On 21 August 1940, in Coyoac\u00e1n, Mexico City, Mexico, Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an agent of Stalin’s secret police. We take this opportunity to critically assess his life and views. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, the son of moderately well-off peasant farmers in the southern Ukraine, in 1879. As a student at the University of Odessa he became an anti-Tsarist revolutionary. He soon fell foul of the authorities and was sentenced to prison and exile in Siberia from where he escaped in 1902 using the name of one of his jailers on his false identity card; this name Trotsky he was to use for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trotsky played a prominent part in the 1905 revolt that followed \nRussia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, being elected the Chairman of\n the St. Petersburg “soviet” (“soviet” is simply the Russian word for \n“council”). Oddly in view of his later political evolution, when the \nsplit occurred in the Russian Social Democratic movement in 1903 between\n the Mensheviks (orthodox Social Democrats like Kautsky in Germany) and \nthe Bolsheviks (supporters of Lenin and his concept of a vanguard party \nof professional revolutionaries), Trotsky tended to favour the \nMensheviks. Stalin and his supporters later took great pleasure in \npublishing one of Trotsky’s writings from this period in which he \nviolently criticised Lenin’s conception of the party. Trotsky in fact \ntried to develop a middle position, evolving his own theory of how the \nanti-Tsarist revolution would develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks saw the anti-Tsarist \nrevolution as being one that would lead to the establishment of a \nbourgeois Democratic Republic in Russia (the difference between them was\n that the Mensheviks tended to see this as being done by the liberal \nbourgeoisie while the Bolsheviks said it would have to be the work of \nthe vanguard party). Trotsky took up a different position, arguing that \nif the working class were to come to power in the course of the coming \nbourgeois revolution in Russia it was unreasonable to expect them to \nhand over power to the bourgeoisie; they would, and should according to \nTrotsky, take steps to transform society in a socialist direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anti-Tsarist revolutionary\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This theory, which Trotsky called “the theory of the permanent \nrevolution”, latching on to a phrase used by Marx in one of his articles\n on the abortive German bourgeois revolution of 1848\u20139, was absurd in \nthat it implied that socialism could be on the agenda in economically \nbackward Russia. It was however important historically as it was adopted\n by Lenin himself in April 1917 when he returned to Russia from exile in\n Switzerland. As a result Trotsky himself then rallied to the \nBolsheviks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a very real sense Bolshevik ideology can be seen as a combination \nof Trotsky’s theory of the revolution and Lenin’s theory of the party. \nIn 1932 Trotsky wrote a book called The History of the Russian \nRevolution, which is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand \nthis event, not only because the author was an active participant in it \nbut also because it unintentionally shows how this wasn’t a working \nclass socialist revolution but an anti-feudal revolution led by a \nvanguard party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Bolshevik seizure of power Trotsky became, first, Commissar\n for Foreign Affairs and, then, Commander of the Red Army which \nsuccessfully won the Civil War against the “White Guards” supported by \nthe Western powers. This gave him an immense prestige both in Russia and\n among sympathisers with the Russian revolution in the rest of the \nworld. His attitude on other issues during this period was even more \nanti-working class than that of Lenin who, on one occasion, was forced \nto intervene to attack as going too far Trotsky’s proposal to \n“militarise” labour and the trade unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Lenin’s death Trotsky was gradually eased out of power. He was \nexiled first to Alma Ata in Russian central Asia and then to Turkey, \nNorway and finally Mexico. If he had stayed in Russia he would almost \ncertainly have been tortured, tried and shot like Zinoviev, Kamenev, \nBukharin and the other original leaders of the Bolshevik Party. All the \nsame he still ended up with a Stalinist ice-pick in his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Degenerate Workers State\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In exile Trotsky played the role of “loyal opposition” to the \nStalin regime in Russia. He was very critical of the political aspects \nof this regime (at least some of them, since he too stood for a \none-party dictatorship in Russia), but to his dying day defended the \nview that the Russian revolution had established a “Workers State” in \nRussia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the\n working class both of Russia and of the whole world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect \none, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his \nbook The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin\n of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a “degenerate Workers State” in \nwhich a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class \nbut without changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: \nhow could the adjective “workers” be applied to a regime where workers \ncould be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work and shot for\n going on strike? Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by \nmaking the completely unmarxist assumption that capitalist distribution \nrelations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on \nthe basis of socialist production relations. Marx, by contrast, had \nconcluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of \ndistribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the\n existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself \nhave been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the \nflimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of \nprivate shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath \ntheir property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist was \nthe existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not the \nnature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trotsky’s view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort of \n“Workers State” was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the \nranks of the Trotskyist movement itself which, since 1938, had been \norganised as the Fourth International. Two alternative views emerged. \nOne was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but some \nnew kind of exploiting class society. The other was that Russia was \nstate capitalist. The most easily accessible example of the first view \nis James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony \nCliff’s Russia: A Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, \nthough in fact neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the \noriginators of the theories they put forward. The majority of \nTrotskyists, however, remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a \n“degenerate Workers State”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transitional Demands\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trotskyist theory and practice is rather neatly summed up in the \nopening sentence of the manifesto the Fourth International adopted at \nits foundation in 1938. Called The Death Agony of Capitalism and the \nTasks of the Fourth International, and drafted by Trotsky himself, it \nbegan with the absurd declaration: “The world political situation is \nchiefly characterised by historical crisis of the leadership of the \nproletariat”. This tendency to reduce everything to a question of the \nright leadership (Trotsky once wrote a pamphlet on the Paris Commune in \nwhich he explained its failure by the absence of a Bolshevik Party \nthere) reminds us that Trotskyists are 102 per cent Leninists and \nbelievers in the vanguard party. They believe, in other words, that \nworkers by their own efforts are incapable of emancipating themselves \nand so must be led by an enlightened minority of professional \nrevolutionaries (generally bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin and \nTrotsky). Thus they fall under the general criticism of Leninism and \nindeed of all theories which proclaim that workers need leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other important point in the manifesto of the Fourth \nInternational was the concept of “transitional demands”. The manifesto \ncontained a whole list of reform demands which was called “the \ntransitional programme”. This reform programme was said to be different \nfrom those of openly reformist parties like Labour in Britain and the \nSocial Democratic parties on the Continent in that Trotskyists claimed \nto be under no illusion that the reforms demanded could be achieved \nwithin the framework of capitalism. They were posed as bait by the \nvanguard party to get workers to struggle for them, on the theory that \nthe workers would learn in the course of the struggle that these demands\n could not be achieved within capitalism and so would come to struggle \n(under the leadership of the vanguard party) to abolish capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually, most Trotskyists are not as cynical as they pretend to be \nhere: in discussion with them you gain the clear impression that they \nshare the illusion that the reforms they advocate can be achieved under \ncapitalism (as, indeed, some of them could be). In other words, they are\n often the victims of their own “tactics”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Splits and sects\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Second World War, all the Trotskyists in Britain were \nunited for a time in a single organisation, the Revolutionary Communist \nParty, which was affiliated to the Fourth International. All the leaders\n of the various Trotskyist sects (Gerry Healy, Ted Grant, Tony Cliff, \netc.) were together in the RCP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most of the splits that subsequently occurred were over the attitude \nto adopt towards Russia and the Cold War. The group around Cliff, as we \nhave already noted, took the view that Russia had been state capitalist \nsince about 1928 (up till then it had supposedly been a “Workers \nState”). Logically they adopted the slogan “Neither Washington nor \nMoscow”. Longtime known as the “International Socialists” they are now \nthe Socialist Workers Party. Except on Russia they share all the other \nTrotskyist illusions (vanguard party, transitional demands, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1949 the RCP dissolved itself and most Trotskyists decided to join\n the Labour Party and “to bore from within”. This tactic, known in \nTrotskyist parlance, as “entryism”, is again based on the premise that \nthe mass of the workers need leaders and are there to be manipulated. As\n would-be leaders of the working class, the argument goes, we must be \nwhere the workers are; as in Britain the Labour Party is “the mass party\n of the working class” this is where we Trotskyists must be if we are to\n have a chance of influencing (that is, manipulating) the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the general strike in France in May 1968, which seemed to show \nthat student activists could influence the working class directly \nwithout needing to pass through “the mass party of the working class”, \nmost of the Trotskyist groups decided to abandon entryism and openly \nform their own parties. Thus parliamentary elections in Britain came to \nbe enlivened by the presence of parties bearing such titles as “Workers \nRevolutionary Party”, “Socialist Workers Party”, “Revolutionary \nCommunist Party”, “Socialist Unity”, etc. Needless to say, they got no \nmore votes than we in the Socialist Party did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This abandoning of entryism should not be interpreted as meaning \nopposition to the Labour Party, because nearly all the Trotskyist groups\n continue to support the election of a Labour government and to call on \nworkers to vote Labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One Trotskyist sect, however, decided not to abandon the Labour Party\n after 1968 but to continue boring from within: the sect now known as \nthe Militant Tendency (leader: Ted Grant). The absence of the other \nsects meant that they had a monopoly of this particular hunting ground. \nSo when Labour turned left after 1979 they were there ready to recruit \nnew members and increase their influence. In fact the Militant Tendency \nhas undoubtedly been the most successful of all the Trotskyist groups \nthat have ever infiltrated the Labour Party.They control a number of \nconstituency parties as well as the Labour Party Young Socialists. There\n are even two or three Trotskyist MP’s sitting on the Labour benches at \nWestminster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From an ideological point of view, the Militant Tendency follows \northodox Trotskyism. Thus, for instance, they regard Russia as a \n“degenerate Workers State” which means they are more backward than many \nLabour Party members who willingly recognise that Russia is state \ncapitalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trotsky entirely identified capitalism with private capitalism and so\n concluded that society would cease to be capitalist once the private \ncapitalist class had been expropriated. This meant that, in contrast to \nLenin who mistakenly saw state capitalism as a necessary step towards \nsocialism, Trotsky committed the different mistake of seeing state \ncapitalism as the negation of capitalism. Trotskyism, the movement he \ngave rise to, is a blend of Leninism and Reformism, committed on paper \nto replacing private capitalism with state capitalism through a violent \ninsurrection led by a vanguard party, but in practice working to achieve\n state capitalism through reforms to be enacted by Labour governments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 21 August 1940, in Coyoac\u00e1n, Mexico City, Mexico, Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an agent of Stalin’s secret police. We take this opportunity to critically assess his life and views. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, the son of moderately well-off peasant farmers in the southern Ukraine, in 1879. As a student at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2106,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-307","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}