Max Shachtman was one of the original founders of the Trotskyite movement in the United States. He was a pragmatist, an opportunist even among opportunists, who led the first major split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1940. At that time, he broke with the orthodox Trotskyite position that the USSR should be understood as a “degenerated workers state” and that it instead had come to be ruled by a new “bureaucratic collectivist” class.

Under the cloak of the theory of the “degenerated workers state” the Trotskyites kept up the pretense of support for the Soviet Union while making every effort to subvert and delegitimize it. Shachtman abandoned that pretense and raised the slogan of “Neither Washington nor Moscow, but international socialism.” Shachtman instead said the Trotskyites should form a so-called “Third Camp” equally opposed to both. In reality, however, the Third Camp Trotskyites aimed most of their fire at the communist movement and the Soviet Union.

Shachtman didn’t limit himself to opposing socialism in the USSR. He also opposed national liberation here in the United States. Shachtman wrote an entire book devoted to denying the right to self-determination for the African American Nation in the Black Belt. In his essay “Race and Revolution” from 1933, while Communist-led sharecroppers were militantly resisting Jim Crow terror in the Deep South, Shachtman argued that national self-determination for African Americans was a “reactionary utopia.”

Later, two other figures rose to prominence among the Trotskyites that would come to shape Shachtmanite Trotskyism as it developed: Hal Draper and Tony Cliff. Draper was part of the group who split with Shachtman from SWP, while Cliff was a founder of British Trotskyism.

To put it briefly, Hal Draper argued that so-called “Stalinism” (that is, Marxism-Leninism) represented “socialism from above” whereas Trotskyism represented “socialism from below.” According to Draper, “Stalinism” imposes socialism on the masses “from above” while Trotskyism seeks the “self-emancipation” of the masses, “from below.” Of course, this is nonsense, as anyone with experience with either can attest.

Anyone who has ever encountered Trotskyism in practice can attest to its commandist, rule-or-ruin methods among the masses. This is what working class “self-emancipation” by the Trotskyites looks like! On the contrary, the Marxist-Leninist organizational method of the mass line, based on the principle of “from the masses to the masses'' represents the dialectical method of leadership, where correct ideas are drawn from the felt needs of the masses, concentrated and honed by theory, and then propagated among the masses through struggle. This is the way to build towards revolution. “Socialism from above” and “socialism from below” aren’t metaphysically separated as the Trotskyites would have it, but are dialectically intertwined.

Tony Cliff was a British Trotskyite who disagreed outwardly with Max Shachtman on many points, but truly represents an extension of his Third Camp theory. Cliff’s book State Capitalism in Russia critiques Trotsky’s theory of the “degenerated or deformed workers states” and Shachtman’s theory of “bureaucratic collectivism” in favor of the theory that the socialist countries are “state capitalist.”

According to Cliff, the socialist countries are “state capitalist” because the Law of Value still operates, they still engage in commodity production, and surplus value still exists. Cliff argues that a “permanent arms economy” prevents cyclical crises, ignoring the fact that constant military spending isn’t sufficient to prevent crises of overproduction in the imperialist countries. Regarding countries like Cuba and China, that Trotsky would call “deformed workers states,” Cliff says they are undergoing “deflected, state capitalist, permanent revolution.”

The simple truth is that Cliff argues from an idealist position. He fails to understand, as outlined by Marx in “Critique of the Gotha Program” and further explained by Lenin in The State and Revolution, that socialism cannot help but carry forward elements of capitalism. In reality, however, the fundamental contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between socialized production and private accumulation. This contradiction is at the heart of the crises that plague capitalism over and over again. The reason the socialist countries don’t experience these crises is that this contradiction largely no longer exists in socialist countries, or where it does it is only on a very small scale. The commanding heights of the economy in the socialist countries are controlled by the state, and the value created by the workers goes primarily into the betterment of society rather than the pockets of the members of the capitalist class.

Of course, problems exist in the socialist countries. Contradictions continue in the period of the socialist transition, including classes and class struggle. But socialism’s reason for existence is to eliminate those problems step by step. This demands a scientific and materialist approach, starting not with ideals, but with the way things really are.

In the United States, the most significant group to come out of this current was the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a group that constantly placed itself on the wrong side of nearly every struggle. The ISO were Third Camp Trotskyites who drew heavily from Draper and Cliff. They opposed the anti-imperialist struggles and the socialist countries internationally, and took either a rule-or-ruin approach to the mass struggles here, or merely shouted from the sidelines. Like the SWP in the 1930s, with its dissolution and entry into the Socialist Party to commandeer the SP or steal away its members, history has repeated itself with the ISO. The ISO likewise dissolved itself in 2019, and by now most of its former members are hiding out in the social-democratic big-tent organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

These modern-day Shachtmanites now try to inject their petty bourgeois ideology into the people’s struggles through DSA. For example, in an article from June 23, 2023 in The Tempest, entitled “Time for DSA’s internationalists to show solidarity with Ukraine,” they argue for the U.S. State Department’s line of support for the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and argue in favor of U.S. taxpayer money funding arms for Ukrainian forces. This position only diverts money away from people’s needs at home while supporting the imperialist war waged by the United States. It is shameful for so-called “socialists” and “internationalists” to support the cynical scheme to send the Ukrainian people to die as proxies for the hegemonic ambitions of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and their NATO allies. U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of the working class and oppressed people of the world. This is a point these “third camp” Trotskyites emphatically refuse to understand.

From every angle, beginning with Trotsky himself and moving through Cannon and Shachtman to Draper and Cliff, Trotskyism again and again presents itself as a lapdog of the U.S. ruling class against socialism and anti-imperialist struggles. Under the cover of its demand for “socialism from below” it opposes socialism everywhere it exists. While pretending to uphold proletarian democracy, it approaches the masses with a sectarian and dogmatic rule-or-ruin attitude. It is an ideology that has failed to lead a successful revolution anywhere, and it is a trap laid at the feet of the workers movement. It is an important task of Marxist-Leninists to expose the true nature of this ideology everywhere it rears its head.

#UnitedStates #MLTheory #AgainstTrotskyism

As we wrap up our series on Trotskyism, let’s turn to the sad and shameful record of Trotskyism in the United States. This article will look at the Socialist Workers Party.

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is the oldest Trotskyite group in the United States, tracing its origins back to the expulsion of the Trotskyites, who were led by James P. Cannon and Max Shachtman, from the Communist Party in 1928. They formed a group called the Communist League of America, which shortly thereafter merged with the American Workers Party to form the Workers Party of the United States. That organization dissolved itself and entered the Socialist Party of America (SP) in its entirety, attempting to try to take it over or pull activists away from it.

It didn’t take long before the Trotskyists were expelled from the SP and formed the Socialist Workers Party in 1938. By 1940, the SWP would split, with Max Shachtman taking a sizable minority with him to form a new Trotskyite organization called the Workers Party.

The great U.S. communist leader, William Z. Foster, wrote about the origins of the Socialist Workers Party in his important 1952 book, The History of the Communist Party of the United States. He explains that the formation of the SWP was rooted in the expulsion of the Trotskyites from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Comintern in 1928. It will be worthwhile to quote Foster on this at length.

“At the time of the sixth congress of the Comintern in 1928 Trotsky was in exile, as a criminal against the Revolution. He made an appeal to the congress to try to get it to repudiate the decision of the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. The congress, however, overwhelmingly rejected this insolent proposal. Nevertheless the scheme found a secret supporter in James Cannon, one of the Communist Party delegates from the United States. Upon Cannon’s return to this country he began at once to spread clandestine Trotskyite propaganda with his friends. They advocated withdrawal from the existing unions, abandonment of the united front, and carried on a bitter factional struggle. The Bittelman-Foster leaders, learning what was going on, preferred charges against Cannon, Max Shachtman, and M. Abern, and all were promptly expelled by the Party as splitters, disrupters, and political degenerates. About 100 of Cannon’s followers were also finally ousted from the Party.

“Upon their expulsion the Trotskyites formed themselves into an opposition league, which, after several internal splits and two slippery amalgamations–first with the Musteites in 1934, and the second with the Socialist Party in 1936–finally emerged, in January 1938, as the Socialist Workers Party … The reason-for-being for this party, which is the American section of the so-called Fourth International, with its pathological antagonism toward the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, is to serve as a tool of reaction. It carries on its counter-revolutionary work against the Party and the U.S.S.R. under cover of a cloud of super-revolutionary phrases.”

The Socialist Workers Party today is similar, except to say that it is even smaller, more sectarian, and more irrelevant than ever. It still opposes Marxism-Leninism and socialism under the cover of an attack on “Stalinism,” and it still opposes national liberation struggles in the name of “permanent revolution.”

As a result of its role in the 1934 Teamster strike in Minneapolis, the SWP managed to stay afloat throughout the 1930s. It also grew as a result of its entry into and then expulsion from the Socialist Party, by taking part of their membership with them in the split. After that, the SWP was the largest Trotskyite grouping in the world, and the most prominent force in Trotsky’s “Fourth International.”

The SWP began to decline in strength when Max Shachtman led a large split in 1940. He argued that the mainstream Trotskyite view of the USSR as a “degenerated workers state” was wrong, and that the Soviet bureaucracy formed a new ruling class. Shachtman called this “bureaucratic collectivism.” While the SWP gave lip-service to defense of the Soviet Union as they attacked and denounced in the same breath, Shachtman and his followers abandoned the pretense, instead arguing for a Trotskyite “third camp” opposed to both capitalism and the USSR.

Today, the SWP tails behind the most backward section of the U.S. working class. Take for example, the article in the SWP newspaper, The Militant, entitled “Biden brags about ‘State of the Union’ as boss attacks on workers grind on,” from February 27, 2023. There, they decry “Democrats’ ‘woke’ anti-woman policies on gender and promotion of ‘critical race theory’ — policies that are detested by millions of workers.” These and their many statements like them are bare-faced repetitions of transphobic, right-wing talking points that shamelessly attempt to pit LGBTQ people against women, alongside far-right attacks on education and the Black Liberation movement.

In another article from June 12, 2023, ironically entitled “A genuine revolution means leading masses in their millions,” SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters repeats again the right-wing talking point that schools “teach those whose skins are white that they are racists by birth,” raising once more the boogeyman of the Republican far right, Critical Race Theory, to unite with the reactionaries. She goes on to bemoan being called a transphobe for “defending the biological fact that there are two sexes.” She doesn’t stop there, however. She digs in even deeper, saying, “Whether under the flag of ‘cancel culture,’ ‘critical race theory,’ the anti-Jewish ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement or something else, these are reactionary forces alien to the working class and its allies,” repeating the Zionist lie that support for the liberation of Palestine is antisemitic.

This should all come as no surprise from Trotskyites, but it is still appalling to see people who call themselves socialists and who claim to speak for the working class carry water for the most reactionary elements within the U.S. ruling class, and to try and help them spread their poisonous ideology amongst the workers movement.

The Socialist Workers Party was always a sad shadow of the genuine communist movement in the United States, and it has only fallen farther and farther as it tries to desperately find its footing in a world where it has lost any scrap of relevance. In 2019, a U.S. Trotskyite group, the International Socialist Organization, dissolved itself. Hopefully the SWP isn’t far behind.

#UnitedStates #MLTheory #AgainstTrotskyism

By now it should come as no surprise that Trotskyism, with its ultra-left emphasis on “pure proletarian revolution” originating in Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution,” that Trotskyism’s errors extend to the national question.

But, before we can get into Trotsky’s view on the subject, what is the national question? When Marxists talk about the “national question” we’re talking about the analysis of the problems posed to the revolutionary movement by the materialist process by which nations form and develop, and the role that plays in revolutionary change. Practically, we’re talking about how the proletarian revolutionary movement should relate to oppressed nations and nationalities.

Marx and Engels wrote about this in relation to a number of important issues while they were alive, especially concerning the Irish and Indian struggles for national liberation against the British Empire, and in the context of the Black liberation struggle, especially in relation to the abolition struggle and the U.S. Civil War. Their support for these struggles was unequivocal. Lenin and Stalin further developed Marxist-Leninist theory on the national question. Lenin and Stalin understood that it was necessary for communists to support self-determination for oppressed nations as an essential element of the struggle against our common enemy, monopoly capitalism, or imperialism. African American Marxist-Leninists like Harry Haywood and Claudia Jones applied these theories to the concrete analysis of the national question in the United States.

In 1933, Trotsky says plainly, in “The Negro Question in America,” “The Negroes are a race and not a nation.” In almost the same breath, Trotsky claims to support self-determination for African Americans. But if Black people in the U.S. are not a nation, what could this possibly mean? Lenin was crystal clear on the meaning of self-determination, practically: “The right of nations to self-determination means only the right to independence in a political sense, the right to free, political secession from the oppressing nation.” Trotsky would have us believe there is some other kind of self-determination, some kind of racial, rather than national, self-determination. For Trotsky, the slogan of “self-determination” should be used as “transitional demand” to recruit Black workers to the cause of a purely proletarian revolution. This isn’t support, but rather it is the cynical manipulation of the demand for Black self-determination. He pays lip-service to self-determination but robs it of its meaning in order to twist it to his own aims.

The U.S. Trotskyite theoretician Max Shachtman isn’t any better on the question. In some ways he’s even worse. He likewise states, in his pamphlet Race and Revolution from 1933, “The American Negroes do not constitute a nation separate and apart from the rest of the population of the country.” His conclusion is that African American liberation in the Black Belt is a “reactionary utopia.” He is opposed even to Trotsky’s lip-service to self-determination. At least, unlike Trotsky, he doesn’t mince words.

Shachtman argues that an oppressed nation must be distinct in every way from the nation that oppresses it. It is not enough for Shachtman, for example, that the African American people speak a common language (English), but rather they must speak a common language unique to them. The same holds true of culture, economic life, and so on. He also gives a lot of weight to the migrations of African Americans out of the Black Belt South, in order to deny that this is their historically constituted national territory. But would anyone deny that Ireland and Palestine remain the national territory of the Irish and Palestinian people, despite migrations resulting from the oppression of imperialism and its lackeys in Ireland and Palestine? Only the imperialists and their agents would make such a claim.

To the Trotskyites, the question of Black liberation or Chicano liberation is a race question. It is a question of overcoming racial prejudice to unite the multinational working class against the capitalist classes and strata, large and small. It is a purely ideological struggle, with no real material basis. Further, by limiting the question to a question of race, the Trotskyites fail to comprehend the inherently anti-imperialist nature of the national liberation struggles. They call the national bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie reactionaries, and would exclude them from being allies in the united front against monopoly capitalism.

We have already seen how the Trotskyites demand for pure proletarian revolution has led them astray on the issues of the alliance with the peasantry and the united front. Their wrong views on the national question are a branch from the same poisonous weed. The only way the working class in the United States will win socialism is to build a united front against monopoly capitalism, and the cornerstone of that united front is the strategic alliance between the multinational working class and the movement of oppressed nationalities for national liberation. There is no path for victory that does not include support for the self-determination of the African American Nation in the Black Belt South, the Chicano Nation in Aztlan in the Southwest, and the Hawaiian Nation. By denying that essential point, the Trotskyites would set the proletarian revolution up to fail.

#UnitedStates #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #AgainstTrotskyism

Trotskyism disagrees with Marxism-Leninism on a number of important theoretical points. These disagreements aren’t limited to the field of theory but have a real practical impact on the movements of working class and oppressed peoples. In our day-to-day struggles, we see them come up again and again. Practically, the question of the united front illustrates very clearly the glaring difference between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism. This is a question of extreme theoretical importance, with tremendous practical consequences, so we should examine it closely.

What is the united front? It is the organizational expression of a broad unity of action by diverse forces against a common enemy. The purpose of the united front, the reason for its existence, is to unite the many to defeat the few.

In order to defeat the monopoly capitalist class – the imperialists who seek to plunder and rule the world through monetary influence and force of arms – the masses in their millions must unite broadly in order to attack the enemy from every angle. This requires a broad unity, beyond the tight, militant discipline demanded by revolutionary communists. We can and must unite millions of people – everyone whose material interests are opposed to those of the monopoly capitalists. One certainly doesn’t have to be a communist to understand that the interests of the monopoly capitalists are opposed to our own.

We can and must fight together with the mass organizations of the working class, such as the trade unions. And we must also unite broadly with classes outside of our own. Building the strategic alliance between the working class and the movements of oppressed nationalities is essential to building the united front against monopoly capitalism. Thus, we should build and unite with the Black and Chicano liberation movements, including uniting with the national bourgeoisie who wants to fight back against the imperialist system at the core of national oppression. We must also seek to unite with progressive forces among the petty bourgeoisie, a doomed class crushed daily under the weight of the monopoly capitalists.

The Trotskyites aren’t interested in this kind of united front, this uniting broadly with different class forces who are materially at odds with the monopoly capitalists. As always, they want pure proletarian revolution, and their understanding of the united front reflects that. To them, the united front should be a unity of socialist forces dominated by the Trotskyites. It is a unity of working-class forces arrayed against all other classes and strata. This is what we saw in how they addressed the Bolshevik revolution in opposition to the peasantry, and the Chinese revolution as well.

The united front, properly understood, means that there are many contradictory forces at work, all seeking to lead it based on their own material interests. Thus, the communists must strive to maintain the independence and initiative with the united front, and should strive to lead it in a revolutionary direction. But how should communists exercise leadership in the united front? Through persuasion and example, and through the use of the mass line.

Mao Zedong explained the mass line like this.

“In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily ‘from the masses, to the masses’. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.”

Understanding the mass line is crucial to understanding how communists should relate to the mass organizations of the united front. We have to understand, as Mao put it, that the masses are composed of advanced, intermediate and backwards elements. The advanced are the activists who want to fight to make things better. The intermediate are the broad group who are not yet active, but aren’t opposed to progress. The backwards are the reactionaries who push back against change, oppose progress and champion the ideas of the enemy among the masses.

The role of communists among the masses is to organize and unite with the advanced, active fighters. These are the people who are articulating the masses' felt needs. Together with the advanced, we can develop organizations, struggles and campaigns around these felt needs in order to mobilize the broad intermediate section of the masses while isolating or winning over the backwards in the course of the struggle. By doing this, we can win important victories and land blows against the enemy. Through the course of these mass struggles, we can raise the level of consciousness and organization among the masses. By helping to lead and sum up these fights, we can win the advanced fighters over to Marxism-Leninism and build communist organization. This is the correct, Marxist-Leninist method of leadership.

The Trotskyites utterly fail to understand any of this. To the Trotskyists, what does united front organizing look like? They have two main, interrelated methods: entryism and commandism. What does this mean?

Because the Trotskyites fail to grasp the mass line in united front work, their idea of organizing among the masses isn’t “from the masses, to the masses.” They have no real interest in the felt needs of the masses, or in the ideas of the advanced. Instead, they go into the mass organizations from outside, to seize control of them, maneuvering to dominate them and force their line onto them. This “entryism” is completely at odds with any clear understanding of the mass line in the united front. The purpose of going among the masses isn’t to dominate them and make the mass organizations into mere extensions of the communists. The mass organizations should arise from the needs of the masses, fight for what the masses want to fight for, and should have a much broader level of unity than that demanded of communist cadres. To make the mass organizations into a mere “front” of the communists robs them of what makes them useful to the masses, and what makes them valuable as an element of the united front in the revolutionary struggle. Instead, it twists the mass organizations into a shell, occupied by the parasitic, Trotskyite entryists. Once this happens, the advanced and intermediate soon abandon the organization, leaving the Trotskyites alone in their ideologically pure “mass” organization.

If this fails, the Trotskyites have another option, one that they also frequently use. Their other method is to simply form these pure “mass” organizations whole cloth. These fake mass organizations are not made up of advanced activists from among the masses, but instead are composed almost entirely of Trotskyites. They use these organizations to try to command the masses. They stand in for the masses and speak for the masses, with no real connection to the actual struggles of working and oppressed people. From here they shout their slogans and peddle their papers, not as mass line tools of organizing, but as dictates from the sidelines of the struggle. Woe to the advanced activist who wanders into one of these Trotskyite “mass” organizations. They will quickly see that their options are to join ranks with the Trotskyites or be gone. This is the way the Trotskyites organize.

The purpose of united front work is to unite all who can be united to defeat the monopoly capitalist enemy. The role of communists among the masses is a dialectical one, while the Trotskyites are mechanical in their approach. The Trotskyites seek to enforce their pure, idealistic formulas, while Marxism-Leninism seeks to transform real people in the crucible of real struggle.

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Given the trajectory of Trotsky’s line on the USSR, it shouldn’t surprising that his theories missed the mark on China as well. In fact, if they had been followed, it is clear that they would have done considerable harm to the Chinese revolution. On the question of China, there are two main things that stand out regarding the position of Trotsky and his followers. First, there is the ever present failure to grasp the national-colonial question in the era of imperialism, and second, there is the failure to understand the united front in relation to that.

The Chinese revolution, led by Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China (CPC), applied the theories of Lenin to the concrete conditions of China. Mao made a materialist analysis of the class forces at work in China in his 1926 “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society.” That important article laid the foundation for the strategic orientation of the revolution, concluding,

“... our enemies are all those in league with imperialism—the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right-wing may become our enemy and their left-wing may become our friend but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.”

Based on this analysis, Mao and the CPC led the Chinese masses through a long and complex revolutionary struggle from 1927 to 1949. The CPC participated in two united fronts with the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), first against warlordism (warlords sponsored by the imperialist powers) from 1924 to 1927, then again against Japanese imperialism from 1937 to 1945. When the CPC overthrew the KMT in 1949 and declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China, they entered the period of the New Democratic revolution.

The New Democratic revolution was a transitional stage in the Chinese revolution, based on the “bloc of four classes” with the aim of overthrowing feudalism and colonialism, laying the groundwork for the development of socialism. These four classes at the core of the New Democratic revolution are the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Just as Lenin said about the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” in Russia, the “People’s Democratic Dictatorship” is a particular form of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. Based on the particularities of Chinese reality, new democracy was based on the strategic alliance of these four classes, under the leadership of the working class and the CPC.

All of this was firmly grounded in Leninist principles and the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the concrete conditions faced by the Chinese revolution, taking place as it was in a large, semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. But of course, Trotskyism takes issue with all of this, opposed the united front with the KMT, and advocated a policy of pure proletarian revolution as the way forward for the Chinese revolution.

The essence of the matter is this: It’s the same old story with Trotsky, who would have the working class stand alone, opposed to every other class. In “The Third International After Lenin” from 1928, Trotsky writes,

“The Russian bourgeoisie was the bourgeoisie of an imperialist oppressor state; the Chinese bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie of an oppressed colonial country. The overthrow of feudal Czarism was a progressive task in old Russia. The overthrow of the imperialist yoke is a progressive historical task in China. However, the conduct of the Chinese bourgeoisie in relation to imperialism, the proletariat, and the peasantry, was not more revolutionary than the attitude of the Russian bourgeoisie towards Czarism and the revolutionary classes in Russia, but, if anything, viler and more reactionary. That is the only way to pose the question.”

Trotsky here begins with an acknowledgement that the bourgeoisie of Russia and China are different, and play a different role on the stage of historical events, but then he backpedals, and treats them as if they’re the same. In practice, the bourgeoisie is the bourgeoisie, plain and simple. He makes no distinction between the Chinese comprador bourgeoisie in league with imperialism and China’s national bourgeoisie, who oppose it. And since, according to Trotsky’s abstractions, the interests of the bourgeoisie are everywhere the same, whether in Russia or in China, the task of the proletariat is, according to Trotsky, again the same: not to ally with any section of them, but to fight all of them.

The Marxist-Leninists understood that the national bourgeoisie were not a reliable ally and would try to seize the leadership of the movement themselves. Likewise, they understood that while it was in the national bourgeoisie’s interest to be rid of imperialist domination, they would not lead the country to socialism. Instead, they would lead the country to compromise with imperialism. Thus, Mao always insisted the CPC must maintain its independence and initiative in the united front, in order to be able to lead the revolution forward towards socialism.

Even so, to fail to unite with the national bourgeoisie would have had two disastrous consequences. It would have prevented the national liberation struggle from defeating the imperialist-backed warlords, and then later Japanese imperialism, militarily. At the same time it would rob the CPC of an important organizational vehicle for its own growth and development in the course of those mass struggles. The fact is, the masses had to learn that the CPC was their true leader in practice, through their experience in the united front with KMT. They had to learn it through deeds, through experiences both positive and negative, and not just through phrases and proclamations.

Essentially, the Trotskyites made three major errors in relation to China. First, they approached the problems of the Chinese revolution dogmatically, without taking into account the particularities of the time, place and conditions. Second, they sought to isolate the Chinese working class from its allies, namely the national bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the urban petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals. And third, they approached the revolution, as always, from the sidelines, with agitation and propaganda alone, instead of utilizing the mass line to educate the masses through their direct experience.

As a result of these three errors, it advocated an adventurist and ultra-left position in China – breaking the united front and immediately forming Soviets to contend for power. These Trotskyite positions were always out of step with the experience, understanding, and organization of the masses, based on abstractions and dogma. The fact is, had the Chinese Communists followed the Trotskyites, they would have faced disaster and defeat.

Today, the Trotskyites call the People’s Republic of China a “deformed workers state.” This is following from their claim that the USSR was a “degenerated workers state.” They say it is “deformed” because, they claim, the Chinese revolution was “crippled” from the moment of its birth by the leadership of the “Stalinist bureaucracy” in the Soviet Union and the Comintern. Trotskyites today directly and openly oppose the People’s Republic of China, almost universally.

The facts about China are quite different. In short, the CPC transformed China from a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, plundered by foreign capital and its domestic agents, into a major, independent, industrial power. They rapidly wiped out illiteracy and have since eradicated extreme poverty, accounting for three quarters of total global poverty reduction. They accomplished this on the basis of proletarian democracy and the building of a socialist economy, in line with China’s concrete conditions.

In the next articles, we will look more closely at the Trotskyite view of the national question and the united front. Whereas Marxism-Leninism succeeded in China, we again see Trotskyism fall into ultra-leftism and dogmatism, both in theory and practice, and we’ll see all of those same mistakes arise for the Trotskyites again and again.

#UnitedStates #MarxismLeninism #MLTheory #AgainstTrotskyism

Trotsky argued, before and after the revolution of 1917, that building socialism in one country was impossible, and that the success of the revolution was dependent on the immediate expansion of the revolution to Western Europe. Once this didn’t happen, Trotsky’s only way to persist in this theory was to say that the Soviet Union wasn’t truly building socialism.

Despite Trotsky’s protests to the contrary, the Soviet Union, in fact, accomplished a great deal. By putting the means of production under the control of the proletarian dictatorship, the Soviet Union, in just a few decades, went from a backwards country built upon horse-drawn plows, to a country with an industrial output rivaling the U.S. The living standards of the Soviet people increased at a rate never achieved before. The landlords were expropriated and agriculture was collectivized. The USSR established free, high quality education and health care, with low priced, state-subsidized food, housing and utilities. Huge strides were made to promote real national and gender equality. By the late 1930s, the USSR had the world’s most democratic constitution.

By any measure, socialism in the Soviet Union was achieving unprecedented success prior to any other countries joining the socialist camp. Of course, this didn’t mean that there was no danger of capitalist restoration from within or without. Thanks to the heroic efforts of the Communist Party and the masses of Soviet workers and peasants, the USSR beat back imperialist attacks both immediately after their revolution, and later when they turned back the tide of the German Nazi invasion.

In the late 1950s, however, the party leadership abandoned Marxism-Leninism for revisionism, and so began a slow march to capitalist restoration that culminated in 1991. Of course, the Trotskyites celebrate this historic defeat of socialism, and claim that they were right all along as a result. But again, they fail to concretely understand what took place.

The Trotskyist understanding of socialism in the USSR is that it was a “degenerated workers’ state.” According to the Trotskyites, the dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer truly in the hands of the working class, but in the hands of a “Stalinist bureaucracy.” After Lenin’s death in 1924, Trotsky and his supporters first insisted upon following a forged “will'' that they claimed Lenin had left behind. This “last testament” of Lenin’s said that Stalin should be removed from his leading posts and that Trotsky should lead in his stead.

Valentin A. Sakharov, and after him, Grover Furr, have dealt at length with the question of Lenin’s “testament” as a supposed historical document. Even the famous right-wing anti-communist historian Stephen Kotkin doubts the veracity of this “testament of Lenin.” But even were it real, the idea that leadership of the state and party should be decided by one person, even Lenin, is not democratic at all, and it isn’t the way the Soviet Party and state worked. Stalin’s leadership of the party and state was determined collectively, and Trotsky overwhelmingly lost his bid for power on the basis of Soviet democracy.

Trotsky insisted that he was the victim of a bureaucracy at work. “Perhaps this is a workers' state, in the last analysis,” Trotsky writes, “but there has not been left in it a vestige of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We have here a degenerated workers' state under the dictatorship of the bureaucracy.”

The real issue at hand, then, is the question of bureaucracy. Opponents of socialism always level the charge of “bureaucracy” against it, and the Trotskyites are no different. Of course, the struggle against bureaucracy in the USSR was nothing new. Stalin himself said, in 1928, “Bureaucracy is one of the worst enemies of our progress.” The key to the struggle against bureaucracy was the struggle for revolutionary democracy. According to Stalin, this meant organizing mass criticism from below. “How are we to put an end to bureaucracy in all these organizations?” Stalin asks. “There is only one sole way of doing this, and that is to organize control from below, to organize criticism of the bureaucracy in our institutions, of their shortcomings and their mistakes, by the vast masses of the working class.” Clearly, the problem for Trotsky isn’t bureaucracy, which the Soviet leadership struggled against tooth and nail, but the Trotskyite strawman of “Stalinist” bureaucracy!

Based on his anti-Soviet theory of the “degenerated workers’ state,” Trotsky and his followers would go from petty factionalists into a gang of wreckers and saboteurs, in the hopes of inspiring a counter-revolutionary revolt against the Communist Party. “The inevitable collapse of the Stalinist political regime,” says Trotsky, “will lead to the establishment of Soviet democracy only in the event that the removal of Bonapartism comes as the conscious act of the proletarian vanguard.” Trotsky saw himself and his followers as just such a vanguard.

So, the question is, was Trotsky outmaneuvered by a “Stalinist bureaucracy,” or did he simply lose out in fair, democratic, inner-party struggle? The U.S. revolutionary Harry Haywood was a student in the University of the Toilers of the East in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, when Trotsky was organizing his opposition within the Party. He explains in his autobiography, Black Bolshevik, that Trotsky’s “writings were readily available throughout the school, and the issues of the struggle were constantly on the agenda in our collectives. These were discussed in our classes, as they were in factories, schools and peasant organizations throughout the country.”

Haywood explains that they had regular, open discussions of the issues of the inner-party struggle taking place. “The struggle raged over a period of five years (1922-27) during which time the Trotsky bloc had access to the press and Trotsky's works were widely circulated for everyone to read.” Haywood explains that, at a session of the Seventh Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, “Trotsky then asked for two hours to defend his position; he was given one. He spoke in Russian, and then personally translated and delivered his speech in German and then in French. In all, he held the floor about three hours.” Nevertheless, “Trotsky and his allies (Zinoviev and Kamenev) suffered a resounding defeat, obtaining only two votes out of the whole body.” It is clear that Haywood is correct to conclude that:

“Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the Party apparatus – as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim. He had his day in court and finally lost because his whole position flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and failed to conform to objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the Soviet people.”

Always an opportunist, Trotsky painted his own personal defeat as the defeat of Soviet democracy itself. Haywood goes on to say,

“I witnessed Trotsky's opposition bloc degenerate from an unprincipled faction within the Party to a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet state. We learned of secret, illegal meetings held in the Silver Woods outside of Moscow, the establishment of factional printing presses — all in violation of Party discipline. Their activities reached a high point during the November 7, 1927 anniversary of the Revolution.

“At the Tenth Anniversary, Trotsky's followers attempted to stage a counter-demonstration in opposition to the traditional celebration. I remember vividly the scene of our school contingent marching its way to Red Square. As we passed the Hotel Moscow, Trotskyist leaflets were showered down on us, and orators appeared at the windows of the hotel shouting slogans of 'Down with Stalin.'”

Trotsky continued in the same manner long after he was expelled from the Party and exiled from the Soviet Union, and he went on to make alliances with all of the greatest enemies of the USSR if it suited his anti-Soviet agenda. The fact is, the defeat of Trotsky and his clique didn’t mark the degeneration of proletarian democracy, but its success. As Haywood put it, Trotsky’s defeat was a broadly democratic one, and Trotsky’s opportunist rejection of his own democratic defeat is the true rejection of socialist democracy.

The Trotskyites continue to insist on the failure of “Stalinism” to build socialism in one country, and shout their nonsense about a “degenerated workers’ state.” For the Trotskyites, it was “Stalinism” that led to the eventual defeat of socialism in the Soviet Union in 1991. And yet, just like Trotsky, the revisionists themselves hid their attacks on Marxism-Leninism behind attacks on “Stalinism.”

At the end of his book, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky writes that “to cause doubts and evoke distrust” of the Soviet leadership among the working class and its intellectual allies “is the very goal we have set ourselves.” Trotsky insists that to do so is a revolutionary act. The Trotskyites go on like this not because it coincides with the facts, but because it fits with Trotsky’s opportunist desire to cause doubt and evoke distrust. This is why ideological struggle against Trotskyism is important, because they seek to confuse things, to misdirect and mislead the struggle of the working and oppressed masses away from Marxist-Leninist revolutionary science and away from a correct summation of real revolutionary struggles for socialism.

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One of the main pillars of Trotskyism is the denial of the possibility of building socialism in a single country. This is an outgrowth of Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory, which argued that the revolution in Russia depended on the immediate success of revolution in western Europe to avoid defeat. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union did indeed build socialism in one country, so we should look at the disagreements between Marxism-Leninism and Trotskyism on this point and try to understand where they come from.

Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory was, from the beginning, opposed to the idea that socialism could be built in a backwards, peasant country like Russia.

As Stalin writes in The Foundations of Leninism, “Lenin fought the adherents of ‘permanent’ revolution, not over the question of uninterruptedness, for Lenin himself maintained the point of view of uninterrupted revolution, but because they under-estimated the role of the peasantry, which is an enormous reserve of the proletariat.”

Lenin, as we have seen, understood far better, and more concretely than Trotsky, how to bring the revolution from its bourgeois-democratic stage into its proletarian-socialist stage. For Lenin, the key was to build the alliance between the workers and the peasantry that would form the backbone of both stages of the revolution. For Trotsky, this was a doomed project; he believed because that relationship was fundamentally antagonistic, and that the success of the revolution relied upon its immediate spread to western Europe. Thus, Trotsky said, in 1906, “Without direct State support from the European proletariat, the working class of Russia cannot maintain itself in power and transform its temporary rule into a durable Socialist dictatorship. This we cannot doubt for an instant.”

Trotsky wanted socialism to sweep through Europe all at once, as though all of the countries in the capitalist world were equally ripe for revolution. Lenin’s view, on the other hand, was based on his understanding that capitalism developed unevenly. Indeed, it is essential to understand that Lenin’s analysis is based on the understanding that the present stage of capitalism is its monopoly capitalist stage – imperialism.

In an article in the Swiss Social-Democrat called “On the Slogan for a United States of Europe,” Lenin argued, “The times when the cause of democracy and socialism was associated only with Europe alone have gone forever.” Instead, Lenin argues, “A United States of the World (not of Europe alone) is the state form of the unification and freedom of nations which we associate with socialism – about the total disappearance of the state, including the democratic. As a separate slogan, however, the slogan of a United States of the World would hardly be a correct one … because it may be wrongly interpreted to mean that the victory of socialism in a single country is impossible, and it may also create misconceptions as to the relations of such a country to the others.” Lenin then explains that “Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of Socialism is possible first in a few or even in one single capitalist country taken separately.”

Trotsky rejects the Leninist theory of uneven development. In his article, “The Program for Peace,” from 1917, arguing against Lenin in favor of the slogan for a “United States of Europe”, Trotsky says,

“The only more or less concrete historical consideration put forward against the slogan of the United States of Europe was formulated in the Swiss Social-Democrat in the sentence which follows: ‘Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism.’ From this the Social-Democrat drew the conclusion that the victory of Socialism was possible in a single country, and that, therefore, there was no point in making the creation of a United States of Europe the condition for the dictatorship of the proletariat in each separate country. That capitalist development in different countries is uneven is an absolutely incontrovertible fact. But this very unevenness is itself extremely uneven. The capitalist level of England, Austria, Germany or France is not identical. But in comparison with Africa or Asia all these countries represent capitalist ‘Europe’, which has grown ripe for the social revolution.”

Trotsky dismisses the Leninist theory of uneven development by saying that Europe is comparatively on the same plane of development if you compare it to the colonies. With this rhetorical flourish, Trotsky dismisses the contradictions between the imperialist states themselves, and the contradictions between those states in relation to their colonies. Again, Trotsky sees only workers and capitalists, incapable of concrete, materialist analysis of the complex contradictions at work in each country. And so, Trotsky says, all of Europe is ripe for revolution, presumably because all of Europe is capitalist, concrete conditions be damned!

Based on these idealist abstractions Trotsky continues his argument:

“That no single country should ‘wait’ for others in its own struggle is an elementary idea which it is useful and necessary to repeat, in order to avoid the substitution of the idea of expectant international inaction for the idea of simultaneous international action. Without waiting for others, we begin and continue our struggle on our national soil quite sure that our initiative will give an impetus to the struggle in other countries; but if that should not happen, then it would be hopeless, in the light of the experience of history and in the light of theoretical considerations, to think, for example, that a revolutionary Russia could hold its own in the face of conservative Europe or that a Socialist Germany could remain isolated in the capitalist world.”

Trotsky here combines ultra-revolutionary phrase-mongering with pessimism. It is his usual refrain: revolution must sweep through all of Europe or we are doomed.

Later, in 1922, Trotsky still persists in his rejection of the possibility of building socialism in one country. He writes, “The assertion, repeated several times in ‘A Program of Peace,’ that the proletarian revolution cannot be carried through to a victorious conclusion within the boundaries of one country may appear to some readers to be refuted by almost five years’ experience of our Soviet Republic. But such a conclusion would be groundless.”

Here, even as late as 1922, Trotsky insisted, “genuine advance in the construction of Socialist economy in Russia will become possible only after the victory of the proletariat in the most important countries of Europe.” Trotsky simply rejects facts in order to avoid having been proved wrong. The only way out for Trotsky, if he is to remain right, is to say that what is being built in Russia isn’t really socialism.

In 1923, Lenin, in the article “On Cooperation,” argued that the victory of socialism in Russia was indeed possible. Lenin wrote,

“…state power over all large-scale means of production, state power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured leadership of the peasantry by the proletariat, etc. – is not this all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society from the co-operatives, from the co-operatives alone, which we formerly looked down upon as huckstering and which from a certain aspect we have the right to look down upon as such now, under NEP? Is this not all that is necessary for building a complete socialist society? This is not yet the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building.”

In other words, Lenin understood clearly that the material basis for building socialism existed in Russia, and that the most important thing was correctly resolving the internal contradictions of the revolution itself, especially the correct handling of the contradiction between the workers and peasants. And as history has shown, correctly handling these internal contradictions formed the basis for dealing with the external contradictions between the Soviet Union and the imperialist countries. It gave them the material foundation needed to resist imperialist intervention when the Soviet people turned back the German Nazi invasion.

The Trotskyite theory was proven false in practice by the Bolshevik party, as socialist construction and agricultural collectivization cemented the bond between the proletariat and the toiling masses of the peasantry. Despite all of Trotsky’s protests to the contrary, the Bolsheviks did indeed build socialism in their country, which shown as a beacon to the working and oppressed people of the entire world.

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The disagreement between Trotsky’s “absurdly Left” (according to Lenin) theory of “Permanent Revolution” and the Leninist theory of revolution in two stages boils down to the question of how to deal with the question of the peasantry.

Trotsky argued for a socialist revolution that would be antagonistic to the tsar, the imperialist bourgeoisie and the broad mass of the peasantry, and that therefore depended on support from socialist revolutions in Western Europe, without which it would be crushed by counter-revolution.

Lenin, on the other hand, advocated a revolution in two stages. The first stage would be a bourgeois-democratic revolution against tsarism and feudal autocracy. The second stage would be a proletarian-socialist revolution against the imperialist bourgeoisie. Both of these, according to Lenin, would be led by the working class in alliance with the peasantry.

Indeed, Lenin called for the “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” and warned against confusing the particularities of “the democratic revolution with the socialist revolution.”

It is worth looking at the Leninist theory of revolution in two stages, as it proved itself in practice in the course of the Russian revolution of 1917.

The first stage, the bourgeois-democratic revolution, lasted from 1903 to February 1917. At this stage, the aim was to overthrow the tsar and the landlords. The Bolsheviks led the proletariat, in a strategic alliance with the peasantry. Lenin and the Bolsheviks understood that the liberal bourgeoisie (the Cadets) would compromise with monarchism and tsarism, and they struggled to isolate them from the peasantry. This period revealed in practice that the Cadets had no interest in the demands of the peasantry for land and liberty, that the tsar supported the landlords, and the Cadets supported the tsar. Thus, the peasantry could rely on no one but the proletariat.

Because the working class was able to lead the peasantry in the struggle against tsarism, the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia had the effect of weakening the bourgeoisie overall, paving the way for the proletarian socialist revolution, culminating in the Great October Revolution of 1917. The second stage of the revolution lasted through the eight short months between the February and October revolutions. In this period the proletariat consolidated its alliance with the peasantry. The new Provisional Government, dominated by the imperialist bourgeoisie together with the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, refused to pull out of the imperialist war or to confiscate and redistribute the landlords’ land. Under Bolshevik leadership, the proletariat again demonstrated in practice that it was the only reliable ally to the poor peasants. Thus, it was possible to advance, under the Bolsheviks’ slogan of “Land, Bread and Peace,” from the bourgeois democratic revolution to the proletarian socialist revolution.

Trotsky believed that the socialist revolution would inevitably put the proletariat into conflict with the masses of the peasantry as a whole. For Trotsky, the revolution was not a protracted struggle, proceeding carefully, step by step. It was a sweeping, global event. Lenin, however, built a plan for revolution in the countryside based on a concrete analysis of the real, material conditions that presented themselves to the proletarian dictatorship. Lenin argued that the majority of the peasantry could be drawn into the process of socialist construction through the development of agricultural co-operatives. By introducing collectivization in the countryside gradually, instead of through coercion and “tightening the screws” as Trotsky would have it, this antagonism between the working class and the broad peasant masses was avoided. As a result, the broad masses of poor peasants participated enthusiastically in the class struggle in the countryside and struggled sharply together with the working class against the resistance of the rich peasants (kulaks).

This gets us to the main problem at the root of Trotsky’s many errors: Trotskyism again and again demands a “pure proletarian revolution,” a “revolution without the peasantry.” This sort of narrow “workerism” leads the Trotskyites to wrong positions in relation to national liberation struggles and how to organize a united front. Instead of uniting with other classes in common cause against the monopoly capitalists, they treat the would-be allies of the proletariat as enemies.

Instead of uniting with democratic demands, they propose the nebulous concept of “transitional demands.” This Trotskyite organizational method is tied to their “all at once” concept of pure proletarian revolution. We should consider the Trotskyite notion of “transitional demands” in light of the Marxist-Leninist method of the Mass Line. Trotsky was an agitator and an orator, not an organizer, and this is reflected in how the Trotskyites approach the masses. Instead of uniting with the advanced masses around their felt needs, developing higher and higher levels of understanding, organization and struggle, shoulder to shoulder with the masses, the Trotskyites reduce the immediate demands of the masses to mere agitational slogans for socialism, shouted from the sidelines, with no concern for how to get from here to there.

We will see the Trotskyite opposition to revolution in two stages arise again when we look at the revolution in China. We’ll look more closely at this in a later article dealing with China in detail, but for now, let’s touch on it briefly. The main point here is that Trotsky and his followers failed to understand that the Chinese revolution’s first stage must involve an agrarian struggle against feudalism as an essential part of a national liberation struggle against imperialism. Thus, Trotsky opposed the formation of a national united front composed of the proletariat together with the peasants, petty-bourgeoisie, and the anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie. This was in direct opposition to the approach taken by Mao Zedong, which was proved correct in practice.

Again and again, the Trotskyites put forward a pure proletarian, all or nothing, approach to revolution. They shout their ultra-left slogans from the sidelines of the struggles of the workers and oppressed, and oppose the strategic allies of the working class. For the Trotskyites, it is always all or nothing, which, of course, amounts to nothing.

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When Lenin gave his brief and scathing overview of Trotsky’s career in his 1914 article “Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity,” so that “the younger generation of workers should know exactly whom they are dealing with,” he made a point of referring to Trotsky’s “absurdly Left ‘permanent revolution’ theory.” What is the role of this “permanent revolution” theory within Trotskyism, and why is it “absurdly Left,” as Lenin says?

Karl Marx himself said in his 1850 address to the Communist League,

While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.

The Trotskyites will always bring out this quote as evidence of the “orthodoxy” on the question. Why then does Lenin characterize the Trotskyist interpretation as “absurdly Left” if this is the case?

To understand this, we need to look concretely at the revolutionary movement in Russia. While everyone agreed that the first order of business was the bourgeois-democratic revolution against the tsar, after that things get more complex.

The Mensheviks argued that the bourgeois-democratic revolution should be led by the liberal bourgeoisie with the support of the working class. It should lead, according to the Mensheviks, to the formation of a capitalist republic, which would develop the productive forces and set the conditions for a socialist revolution, to come much later.

Trotsky explained his view in the essay “The Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution.” According to Trotsky,

The perspective of the permanent revolution may be summed up in these words: The complete victory of the democratic revolution in Russia is inconceivable otherwise than in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat basing itself on the peasantry. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which will inescapably place on the order of the day not only democratic but also socialist tasks, will at the same time provide a mighty impulse to the international socialist revolution. Only, the victory of the proletariat in the West will shield Russia from bourgeois restoration and secure for her the possibility of bringing the socialist construction to its conclusion.

Lenin opposed both the Menshevik and the Trotskyite formulation. Against the Mensheviks, Lenin insisted that the proletariat could, and must, lead the revolution against feudal autocracy and tsarism. Against Trotsky’s view, Lenin advocated for revolution in two stages by leading the peasantry against the feudal autocracy and then against the bourgeoisie. Lenin argued that the first stage would be followed immediately by the second, and indeed it was, with the February Revolution to overthrow the Tsar in 1917 followed by the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie in October. For Lenin, this relied on the strategic alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, the “revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.”

Trotsky wrote in “The Permanent Revolution,” that “I accused Lenin of overestimating the independent role of the peasantry. Lenin accused me of underestimating the revolutionary role of the peasantry.” Trotsky argued that the revolution, in the socialist period, would inevitably form an antagonistic contradiction between the proletariat and the peasantry, leading the peasants to abandon and even to oppose the socialist revolution. The socialist revolution, according to Trotsky, would “have to make extremely deep inroads not only into feudal but also into bourgeois property relations,” leading into inevitable conflict with the masses of peasants. Indeed, according to Trotsky, “The contradictions in the position of a workers' government in a backward country with an overwhelmingly peasant population could be solved only ...in the arena of the world proletarian revolution.” In other words, as a result of this inevitable antagonism between the proletariat and the peasantry, the revolution in Russia was doomed to failure unless the revolution was spread immediately to Western Europe.

For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat in the world’s first socialist country has a special character. “The dictatorship of the proletariat is a special form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the toilers, and the numerous nonproletarian strata of the toilers (the petty bourgeoisie, the small craftsman, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.) or the majority of these.” Lenin believed that the revolution depended on the unity of the toiling masses, of the working class together with the poor peasants. Harry Haywood points out that “Trotsky portrayed the peasantry as an undifferentiated mass. He made no distinction between the masses of peasants who worked their own land (the muzhiks) and the exploiting strata who hired labor (the kulaks).” Haywood goes on to point out that this is in contradiction to the Leninist analysis and strategy of the worker-peasant alliance and is “at complete variance with any realistic economic or social analysis.”

Because of this, Trotskyism holds that socialism couldn’t be built in a single country, but that it must sweep away the entire capitalist and imperialist system at once. This is what characterizes Trotsky’s theory as “absurdly Left.” It sounds very revolutionary, but at its core it doesn’t coincide with facts. Indeed, Marx argued that socialism must take hold “not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world.” There is nothing controversial about that. But Trotsky mistakes the final victory of socialism for the present task of the revolution. It is all or nothing.

For the Trotskyists, “permanent revolution” is held up as a matter of principle, but in reality, it is an abstraction based on the underestimation of the peasantry and a fundamental failure to understand who the allies of the working class are. As Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, said in 1925, “Marxist analysis was never Comrade Trotsky’s strong point. This is the reason why he so under-estimates the role played by the peasantry.”

Harry Haywood put this another way:

Behind Trotsky's revolutionary rhetoric was a simplistic social-democratic view which regarded the class struggle for socialism as solely labor against capital. This concept of class struggle did not regard the struggle of peasant against landlord, or peasant against the Czar, as a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. This was reflected as early as 1905, in Trotsky's slogan, “No Czar, but a Workers' Government,” which, as Stalin had said, was “the slogan of revolution without the peasantry.”

This is a problem that arises again and again for the Trotskyists, as they lead with abstractions instead of concrete Marxist analysis, coming to erroneous positions on the socialist countries and the national-colonial question, both in the U.S. and in the anti-imperialist national liberation struggles abroad.

In the following articles, we’ll look more closely at the Leninist theory of revolution in two stages and then at the possibility of building socialism in a single country, and how these differed from the Trotskyite view. In any case, Trotsky and his followers have been sidelined by the course of history, while Marxism-Leninism has been proved in practice again and again.

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The Trotskyites always paint Trotsky as the true inheritor of the revolutionary legacy of Lenin. This is pure opportunism. They see the tremendous respect and admiration for Lenin that is held by working and oppressed people all over the world and seek to gain some of that respectability simply by association. They say Trotsky was Lenin’s true heir and comrade-in-arms, and that Stalin and the USSR betrayed Leninism.

But this is nonsense. The fact remains that Trotsky was never truly a Leninist, and between the theories of Trotsky and those of Lenin there are great differences. In fact, there were sharp disagreements between Lenin and Trotsky both before and after the revolution of October 1917. An overview of those disagreements will be helpful. Let’s look at some of them here.

First, let’s look at the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. This was a disagreement within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) about revolutionary organization and strategy. To put it simply, the Mensheviks (meaning minority), argued for a legal, mass party where anyone sympathetic to the party program could join, without being bound by strict revolutionary discipline. Lenin and the Bolsheviks (meaning majority) argued that the revolution required a smaller, more disciplined party made up of professional revolutionaries, bound by democratic centralism and deeply rooted in practical mass organizing. Trotsky sided with the Mensheviks, against Lenin.

Trotsky himself said in 1913, “The whole construction of Leninism is at present built up on lies and contains the poisonous germ of its own disintegration.”

In the 1914 article “Disruption of Unity Under Cover of Outcries for Unity,” Lenin writes, “The old participants in the Marxist movement in Russia know Trotsky very well, and there is no need to discuss him for their benefit. But the younger generation of workers do not know him, and it is therefore necessary to discuss him…”

In this article from 1914, Lenin sums up Trotsky’s trajectory from 1901 to that point:

“Trotsky was an ardent Iskrist in 1901-03, and Ryazanov described his role at the Congress of 1903 as “Lenin’s cudgel”. At the end of 1903, Trotsky was an ardent Menshevik, i.e., he deserted from the Iskrists to the Economists. He said that “between the old Iskra and the new lies a gulf”. In 1904-05, he deserted the Mensheviks and occupied a vacillating position, now co-operating with Martynov (the Economist), now proclaiming his absurdly Left “permanent revolution” theory. In 1906-07, he approached the Bolsheviks, and in the spring of 1907 he declared that he was in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg.

In the period of disintegration, after long “non-factional” vacillation, he again went to the right, and in August 1912, he entered into a bloc with the liquidators. He has now deserted them again, although in substance he reiterates their shoddy ideas.”

As Lenin says, regarding Trotsky, “The younger generation of workers should know exactly whom they are dealing with…”

Indeed, during the debates over the direction of the Russian revolution, Trotsky aligned himself with many different forces at different times. By 1912, Lenin and the Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks, who sought to liquidate the underground Russian Social Democratic Labor Party as a revolutionary organization, replacing it with an entirely legal, above ground, reformist organization. The expulsion of the liquidators allowed Lenin to consolidate the party into a more disciplined fighting organization of revolutionary cadres.

After this, the Mensheviks, Trotskyites, and other anti-Bolshevik factions came together to form the “August Bloc.” At this time, Trotsky took up a “centrist” position, claiming to seek to reconcile and unite the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. However, Lenin saw Trotsky’s centrist position for what it was: a smokescreen for the Menshevik liquidators.

Lenin wrote around this time, “Whoever supports Trotsky’s puny group supports a policy of lying and of deceiving the workers, a policy of shielding the liquidators. Full freedom of action for Potresov and Co. in Russia, and the shielding of their deeds by ‘revolutionary’ phrase-mongering abroad – there you have the essence of the policy of ‘Trotskyism’.”

At this time, Lenin took to referring to Trotsky as “Judas Trotsky” because he pretended to side with the Bolsheviks but actually was aiding the opponents of Bolshevism. This is a trend that will continue throughout Trotsky’s life.

In the summer of 1917, after the victory of the February Revolution against Tsarism and on the eve of the October Revolution that would overthrow the Russian bourgeoisie and establish the proletarian dictatorship, Trotsky and his small “centrist” group renounced their Menshevism and joined the Bolsheviks. The victory of the October Revolution brings us to another major disagreement between Trotsky and Lenin.

The first order of business after 1917 was to end Russia's involvement in World War I. Negotiations between Russia and Germany began in 1918 in Brest-Litovsk. Lenin’s view was that the survival of the newborn Soviet state required that peace be signed. Trotsky was given the task of negotiating the peace agreement at Brest-Litovsk.

Trotsky believed that the young Soviet state couldn’t survive without the success of the revolution in Western Europe, and that the victory of the German revolution was necessary to secure the victory of the Soviets. According to Trotsky, it was necessary to risk all of the gains of Soviet victory in order to keep Germany in the war, thereby aiding the German revolution.

Those opposed to signing the peace agreement with Germany formed a faction led by Bukharin and Trotsky, against Lenin. A vote was taken, and Lenin’s position won out. Nevertheless, Trotsky refused to submit to democratic centralism and refused to sign the treaty. Trotsky was therefore forced to resign as Commissar of Foreign Affairs.

Lenin wrote that, by delaying the signing of the peace agreement, these “pseudo-Lefts” actually bore “responsibility for sowing illusions which actually helped the German imperialists and hindered the growth and development of the revolution in Germany.”

The final major political disagreement between Trotsky and Lenin himself occurred regarding Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP). To understand the NEP, it is necessary to contextualize it following the period of the Civil War, where “war communism” demanded surplus grain appropriation in order to sustain the defense of the revolution. The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) – Short Course, sums it up like this:

“The Central Committee realized that the need for the surplus-appropriation system had passed, that it was time to supersede it by a tax in kind so as to enable the peasants to use the greater part of their surpluses at their own discretion. The Central Committee realized that this measure would make it possible to revive agriculture, to extend the cultivation of grain and industrial crops required for the development of industry, to revive the circulation of commodities, to improve supplies to the towns, and to create a new foundation, an economic foundation for the alliance of workers and peasants.

“The Central Committee realized also that the prime task was to revive industry, but considered that this could not be done without enlisting the support of the working class and its trade unions; it considered that the workers could be enlisted in this work by showing them that the economic disruption was just as dangerous an enemy of the people as the intervention and the blockade had been, and that the Party and the trade unions could certainly succeed in this work if they exercised their influence on the working class not by military commands, as had been the case at the front, where commands were really essential, but by methods of persuasion, by convincing it.”

Contrary to this view, Trotsky demanded that the trade unions be “governmentalized,” and called for “tightening the screws.” Trotsky opposed democratizing the trade unions and favored the continuation of the compulsory methods of war communism. This debate was taken to the Tenth Party Congress in March of 1921, where the overwhelming majority of the party sided with Lenin and endorsed his plan.

Lenin addresses this debate at length in his article, “The Trade Unions, the Present Situation, and Trotsky’s Mistakes.” There, Lenin argues that Trotsky’s errors on this question are mistakes about “the very essence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

“Comrade Trotsky speaks of a “workers’ state”. May I say that this is an abstraction. It was natural for us to write about a workers’ state in 1917; but it is now a patent error to say: ‘Since this is a workers’ state without any bourgeoisie, against whom then is the working class to be protected, and for what purpose?’ The whole point is that it is not quite a workers’ state. That is where Comrade Trotsky makes one of his main mistakes. We have got down from general principles to practical discussion and decrees, and here we are being dragged back and prevented from tackling the business at hand. This will not do. For one thing, ours is not actually a workers’ state but a workers’ and peasants’ state. And a lot depends on that.”

The Trotskyites today still parrot Trotsky’s error regarding a “workers’ state.” Lenin is correct to point out that this disregards the role of the peasantry. Indeed, the October Revolution established the proletarian dictatorship, and in the case of the former Russian Empire, the dictatorship of the proletariat was built upon the alliance of the working class together with the poor peasants. Why does Lenin stress this point about the “workers’ state'' in Trotsky’s formulation? He does so because this is an essential point that Trotsky fails to grasp. In the following articles, we’ll look more closely at the sharp disagreement between Lenin and Trotsky on the role of the peasantry in the revolution. It should be clear from this brief overview that Trotsky was never a Leninist, and that to call Trotsky a Leninist, the Trotskyites must opportunistically distort Leninism to fit their Trotskyism.

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Trotskyism has been one of the most persistent and damaging opportunist ideological opponents of Marxism-Leninism within the left. In the next several articles, we’re going to look at the origin and development of this ideology, what it is and what it seeks to accomplish. But first, who was Trotsky, and what is Trotskyism?

Who was Trotsky? Briefly, Leon Trotsky was a Menshevik who came over to the Bolsheviks on the eve of the October Revolution in 1917. He was a skilled writer and speaker. After the February Revolution, he joined a centrist social-democratic group called the “interboroughites.” This small grouping joined the Bolshevik party in the Summer of 1917, and Trotsky with it. During the October Revolution he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee, but of course, as someone so new to the organization, he could not be one of the group that directed, organized and led the uprising. During the Civil War that followed, he became Military Commissar of the Red Army. This wasn’t a position of military leadership, but of political leadership within the military. He was basically the chief propagandist of the Bolshevik forces, while questions of strategy, operations and tactics were directed by skilled and tested military figures under the leadership of the Central Committee.

Before and after the October Revolution, he was often in strong disagreement with Lenin and the Bolshevik majority. Again and again, Trotsky’s minority views were discussed and debated, but didn’t win out within the democratic centralist structures of the party. Eventually, Trotsky and his supporters degenerated from a faction within the party into a gang of wreckers against the party and were expelled as such. From there they only grew more desperate, taking any opportunity to disrupt and sabotage the Soviet state.

So much for Trotsky. What is Trotskyism? Trotskyism isn’t just the ideas of Trotsky in that period, but a persistent, developed ideology that originated then. Trotskyism is a petit bourgeois ideology within the working-class movement. What does this mean? Every ideology has a material basis within the class struggle. For example, liberalism is the ideological expression of the material interests of the monopoly capitalist class, and Marxism-Leninism is the expression, in the field of theory, of the material, practical interests of the working class.

The petite bourgeoisie is an intermediate class that always seeks to attain the heights of wealth and privilege held by the big capitalists, but is instead driven down by the inner logic of monopoly capitalism. Because of the pressures placed upon this class, some of its members look towards the revolutionary workers movement. Many are able to transform themselves and take up Marxism-Leninism, but some aren’t able to shake the ideological influence of the bourgeoisie and are instead drawn to Trotskyism, which dovetails with bourgeois ideology in numerous ways.

Indeed, Trotskyism is an ideology that stands in the doorway between the ruling class and the working class, with one foot in each room. It seeks to present itself as a working class ideology, but always seeks to compromise with the ideology of the ruling class. Because of this dual nature, it presents itself as being very “left,” but in essence it remains on the right.

To do this, Trotskyism has come up with a number of theories, each of which run counter to Leninism and each of which we will examine in detail. For example, Trotskyism upholds a theory called “permanent revolution,” and argues that it is not possible to build socialism in one country, but that it is only possible to have a worldwide revolution that sweeps away the entire capitalist order in one stroke. Similarly, Trotskyism argues against the Leninist idea that revolution should proceed step by step, in alliance with the peasantry, instead arguing that the revolution should oppose the peasantry as a counter-revolutionary force from the beginning. This is the foundation of Trotskyism’s wrong positions on the national-colonial question, the united front, and other essential questions of anti-imperialist liberation struggles and socialist revolution. In the articles that follow we will examine each of these points in detail.

We will also have to look at some questions of history, which the Trotskyites distort in order to prop themselves up. We will look at Trotsky’s ongoing struggle against the Bolsheviks, in the leadup to the October Revolution and after. We will examine the history and development of Trotsky’s relationship with the Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist country. Finally, we will also look at Trotskyism in relation to China, the Philippines and the United States.

The real test of any revolutionary theory is practice. Trotskyism has failed this test everywhere, over and over again. Trotskyism has only brought schisms, splits and disruption. Marxism-Leninism has proven itself in practice as the ideology of successful proletarian revolution. Marxism-Leninism has brought victory to the working class and its allies in socialist revolutions all over the world, and has proved itself again and again as the way forward for the working and oppressed people of the world.

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