed with the majority - have veered more and more in the

SWP

direction of apologetics for pragmatism and eclecticism.

(25). The fact that questions of Marxist philosophy have subsequently been divorced, by the WRP leadership, the problems of class struggle, the fight for the from Transitional Programme and to build the party, and the problems of concrete political analysis, should not allowed to disguise the theoretical and political impetus given, especially to the British section, by the 'turn to philosophy' in the early 1960s. It was, for example, an cadre in element in training an entire new essential Marxism in the course of the work in and around the Labour Party Young Socialists up to the expulsions of 1964. But, at the same time, this gain like all advances had.

a one-sided and uneven character. What the SLL and OCI leaderships were not able to do, in the course of the break with the SWP leadership, was to go back and reassess the theoretical problems involved in the Third World Congress, the break with Pablo, and the analysis the Chinese revolution. These were not problems of ones of which immediately presented themselves as Marxist method, or could be tackled only by defence of of Marxism; were they the philosophical bases not simply those of liquidationism versus the struggle for, Trotskyist parties. Still less were they tactical or episodic. What was placed before the International Committee was the need for a re-opening of the post-war discussion on Stalinism and the formation of the new workers' states. It made no sense to say that accepting Cubaas a workers' state undermined the whole basis of Trotskyism, since the Cuban revolution had been made by à political formation that was far from Trotskyist, if one simply, 'empirically" accepted that Eastern Europe and. China had become workers' states under the domination of Stalinism.

Yet, although the SLL leadership in 1961-63 insisted on the need to return to a full discussion of the bases of the 1953 split, they were in practice not able to take up theoretical questions involved - namely what was the specifically new in the post-war world in the part played bureaucratic leaderships the relation between by imperialism and the working class.

It is true that the SLL leadership, already in 1957, speaks in correspondence with Cannon of 'the double- talk of the 3rd Congress' (26), but in the main public document against the Pabloites of that year the 'double- talk' is ascribed only to Pablo's documents of 1953. And at no point, from then to now, have they been able to make any sort of overall reassessment of the return to positions of the Third Congress.

CONCLUDED IN NEXT EDITION

Theses on the American Revolution in Cannon The Coming American Revolution,

SWP.

1947. of the British section, was in a leadership Healy, the minority supporting Cannon in this perspective in the immediate post-war period. See, eg. John G. Wright Welfare State and Depression, in FI, 10. June 1949. Black Stalinism in Britain for this (p.231) and 11. See R. other incidents of the period.

Resolutions of the Second World Congress in Fl, July 1948.

12. of Eastern Europe in Character 13. Resolution on the Nece Class, Party and State SWP, p.55.

Mutation, in 5. mternal Tile in Volort Wo.17 419dethodological Tom Kerry The Wolforth Way See Quatrieme Internationale.

15. See Class, Party and State, p.55.

16. See International Information Bulletin, March 1951. There 17. is a most striking parallel between the way in which Pablo revised Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism in relation to Tito, and the the WRP's very similar assessment of the Vietnamese Stalinist leader- following the fall of Saigon, See articles on the Vietnamese ship Revolution by S. Johns in Workers Press Aug. 5,6,7 and 8th. 1975.

See IIB, April 1951 (reprinted in Towards a History of the FI 18. See Trotskyism V. Revisionism, Vol. 1, p. 298.

19. See Trotskyism u Revisionism, vol 2pp 86f & 206f.

20. See Trotshyism u Revisionism vol 3, pp 21-45.

21. See Towards a History of the FI, vols 3&4.

22. See Introdutory Note, by Fred Feldman.

23. In Trotskyism u Revisionism, vol 4, pp 20-71 24. See his articles of 1971-3, reprinted Healyite 25. Revision of Dialectical Materialism, "Marxism v Ultraleftism", Section xix, SWP, 1974. Healy to Cannon, 10th May, 1957, 26. See Letter from in Trotskyism u Revisionism, vol 3 p 32.