To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
November 23, 2020
Re: Trotskyism in the light of mass experience
by Joseph Green, Detroit Workers' Voice
Over the last few months, I have been involved in a number of discussions with activists concerning the validity of Trotskyist theories. August 21 this year marked the 80th anniversary of the murder of Trotsky, and a number of left-wing publications published appreciations of Trotsky's life and writings. But the commemorative articles overlooked the many mistakes made by Trotsky, and the need to reexamine his theories in light of the experience of the last 80 years. Instead they attributed the failures of the Trotskyist movement to a number of causes, but never to deficiencies in Trotskyist theories themselves. I have sought to bring a deeper view of the matter to these discussions. Below I give a brief overview of the situation facing Trotskyism. And then in subsequent issues of the D/SWV list, I will reproduce a few of the more notable exchanges that have taken place about Trotskyism.
The revolutionary Marxist-Leninists from the 1960s through 1980s had sought to build a truly communist movement by, among other things, displacing both the pro-Soviet parties and the Trotskyists, but the movement repeatedly splintered and then went into decline. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Stalinist movement went into crisis. This left the Trotskyists as the main section of the revolutionary movement claiming to uphold Leninism. But in the last few years, despite the upsurge in the mass struggle in the US, the Trotskyist movement has faced disorientation and decline.
Indeed, the Trotskyist movement is undergoing a crisis. The International Socialist Organization (ISO), which was perhaps the largest American Trotskyist organization, dissolved last year after 43 years of existence. Another longtime organization, the Spartacist League, has barely published anything for the last few months, possibly as a result of the death last year of its founder, James Robertson. The Workers World Party suffered another of its splits in 2018, with its important Detroit branch, along with several others, leaving to form the Communist Workers League. And the Trotskyist movement has had trouble dealing with trends in the anti-Trump movement such as the rise of the left-wing Democrats; they have generally failed to recognize the existence of new imperialist powers around the world; and they have floundered in dealing with democratic uprisings around the world, such as the Syrian struggle against the dictator Assad.
The radical left needs to look into what's behind this crisis of the
Trotskyist movement. The point of doing this isn't to denigrate all
Trotskyist activists. Many of these activists have done dedicated and
valuable work. On one hand, Trotskyism, Stalinism, petty-bourgeois
democracy, and other erroneous trends have led the left-wing movement
into a serious ideological crisis. But on the other hand, activists
have joined these trends for a number of reasons, such as not being
aware of any better trends. It is our responsibility, both to the
overall movement and to the activists in erroneous trends, to look into
what's happened. Otherwise a strong radical left will never be built,
and never play its role in the mass struggle.
World developments constantly put new problems before the working class movement, and Trotskyism has stumbled on one after another.
A number of Trotskyists deny that there is a danger of extreme repression coming to the US, arguing that the ruling class supposedly only resorts to fascism when working-class revolution is imminent. This theory comes from Trotsky's writing on the fascism of the 1930s. They believe that this is how things were in the 1930s, and therefore this is how they must be today.
Many Trotskyists deny that in the century since Lenin's time new imperialisms and reactionary powers have developed. Russia supposedly can't be imperialist now, because it used to be revolutionary. China supposedly can't be imperialist today because it was a semi-colony in past, and India can't, because it was a colony in the past. With this way of thinking, the role of many major reactionary states is obscured, or even presented as anti-imperialist.
Trotsky's version of "permanent revolution" has failed spectacularly
with respect to the rebellions of the Arab Spring. Trotskyist groups
either pretended that these uprisings could lead to socialism, or
denounced them when they realized that they had no chance of leading to
socialism. In general, the theory of permanent revolution has made it
impossible for Trotskyism to make reasonable assessments of
democratizations movements when, as at present, they can't lead to
workers' regimes.
Trotsky's "transitional program" holds that the
distinction between reforms and revolution is outdated; only demands
which are inherently revolutionary are of any value. This requires
either imagining that various reforms are revolutionary in themselves,
or play-acting by putting forward very revolutionary demands without
any ability, or even real intention, of carrying them out.
Following the pattern set by Trotsky in the Fourth International, the major Trotskyist groups generally implement a rigid and mechanical form of centralism. Trotsky himself alternated between denigrating party-building, and advocating extreme centralism. His enthusiastic biographer Isaac Deutscher described him as "one of the sternest disciplinarians". (1)
Trotskyism presents itself as Leninism but actually has a number of similarities with non-Marxist views in the general left. As a result, certain of its views have spread widely among non-Marxists.
Most Trotskyists see the Stalinist and state-capitalist states as socialist and workers' states, albeit ugly or deformed ones. This goes back to Trotsky's book The Revolution Betrayed which held that the Stalinist system in the USSR of the mid-1930s was socialist economically and simply needed a change in leadership.
Trotskyists see the pro-capitalist trade union bureaucrats, no matter how treacherous, as a part of the workers movement to be allied with. In practice, this view is similar to that of those reformists who see gaining support in the working class as getting support from the labor officialdom.
Most Trotskyists see various oppressive regimes as anti-imperialist when they come into conflict with US or European imperialism. This is non-class anti-imperialism, which separates anti-imperialism from the struggles of the masses in these countries. While this is presented as the most fervent anti-imperialism, it tears the heart out of real anti-imperialism, leads to backing one imperialism against another, and leads to bitterly opposing a number of mass struggles and uprisings around the world; meanwhile it's compatible with the standpoint of some bourgeois political figures.
Marxism distinguishes between bourgeois-democratic movements, which fight various forms of oppression but don't go beyond capitalist democracy, and socialist movements, that aim at the economic emancipation of the working class. Non-Marxist leftism generally doesn't see the social difference between different types of movements and revolutions, and thinks that any truly progressive movement would lead to full liberation. The theory of permanent revolution also doesn't distinguish between different types of movements, as it regards that all movements will fail unless they become socialist movements.
Trotskyism differs with general leftism in a number of ways.
Most Trotskyists defend some form of party organization. Unfortunately, their idea of organization tends to be similar to Stalinist organization. Their terminology varies, as they defend the idea of factions while Stalinist parties may ban factions, but the result is pretty much the same. The recent history of the ISO and the British SWP show that factions didn't suffice to defend the membership against abuses by the leadership.
They are much more vehement in the defense of state-capitalist regimes and "anti-imperialist" reactionaries than most other leftists with the same views, and are fond of declaring, say, "unconditional" support for various regimes, even if it's "unconditional critical support".
They claim to be Leninist, and to be the staunchest opponents of Stalinism. Indeed, their terminology differs from that of Stalinism, but in practice Trotskyism is generally the flip side of Stalinism. For example, while bitterly denouncing Stalin, they defend Stalinist regimes as a form of workers' state. In reality, both Stalinism and Trotskyism are revisionist distortions of Leninism, that tear out its revolutionary and Marxist nature.
The coming parts of this article will deal with the debate on a few of these issues, such as permanent revolution, the transitional program, on party concept, and non-class anti-imperialism.
One of the key points will be the refusal of Trotskyists to seriously assess the experience of trying to carry out their theories. For example, consider Trotsky's view in April 1936 that Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia, would be a revolutionary dictator who would play a "very progressive role in history" and electrify the anti-imperialist movement by leading the fight against Italian fascist occupation. In reality, Selassie fled the county within a week and a half of Trotsky's statement, leaving the Ethiopian resistance to fight on by itself, and not returning until in 1941, with the help of British bayonets. In the recent discussion about Trotsky, I have tried without success to get any Trotskyist to take account of this. For that matter, in the 80 years since Selassie fled, the Trotskyist movement as a whole has stubbornly refused to take notice of it. I have yet to see a single article by any Trotskyist organization that mentions Selassie fleeing Ethiopia. This isn't because they have forgotten Trotsky's opinion about Haile Selassie. Indeed, Trotsky's letter On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo is one of the key building blocks of Trotskyist theory concerning the meaning of anti-imperialism, and has been cited repeatedly in Trotskyist polemics among themselves about the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and other regimes. But they prefer to close their eyes than to reexamine Trotsky's standpoint in the light of facts and what's really happened in Africa and the rest of the world.
Similarly, with regard to the Arab Spring, the Trotskyists rarely if ever mention that the theory of permanent revolution had something to do with their difficulty in dealing with democratic uprisings. They might point to the mistake of "campism", which is defined in various ways but basically means regarding various reactionary forces and regimes as being part of the anti-imperialist camp in struggle with the imperialist camp. But they won't mention that Trotsky's view of anti-imperialism is one of the inspirations for campism. And they won't mention that the theory of permanent revolution resulted in one wrong assessment after another of the democratic movements, such as those in the Middle East and North Africa. So, for example, when the anonymous article "Socialism and the Democratic Wager" appeared in an anthology defending the Syrian uprising and pointed out that permanent revolution was being "falsified by reality", most Trotskyists ignored it. (2) Perhaps its criticism of some of their views as "zombie Stalinism" and "Stalinism without Stalinism" struck too close for comfort.
(1) Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed/Trotsky: 1921-1929, pp. 29, 30, 32, 51, etc.
(2) The
book is Khiyana [Betrayal]: Daesh,
the Left & the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution, 2016,
edited by Jules Alford and Andy Wilson. The author of "Socialism and
the Democratic Wager" (pp. 1-40) was given as Assad an-Nar, which is
apparently a pen-name; it is the only anonymous article in the book. I
don't agree with all the assessments in this article, but it brings up
many sore points about the stand of many leftists towards the Syrian
democratic movement, sore points that most other authors ignore. See
pp. 25 and 31 for "zombie Stalinism" and "Stalinism without Stalinism".
<>
* A new assessment of
an old trend: Trotskyism as the equally evil twin of Stalinism, August 2014.
* Why some left-wing groups recoil from the
current wave of mass protests", Nov. 8, 2019.
*An Outline of Trotskyism's anti-Marxist
theories: A four-part critique of the basic ideas of Trotskyism", December 2002 - March 2005.
* A
collection of articles on Trotskyism, 1995-2020 <>
Back to main
page,
how o order CV,
write us!