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[7] The Labour Party in Parliament confined itself to sporadic questions about ‘integration’ from the back benches. In 1958, however, inspired by the Notting Hill riots and a back-bench Private Member’s Motion the Labour Party took a firm stand on the control question. Just as in 1905, and in 1919, their attitude was total opposition to control, but immediately their reasons for such an attitude differed sharply from the previous occasions. Thus Arthur Bottomley, Front Bench spokesman on Commonwealth questions, spoke out in the House on 5 December 1958: ‘We on this side are clear in our attitude towards restricted immigration. I think I speak for my Right Honourable and Honourable friends by saying that we are categorically against it ... The central principle on which our status in the Commonwealth is largely dependent is the “open door” to all Commonwealth citizens. If we believe in the importance of our great Commonwealth we should do nothing in the slightest degree to undermine that principle.’ Gone was the argument of Keir Hardie that control was ‘deceitful’ in that it did not solve the problems of the working class; gone was the argument of Josiah Wedgwood that ‘we believe that the interests of the working classes everywhere are the same’. A new element had crept into the discussion. It was ‘our great Commonwealth’. Bottomley’s ‘categorical’ opposition to control of Commonwealth Immigration was repeated officially in 1960 and half-way through 1961 by Party leaders, although the matter was never discussed at Party Conference. When the Tories, bowing beneath the pressure from the constituencies and the small, well-organised right-wing group in Parliament, introduced a Bill to control Commonwealth Immigration, the Parliamentary Labour Party decided by a substantial majority to oppose it. Their opposition was prolonged and principled. In Parliament, they fought every line of the Bill, plugging it with huge gaps which they were later, in power, to close. Outside Parliament, they launched a campaign against the Bill, which fired the enthusiasm of all the principled sections of the movement, including, even, the Young Socialists. Yet it was the arguments used which, in the long run, proved catastrophic for Labour. True, Gaitskell, Brown and Gordon Walker all emphasised that control did not solve the real social problems which gave rise to resentment against the immigrants. But the fundamental argument which ran through every speech and every article in opposition to the Bill from official Labour and from all sections of the Parliamentary Party heralded Bottomley’s rallying cry about ‘our great Commonwealth’. Thus Gaitskell: ‘It is rather moving. I found when I was there that they look on us as the Mother Country in a very real sense ... I simply say that we are the Mother Country and we ought not to forget it.’ [8] Thus Arthur, later Lord, Royle: ‘The second reason why they come here is that they are loyal members of the Commonwealth and turn as of right to the Mother Country to obtain the things which the Mother Country alone can give them.’ [9] Thus Barbara Castle: ‘I do not care whether or not fighting this Commonwealth Immigration Bill will lose me my seat, for I am sure that this Bill will lose this country the Commonwealth.’ [10] One of the main wrecking amendments to the Bill was moved jointly by Mr John Biggs Davison and Mr Robin Turton of the Tory extreme Right and Mr Michael Foot and Mr Sydney Silverman. The old internationalism with which Labour had fought the Aliens Acts had vanished without trace. In its place was this crude and reactionary maternalism. For loyalty to the Commonwealth, whatever the progressive terms in which it is phrased, is nothing more nor less than inverted imperialism. Those who ask for special privileges for Commonwealth citizens are accepting that people who have been conquered by Britain should be treated more leniently than people conquered by a foreign power. Since so much of the Labour Opposition depended on this maternalism, it was not long before the entire case, which, at the time of the Second Reading of the Bill (November 1961), was reinforced with strong and principled arguments, degenerated utterly. By February 1962, Labour back-benchers were moving amendments to the Bill that people who had fought in the war should be allowed to come into Britain free. By November 1963, when Labour was forced to oppose the continuance of the Act, Wilson (much more reactionary and opportunist on this issue than Gaitskell) could complain about the ‘loopholes’ in the Act which his own Party had created. Wilson’s only grounds for opposing the continuance of the Act on that occasion was that the Tories had not ‘consulted’ the Commonwealth Governments. Keeping out the blacks seemed to Labour in 1963 a perfectly reasonable proposition, provided the blacks were told about it in advance. Although the Labour ‘line’ now appeared consistent, the whole of the argument was now about the Commonwealth. No longer did Labour members insist that control would not solve the real social problems, or that it was a sop to racialists. Thus what little meat there was in the Labour case in 1961-2 had disappeared completely a year later. It needed only a final shove to push Labour off their nominal opposition to the Immigration Act. The man who gave the shove was a young schoolteacher who lived in Smethwick, whose name was Peter Griffiths. Griffiths, cast precisely in the Joseph Chamberlain Midlands Tory tradition (which has for fifty years attracted considerable working-class support), could not regard himself as likely ever to be persona grata in the Tory hierarchy. He has a strong Midland accent, and he is a crude reactionary. Unless he could win Smethwick for the Conservatives, his chances elsewhere would be minimal. He watched with interest then as the Birmingham Immigration Control Association moved into Smethwick in 1961, and, helped by able local propagandists, succeeded in exciting hundreds of working-class people in Smethwick against the immigrant. Griffiths adopted their techniques and their propagandists over a powerful two-year anti-immigrant campaign and took the seat off Labour in a swing of 7.2 per cent – against a national swing the other way of 3.5 per cent. The highest ‘swing’ to the Tories anywhere else in Britain was 3.5 per cent (in neighbouring West Bromwich). |
Griffiths proved that a concerted anti-immigrant., racialist campaign, if given time, can explode the solidarity with Labour of the working-class electorate. Labour took the hint. No sooner had they settled in office but they started to tighten the controls. Gunter announced on the 17 November 1964 that there would be no more ‘C’ vouchers (for unskilled immigrants) issued, unless the prospective immigrant could show that he had fought in the war. On 5 April Soskice was promising stricter controls within the existing legislation and in mid-July, the Government finally announced a ‘quota’ system by which no more than 8,000 voucher holders would be allowed in each year from the Commonwealth. The Labour Government’s attempt to gloss over this collapse with ‘integrative measures’ and a Race Relations Act have failed miserably. Throughout, they have been compromised. The Race Relations Bill, for instance, does not deal either with housing or with employment – the two main areas of discrimination – and is in the main a restatement of the Public Order Acts, 1936. 4. Conclusions Three crucial lessons for the Labour movement and the class it represents arise from this brief history. First, there is the unusual power and strength of racialist propaganda. Reactionary propaganda, in normal circumstances, has a political effect only within the limits of economic circumstances. Yet racial propaganda can move for long periods beyond the bounds of economic circumstances, and, further, can give otherwise impotent politicians enormous power and influence. The example of the Southern States of America hangs threateningly over the British working class. For in the period immediately after the Civil War, the Populist movement began to forge the links between white and black workers which, if completed, could only have had revolutionary consequences. Negro delegates were elected to all the State legislatures, and the leading working-class organisations joined with the Negroes to outvote, and eventually, they hoped, to overthrow the traditional ruling class in the South. Tom Watson, the Populist leader, called again and again to ‘our friends’ the Negroes, with whom the ‘poor whites’ must unite to overthrow the despotism of the planter. Observers in the South at the time noted with amazement that the incidence of racial discrimination in the South was less even than in New England, the traditional home of Northern abolitionism. The revolutionary consequences of the links between the poor white and the Negro were not lost on the two political parties, the planters or indeed the Northern Liberals. Thus it was that towards the end of the last century the great campaign was started by politicians from both Republican and Democratic parties (particularly the latter), by the planters, and – if only by their acquiescence – the Northern Liberals, to split the new alliance. With the poll tax, the white primary and a constant stream of anti-black propaganda they turned the poor white against the Negro, until poor old Tom Watson was shouting racist drivel with the rest of them. Having once staved off the revolutionary potential of a multi-racial working class alliance, however, the propaganda and the race-hatred could not stop itself, and reached proportions which were unacceptable, not only to the Northern Liberals, but also to the Southern ruling class itself. It is worth remembering that the membership of the Klu Klux Klan is almost entirely working-class. Thus, also, in South Africa the intelligent capitalists are crying for an end to the colour bar and to a system of exploitation which allows for a relevant division of labour. They are held back by white workers who will strike rather than accept black men alongside them in the factory. The racial prejudice which the ruling class has unleashed to split the workers knows no master. It distorts the capitalist pattern out of all recognition. It is quite useless for socialists to sit back and say, ‘The capitalist system, in the long run, will unite the different racists in the process of production.’ Racist propaganda can, at will, divide the class even while the process of production unites it. Thus it must be met with fierce propaganda from the other side. Further, racialist propagandists are never satisfied. They thrive on acquiescence. In the years 1920-1926 – a period of intense racist propaganda – more aliens left the country than came in. The Control Acts of 1916 and 1961 were followed, not by acquiescence, but by renewed racist propaganda by the extremist politicians. Secondly, there is the need for ‘integration’. The word is much abused, used far too often in a ‘teach them to live like us’ meaning. No progressive, much less socialist, is going to be associated with moves to rob people of their culture and customs. Nor, on the other hand, will he spurn the opportunity to counter the ludicrous propaganda about the immigrant community which is common gossip in many ‘affected’ working-class communities. For instance, there are very few statistics to show higher rates of crime or of disease among coloured immigrants in Britain. In the first two and a half years of immigration four Indians and six Pakistanis have been deported for criminal offences (compared, for instance, with 378 Irish), and the rate of venereal disease among Asians and the rate of tuberculosis among West Indians are in both cases lower than the rates in the indigenous population. Crime and disease among immigrants, where they are exceptionally widespread are directly due to the foul, insanitary conditions in which they are forced to live. The foulest lie of all is the connection which is drawn between the immigrant population and the housing shortage. It is necessary constantly here to emphasise contribution. Housing shortages and the like are quite unrelated to the numbers of people in the planning area, since all these people, or almost all, are contributing to the general levy of production (or have contributed or will contribute). Take away the immigrant community and you take away their contribution to the social services, which, if anything, is slightly higher per head than that of the indigenous population. A higher proportion of immigrants are at work than the indigenous population, and many of them have entered the country as fit and available workers, whom the capitalist State is not forced to ‘educate’ or pay out family allowances for. |
Constantly, remorselessly the point must be driven home: modern capitalism, for all its apparent slumplessness, has not started to provide even the most basic social services for the people who produce its wealth. The number of people in any given area is quite irrelevant to the state of those services, whose shortage is entirely due to an economic system which produces wealth for the benefit and superiority of a class. Finally, there is the problem of immigration control. The matter is crucial, because it is in terms of control that the issue is always discussed, and it is under the ‘realistic’ demands for control that the racists launch their most powerful propaganda. Against the argument for control, which is accepted by some 80 per cent, if not more, of the British working class there is one defensive argument, and one offensive. The defensive argument stems from the one iron law about international migration since capitalism began – that migration corresponds almost exactly to the economic situation in the receiving country. Thus the ‘right’ of Commonwealth immigration, although in existence for some 200 years, was not used until 1948 because there was no security of employment in Britain. Similarly, during the fifties the ‘net’ immigration into Britain from the coloured Commonwealth levelled out at some 40,000 per year during 1955, 1956, and 1957. Yet in 1958 and 1959, for no legal or administrative reason, it dropped to 20,000 a year. This was the direct result of Mr. Thorneycroft’s recession at the end of 1957 which resulted in the then highest unemployment since the war. Since the Commonwealth Immigration Act, Irish immigration, which remains uncontrolled, has corresponded almost exactly to the rise and fall of vacancies in Britain, as indeed has Puerto Rican immigration into America which is also, for similar reasons, uncontrolled. Even if we accept all the capitalist premises, then, immigration control has nothing to do with ‘flooding the labour market’ or any such nonsense. Automatically, immigration corresponds to the needs of the economy. Similarly, in close capitalist logic, immigration does not in any way aggravate the shortage of social services, since the immigrant brings with him not only his body, which has to be housed, but also his work, which helps to build the house. Immigration control is not a creature of logic, even of capitalist logic. It has nothing to do with reason, even capitalist reason. It is a direct product of and capitulation to reason’s opposite, prejudice. Yet this argument pales into insignificance before the real, offensive socialist argument which concerns the man who is being controlled. Upon what basis is the Indian or the Pakistani or the Jamaican refused leave to better himself by migration? The methods of immigration control reveal its true nature. People are kept out because they are sick; because they have in the past committed crimes; because, above all, they are unskilled. Yet these are the people who most need to migrate, who most need the better services and training facilities which migration brings. Why then keep them out? Simply (get out those manifestos again) because that is the method which ‘most benefits Britain’. Immigration control is chauvinist legislation. It cannot be contemplated by an international socialist, for its whole rationale is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. This struggle between nation states has two main effects. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. Second, it continues the ruthless division between former imperialists and former colonial subjects. While the battle between nation states continues there remains no chance for a switch in resources from the ‘developed’ to the ‘underdeveloped’ world. The chauvinist tradition in the British Left is today its greatest enemy. It is this tradition which drives ‘extreme’ Left-wingers in Parliament and outside to talk of immigration control as ‘planning’ and something which should therefore be welcomed. ‘Planning’ to these people is national planning: Neddy, the Coal Board, British Rail and the nationalisation of steel. The restricted immigrants get no benefit from the overall ‘plan’. But they can be forgotten. They are not British. As Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker wrote to his former constituents: ‘This is a British country with British standards of behaviour. The British should come first.’ The inhumanity and chauvinism of the Methodist Left can best be summed up in their overnight conversion to immigration control on the basis that this is ‘planning’ for a better Britain. Of course, they all want international planning one day. In the meantime they are happy with the national plan. In their heart of hearts, they are hoping for the sun. In the meantime they will continue to pray for, and urge on the rain. The only possible attitude of an international socialist is outright opposition to immigration control. Yet it is only by taking the argument two stages further that such a position will ever convince the working class. |
Yet it is only by taking the argument two stages further that such a position will ever convince the working class. First, that the socialist case does not stop with opposition to control: that the process whereby the employers of one country go out (as for instance the German employers go to Turkey) to recruit thousands of workers en masse, uproot them from their homes, house them in ghettos, use them as cheap labour to soften the militancy of indigenous workers – this process has nothing whatever to do with international socialism. Socialists must make it clear that they are looking for a system where people are not forced through economic circumstances to leave the homes and cultures they know and understand: that under international socialism, movement between countries is free, of course, but it is in the real sense voluntary. Finally, opposition to immigration control must not become the sole province of well-meaning liberals who ‘believe’ in the fundamental equality of God’s children. Socialists must make it clear that they are opposed to anti-immigrant propaganda, opposed to immigration control, not for any abstract principle, but because of the need of workers of all nationalities, to forge a weapon which, unlike immigration control, will carve out the highest standards of life and living for all workers. Top of the page Footnote 1. See James Handley, The Irish in Scotland. 2. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class, 1844. 3. House of Comment, 2 May 1905. 4. Ibid., 22 October 1919. 5. See the debate on the Second Reading of the Polish Resettlement Bill, Ibid., 12 February 1947. 6. Ibid., 5 November 1954. 7. See Smethwick Telephone and News Chronicle, 12 November 1954. 8. House of Commons, 16 November 1961. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 14 January 1962. Top of the page Last updated on 11.5.2008 |
MIA > Archive > P. Foot Paul Foot Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Haitian Slave Revolt of 1791 (July 1991) A lecture by Paul Foot delivered on 12 July 1991 in London. Transcribed by Adrian Leibowitz. Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. Well, we are playing once again the anniversary game here, 1791 to 1991. There was a very good example of that the other day, I don’t know whether you saw in the newspapers, that her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal was making a speech for the Observer newspaper to celebrate two-hundred years since the publication of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man. It was the Tom Paine lecture, sponsored by the Observer and one of the quotes in The Rights of Man, which was not used on that occasion, which I picked out here, in which Thomas Paine said “Monarchy is a silly stupid thing. A play thing for the rich and a menace for the poor”. Now that’s the theme actually of The Rights of Man, Common Sense, Crisis Papers, most of Thomas Paine’s life was devoted to the destruction of monarchy. And it is part of what might be called the revolutionary necrophilia which runs through the ages, that is, that each age worships the revolutionaries of the past and loves revolutionaries provided only that they are dead. And the longer that they are dead the better for them. That is the usual state of affairs with people in our tradition, that are heralded by the existing society. Now, what we are dealing with today is another notch up, if you like, in that process. You have revolutionary necrophilia, you also have a phenomenon called revolutionary amnesia – that is in which people forget altogether what has happened in the past. The Observer does not have a Toussaint L’Ouverture lecture. The Observer is celebrating its two-hundredth anniversary and when I rang up rather plaintively suggested that they might have an article on Toussaint L’Ouverture, on August the 14th, well August the 18th which is a Sunday, to celebrate the uprising in Saint Domingue in 1791, which after all was rather appropriate since the Observer was started pretty well about that time I was told that ‘we were looking too much into the past’ and ‘such a thing was absolutely out of the question’. I don’t know whether you have been reading the Observer, but every single thing in the colour supplement over the last six months has been heralding what happened in 1791. In other words they will remember everything, except perhaps the most important event of that year, more important even than the publication of The Rights of Man, I would argue. Perhaps more important than anything else in the whole history of the world, it’s no great exaggeration to say that, the events that started in 1791 in San Domingo in the West Indies. And to get us there I’ll ask a few ‘O’ Level questions, I know you’re, this is the cream of the Marxist intelligentsia in this country and therefore you’ve all not only got ‘O’ Levels but also ‘A’ Levels and therefore the (questions will easily) answers will trip off your tongue as I (make) as I suggest the questions. I ask the question ‘Who abolished slavery?’ and in a great roar the answer will come back ‘William Wilberforce abolished slavery’. One of the most heroic and greatest feats in the history of Great Britain is that this grand old Christian gentleman and Tory MP, from Hull, somehow, struggling himself from factory to factory ... which he owned ... and, er ... treating the workers there ... well like ... like slaves – somehow himself by prodigious effort and enormous amount of prayer managed to abolish one of the great obscenities in the whole history in the human race. And he was assisted in that regard, and this also will be in your ‘O’ Level syllabus, by the youngest ever, Tory Prime Minister, William Pitt. The Tory Prime Minister of the day, together with Wilberforce drew up the first abolition bill for getting rid of slavery themselves. That is the Tory MP plus his friend and mentor, William Wilberforce drew up a bill to abolish slavery in 1792. It never did get on the statute book – but the answer is quite simple isn’t it – William Wilberforce abolished slavery and he was helped by William Pitt. And therefore, not only the great inventions and deeds of civilization have been of course created by grand bourgeois people but also the great reforms of history have been carried out by grand bourgeois people, the changes, the end of exploitation have been bought around by people like Wilberforce and Pitt. And now we come, to get us to the destination where we want to start – we come to another set of questions with which the answer will be very, very familiar to you: ‘who discovered America?’ That’s absolutely ... everybody knows that, don’t they. ‘Christopher Columbus discovered America’. I mean it was annoying that there were about six hundred thousand people living there at the time who had apparently discovered it before him, but there’s no doubt that Christopher Columbus discovered America. That is he discovered it for the Spanish empire for whom he represented. He was an explorer and he represented the Spanish empire. He also discovered, in fact, the same year as he discovered America, or the year afterwards, I think, he discovered a paradise island, what he described as a paradise island. The closest thing to paradise on the face of the earth – he described it like that. And because it was so wonderful he called it, naturally, Hispaniola – that is, something that’s come out of Spain. Because it was so beautiful it was plainly something to do with the Spanish empire. This was the largest island in what later became known as the West Indies. The island itself of Hispaniola was about the size of Ireland; a fairly substantial size and when Columbus discovered it again there were about a million people living there in apparent reasonable peace and reasonable friendship with one another – they didn’t fight each other very often or anything like that. They weren’t trained in the advanced practices of white Christian civilization and therefore on the whole they didn’t fight each other. |
And the Spanish empire were so delighted with having got hold of this island which they thought might contain gold – as a matter of fact it hardly did contain any gold, but they thought it might – that they started in the most extraordinarily short period of time to exterminate the entire population. And I mean exterminate. There were a million people there in 1493 when the island was discovered, by 1520, certainly by 1550, there were no more than 50,000 of the million people there, simply because they had been put to work in the most brutal fashion known to the Spanish empire, which was perhaps the most brutal of all – although it’s a close run thing and we are not going to get worked ... have an argument now as to which was the most brutal of the empires. At any rate, the entire indigenous population of the country was destroyed. And the Spanish imperialists, some of whom had turned into colonists, were therefore faced with the awkward question of how they were to get the wealth out of a territory if there was no-one to get it out for them. Now the time our story starts, Hispaniola is no longer called Hispaniola. It’s an island which is divided into two through the imperialist wars that have taken place in that part of the world – chiefly between the empire of Spain and the empire of France. The empire of Spain owned the eastern half of the island, which was called Santo Domingo. The empire of France owned the western half of the island, which was called Saint Domingue. Now, it was something to do with the relative life that was left in the two imperialisms, if you like, that the Spanish part had been left to rot. There were a hundred and twenty five thousand people there, cattle simply roaming about, pretty well nothing cultivated. But the French half, Saint Domingue ... remember now that this island, just in case you’re still floundering about wondering where the hell we are, this island is now called Haiti. And this island, Haiti, is now among the five or ten poorest places on earth, both in terms of the state of the people there and in terms of its production. Now in terms of its production, the western half of San Domingo, Saint Domingue, in 1789 just to take a year, a convenient year at which we might start, in 1789, was the richest place on earth. It produced two thirds of all the proceeds of the trade of France. France being perhaps the richest, or the second richest country in the world, one of the biggest empires in the world, two thirds of all its trade was provided by production from Saint Domingue. Something to do with mixture of climate made it an extremely cultivable place. And sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, tobacco were produced in that part of the world more, easier and in greater numbers, in greater volume than in any other place on earth. Whole cities in France, Nantes for instance, Bordeaux, places that you would have visited on your holidays, were all dependent there, dependent almost entirely upon the trade which came from Saint Domingue. Now this vast wealth was entirely dependent on one phenomenon. That is the phenomenon of slavery. I’m not going to go into it in any length because on this subject really we’re not in great difference with the people who produce great series’ on television and so on, nothing distinguishes us very much. Everybody regards slavery as an obscenity. Everybody – horrible thing that happened! I just want to give one or two figures to demonstrate the size of it. Between 1500 and 1800, three hundred years, before this ... just up to where this story starts, thirty million slaves were taken from the continent of Africa to the West Indies and to the so-called New World in the United States of America. Now, thirty million, that sounds a lot anyway. If I tell you that the population of Britain at that time was a population of ten million – then what I am talking about is three times the population of Britain. That is equivalent to something like, to a hundred and fifty million people. An enormous percentage of the population of the whole continent of Africa were taken from relatively peaceful and friendly surroundings into a hell which it’s almost impossible to describe. I mean they were, you know about it, they were chained, put on the boats, they were the lucky ones, that the ones who died on the boats. They were treated as dogs, worse than dogs – worse more than animals and the slave trade was and certainly is accepted as being something unimaginably horrible in terms of the exploitation and horror. Nevertheless, the wealth in Saint Domingue at the time that we are talking about was entirely dependent upon this trade. There were in the island, this part of the island, thirty thousand whites, who were mainly either overseers, or part of the militia or the planters themselves; forty thousand mulattos – that is people of, what we would call today, probably wrongly ‘mixed race’, people who had come from a black mother usually and a white father and five-hundred thousand black slaves from Africa. That was the population, about six-hundred thousand people of Saint Domingue at these times. And two-thirds of the slaves in 1789, that were actually in Saint Domingue, had been born in Africa. There wasn’t you see a second generation, much of a second generation, or a third generation of slavery at that time; simply because there wasn’t time really to have children and the slave drivers were not particularly interested in slaves that had children – because it was a process which held up the business of labour which produced profit for them. Eleven percent of the population of Saint Domingue every year died. Eleven percent. Now you might say well what’s that figure mean? Well it means that more people died in Saint Domingue every year, as a result of the very high death rate among the slave population, than for instance died in Britain in the First World War. If you wanted to find a time when lots of people died in this country you would immediately think of the First World War. A horrible massacre of young men, that went on and on for four years. But a much smaller percentage of the population died then that died now. Food was not provided. It was in the rules that food should be provided for slaves but on the whole food wasn’t provided for slaves. |
They worked a seven day week and an eighteen hour day, once they got to Saint Domingue in the fields picking the cotton, picking the coffee and generally getting the production out of the fields, that they had in their spare time to cultivate their own little patches in order to make vegetables for them to eat. The crucial thing about them was that they were not entitled to any minds of their own. No thought – one of the most savage sentences was handed out to anybody who gave any education to any slave. Even religion was regarded as dangerous as far as the slaves were concerned. I mean they were allowed to be baptised, mass baptisms, the Catholic Church were allowed in for a quick baptism, mass baptism and then out again. That was the total amount of time they were allowed religion in case any nonsense about ‘eyes of needles’ and ‘people being made of one blood’ and all that kind of thing should get out in the business of people going to church. And the whole process, of course, was held together by sadism. There’s no other word to describe how it operated. It was held together by violence of the most savage kind. The slightest sign of disobedience, the slightest sign of independent thought, the slightest talking, the slightest disobeying of any rules of any kind was treated with the utmost savagery – which is detailed in some of the books that were written just before our story starts. Baron de Wimpffen, for instance, a great liberal gentleman from France who went out to Saint Domingue, was rather shocked to be sitting next to a delightful and beautiful hostess who at one stage in the meal, because she was dissatisfied with the taste of some of the food, ordered that the cook should be put in the oven with the next course. That was standard way in which the hostesses behaved at that time to show off to their friends from colonial France. Now of course there were revolts. It’s not surprising. There were outbreaks of individual violence. But these were put down with such ferocity that they were never again countenanced. And the whole operation survived, on this notion of what I’ll call for the purposes of this afternoon, the conquerable mind. That is that the minds of slaves, the minds of these black people from Africa were conquerable, that is they were to be conquered and conquerable all the way through. It wasn’t only that there was savagery operated, it was also that they would never revolt. They could never revolt; it was not part of their makeup to do so. Those who say that, there are those who say that slavery was going to end anyway at some stage or other, you know these people who call themselves Marxists who say, who become the great determiners of what happened two or three hundred years ago. They become ... they decide what was going to happen. ‘Oh, well of course slavery was coming to an end anyway’ – my ... not at all the case. Slavery in Saint Domingue would have gone on and on and on; there was nothing in particular to stop it – a great many people were benefiting enormously from it and therefore it was likely to continue. One or two things happened which began to stop it. And the first thing that happened was the French Revolution of 1789. Now when the revolution took place France was controlled by people who had a conscience. Do you know people with a conscience? That is people with some wealth, considerable wealth but also conscience. And there was a problem for them about slavery. Because many of the writings in the Enlightenment which led up to the French Revolution, of course were denouncing slavery in the most savage way. How dare ... this is hostile to everything that can possibly be regarded as human happiness, universal human happiness of mankind. All those great writers denounced it, the Abbé Raynal, Condorcet, Rousseau, all those writers denounced slavery in the most uncompromising fashion. But the problem is once they’d got office, these same people, people from the Enlightenment – enlightened people – who’d come in, they realised there was a conflict. Because most of their income, much of their wealth, came precisely from the trade with Saint Domingue, which in turn as I have described depended entirely upon slavery. Therefore there was this awful thing which you see all the time in bourgeois politicians, you can see sometimes the schizophrenic mind. Here’s a man called Charles Lameth, this is the exception, for instance, of one of the people who came into office immediately after the French Revolution: “I am one of the great proprietors of San Domingo, but I declare to you that were I to lose all I possess there I would make the sacrifice rather than disown the principles which justice and humanity have consecrated.” He said I’m prepared to renounce, actually history doesn’t reveal whether he did personally renounce, but other people were more sophisticated about the problem. ‘We’re against slavery, it’s vile, it’s outrageous, it’s inhuman, it’s barbarity between man and man, no question about it we’re against slavery – but what about our money? What about our wealth, our big houses?’ and so on. And therefore what are we going to do about it? And they made a compromise. You’ll have heard about compromises in politics – people always make it. ‘Politics is the art of the possible’ that’s Nye Bevan, you know, not somebody coming along from the right or anything. Politics is the art of ... we have to make a compromise ... we have to make a compromise ... have to make a compromise. We can’t declare the slaves free in Saint Domingue because that will cut off all our wealth. On the other hand we can’t do nothing about it because that will cut us off from all the ideas of the Enlightenment which led us into this situation, which to our great surprise we are now in charge of the country. ‘So what are we going to do? We are going to have a compromise.’ They had a compromise and the compromise was a decree which said that any mulatto – remember the figures, thirty thousand whites, twenty-five thousand mulattos, five hundred thousand black slaves – any mulatto in Saint Domingue whose mother and father were born in France should get French citizenship. |
That amounted to about naught point eight percent of the mulattos! Not of the population altogether, but naught point eight percent of the mulattos. And that was the great compromise introduced by the first phase if you like, the first bourgeois phase, or ultra-bourgeois phase, right wing phase of the French Revolution. Now, no one was satisfied with the compromise – it was rather like the poll tax. Everybody was against it. It annoyed the mulattos, it annoyed the slaves, naturally because they got absolutely nothing out of it. But most of all it annoyed the whites. Now, anyone should dare to suggest, even that 0.8% of mulattos should get French citizenship was an outrageous situation. But the point about the decree is that it loosened the logjam, what appeared to be a logjam that existed in Saint Domingue. In other words, the notion that ‘the conquerable mind’, the idea of half a million people forever and ever obeying their masters was suddenly challenged. Even in that tiny degree challenged – the fact that there was a debate going on in the French assembly, the fact that the French revolutionaries were discussing what they are going to do about slavery seeps into the minds of many of the people, the slaves that are operating in Saint Domingue. And there takes place then, August the 14th, I hope you put a ring round it and see what you are doing on August the 14th and do something to celebrate the date. But August the 14th 1791, under, immediately under a man called Boukman there is an uprising in one of the plantations in the north. And before the planters know what is happening pretty well the whole of the north of the island is in conflagration. And I mean conflagration. Because what happened, of course the brutality which had led to, all those years of brutality in slavery, led to the most brutal treatment, and you may say quite right too ... the most brutal treatment of the planters. They were hanged ... their great houses were burned and then of course as the planters got themselves together they went back and engaged in equal savagery wherever they could get hold of anywhere. In fact in some places – even in the places where they didn’t rise up, slaves were hung and killed just because others elsewhere had risen in an uprising. The uprising of August 14 was different to any other in ferocity to any other uprising that had taken place. But it was similar in this, that there was no leadership of it. It was entirely spontaneous – moving from place to place, armies growing up under different people with different ambitions. Squabbling with one another, the constant squabbling between the Generals. So, first the slaves through surprise got the upper hand in the north and then with the help incidentally of guns from Jamaica – which was then under British control – the French immediately, immediately recognising their common interest, sent over to British Governor of Jamaica asking for guns to help them, managed to get a much more disciplined force, managed to get their militia together and started to win against the slaves. What happened then is, that in the small and relatively contented plantation of Breda, where the planters had broken the rules and started to educate a very small section of their slaves, there was a coachman ... son of a coachman ... and the coachman was one that was always taught to read, who was called Toussaint. He was called Toussaint because he was born on All Saints Day. Slaves only had one name and his was Toussaint and in 1791 – and this is for the benefit of all those youth worshippers who get increasingly to annoy me as I ... as the years go on – he was forty-six years old. And at that time had taken part in not in any protest whatsoever, not in any protest of any kind. He was one of the very few slaves who was able to read and he had time to think. He’d read the Abbé Raynal, who had perhaps written the most savage condemnation of slavery in Saint Domingue. He’d read the works of Julius Caesar, which I suppose assisted him a bit when he came to think of fighting the French. And he joined the marauding rebel armies of the north – first as a medical auxiliary because he knew a little bit about medicine and increasingly as a leader and a negotiator. And within a matter of months he was ... had become, really by dint of the arguments with the squabbling generals, by the constant arguments that took place – chiefly verbal arguments in councils ... I mean ‘councils’ ... not elected councils but just great camp meetings ... great country mountain meetings in which masses of people came and listened to the debate. He asserted his authority over the other generals and one or two of the squabblers were put aside, and Toussaint became the spokesman for the slave army. So what you had was, the slave army, chiefly constituted in the north, militia assisted by troops which came from France, to assist the planters if you like – this is revolutionary France they are talking about – Commissioners and the like, chiefly to assist the planters and the two stand-off, if you like, is I understand the phrase we have to use this year. A stand-off between the slave army on one hand and the representatives of the planters on the other. Now, Toussaint’s strategy was quite simple. His enemy was the colonial power, France. And therefore, anything that would help him in his battle with the colonial power was to be used. And in particular, he was assisted at that time from the reviving imperialism in Spain. Because Spain thinking ... ooh, slave revolt on the western side on the island – maybe the slaves will knock out the French, then we can move in and knock out the slaves, and then we can have the whole of the island. So they started to give guns to Toussaint. And he held all the northern harbours, all the northern ports and harbours of Saint Domingue for Spain, which owned the east ... which occupied the eastern half of the island anyway. There is also incidentally and just interestingly in case anyone thinks these things are always clear and obvious, there was in if you like the slave mentality, the leadership of the slave mentality, a notion that there was something particularly wonderful about royalty. |
It’s something that if you read about the Peasant’s Revolt, actually finished off the Peasant’s Revolt, the idea that somehow – the King was alright but that everybody else, all these courtiers. You often see it, as a matter of fact, when people are criticising the royal family today: the Queen’s alright ... it’s all those people ... hangers on, you know and all those politicians I don’t like. The Queen’s alright. This notion was quite strong in the slave leadership ... even Toussaint felt like that a bit ... and therefore their feeling was not particularly moved by the ... activities ... the republican activities of the French Revolution. In so far as they were simply republican, directed against the King, then that seemed to Toussaint to be something that he didn’t particularly ... and he was impervious therefore to the seductive advances of the French Commissioners, the republican Commissioners which had gone out there. Sonthonax, General Laveaux, people like that, who were republicans and went originally to put down the slave revolt, began increasingly to say to Toussaint and to say with increasing sincerity it seemed ‘look, why are you enemies of France? France are on your side – why are you accepting guns from Spain, when all Spain want to do is to smash you down?’ And all through the year 1793, there’s a stand-off going through 1792, all through the year 1793, this argument, this debate, about what the central strategy of the slave army should be ... should it be (with) against ... to continue against colonial and republican France or should it seek to change its views in the light of what was happening in Europe? Well the fact is that in 1794, the whole strategy changed. The strategy of supporting the Spaniards changed and came on to the side of France. Now why? What’s the explanation for that change in strategy? The first, and the crucial explanation, by far the most important explanation is what was going on in revolutionary France – it’s the explanation which is ... makes this story so very exciting for us today. It deals a little bit with the question ‘are white people always racialist?’ If that question is true ... if the answer to that question is yes ... ‘white people are always racialist’ then there’s not much hope for us, is there? Not much advance – the whole world condemned all the time, I suppose, to a permanent race war. Are white people always racialist? One answer comes out of the shift in strategy Toussaint and the slave army, in 1794. And the reason was this – the attitude of the French Revolution, 1794, you remember was shifting ... you know it had reached its peak ... it reaches its peak in the first few months of 1794 – it has moved ... it has been a shifting revolution all the time. Those people that I talked about earlier that were actually the planters, that had the plantations in Saint Domingue, people of that kind were being pushed aside and in their place new more rigorous revolutionaries were being put in place, and held ... held in place by, for the first time in history, or the first time in history certainly since London in the 1640s, the common people – the so-called common people, the people underground, the people without property, the sans culottes, beginning to come onto the historical stage. That was happening there. One of the results of that is this that the French Revolution, the language if you like of the revolution had directed itself against what it called ‘the aristocracy of wealth’, or for that matter ‘the aristocracy of religion’ – it had directed itself against those two things. But also crucial to the whole of that thinking, so inspiring to us today, was the notion also of the ‘aristocracy of the skin’. Now in 1794, February, at the very peak of the Revolution Saint Domingue was asked to send three delegates to the French Convention. The French Convention – and I repeat it again, controlled by the Jacobins, by the Mountain, by the left if you like – was asked to send three delegates. And they sent three, a black man, a mulatto and a white man came to represent Saint Domingue at the Convention. And the description there, in the account from the Convention gives us a clue as to why the strategy of the armies in Saint Domingue began to change. ‘Camboulas rose: “Since 1789 the aristocracy of birth and the aristocracy of religion have been destroyed; but the aristocracy of the skin still remains. That too is now at its last gasp, and equality has been consecrated. A black man, a yellow man are about to join this Convention in the name of the free citizens of San Domingo.” The three deputies of San Domingo entered the hall. The black face of Bellay and the yellow face of Mills excited long and repeated bursts of applause. Lacroix (of Eure-et-Loire) followed: “The assembly has been anxious to have within it some of those men of colour who have suffered oppression for so many years. Today it has two of them. I demand that their introduction be marked by the President’s fraternal embrace.” Next day, Bellay, the Negro, delivered a long and fiery oration, pledging the blacks to the cause of the revolution and asking the Convention to declare slavery abolished. It was fitting that a Negro and an ex-slave should make the speech which would introduce one of the most important legislative acts ever passed by any political assembly. No-one spoke after Bellay. Instead, Levasseur (of Sarthe) moved a motion: “When drawing up the constitution of the French people we paid no attention to the unhappy Negroes. Posterity will bear us a great reproach for that. Let us repair the wrong – let us proclaim the liberty of the Negroes. Mr. President, do not suffer the Convention to dishounour itself by a discussion.” The assembly arose in acclamation. The two deputies of colour appeared on the tribune and embraced while the applause rolled around the hall from members and visitors.’ Well there was no discussion and slavery was abolished on February the third 1794 by the French Convention. Now news travelled slowly, especially from France to Saint Domingue when you are controlling a slave army which is out of touch with communications in the north. |
Now news travelled slowly, especially from France to Saint Domingue when you are controlling a slave army which is out of touch with communications in the north. And therefore, it took a long time – no-one knows when the news of that act of the Convention – arrived with Toussaint L’Ouverture. But he probably heard it about May 1794. And on May the fourteenth 1794 he declared a complete shift in all his strategy. He changed his allegiance from the Spanish to the French. Seized exactly the same harbours that he’d taken for the Spanish up in the north, for the French. Declared himself for revolutionary France and took a second name. He took the French name L’Ouverture: the opening to liberty. The opening not only to liberty but the opening to an alliance between revolutionary France, who have declared us free, revolutionary France and revolutionary Saint Domingue. The word L’Ouverture has those two meanings – that’s why he called himself Toussaint L’Ouverture. And it’s true ... the truth is that it was in the nick of time that he did change his strategy because the second reason why he was considering changing his strategy was what was going on in Britain. And here now, we come back to our old friends William Wilberforce and William Pitt. Now I told you that in 1792, Wilberforce and Pitt moved a motion that slavery should be abolished. And in April 1792 an amendment was moved by the supporters of the great British planters of Jamaica and places of that kind. The amendment is a familiar one, which we come across all the time in parliamentary politics, that the bill should be passed in its entirety, with the addition of one word ... gradually. In other words, that slavery should gradually be done away with – that’s practical Fabian politics, isn’t it, which gets things done. Well, that was passed in April 1792, so actually they did have something there which said that they were for abolition of slavery. Then how long was gradually? How long was it to be? And one answer to that question was this: That Britain had now declared war with France and had observed what was going on in Saint Domingue. Namely, there was a slave revolt that wouldn’t go away. In fact it seemed to be gaining in strength all the time – and it even had a leader and a negotiator who was capable of negotiating with French Commissioners out there. And it looked as though that France was involved in a very serious situation. Now here is the crucial point. Wilberforce and Pitt were one-hundred percent against slavery, but the chief reason they were against slavery is that the main profits from slavery were going to the French. You see, there’s two points – and you can imagine them waking up at night and worrying about it: one, the obscenity of all those black people being yoked and put into the galleys and being taken and killed on the way and being thrown into the sea and thousands of people dying in the sea, and all that kind of thing. That’s obscene! That would wake you up at night. But even worse it would wake you up at night if somebody else is getting the profit from it. And this is the key problem that ... it was in Saint Domingue, was French, it was by far the biggest place where any profits were coming from slavery. And the British were running the slave trade! Those were Christian British people, captains singing ‘Oh God our help in ages past’ as they chuck the bodies into the sea. The British were actually providing the material, the human material, whereby the French were making extreme profits. Now that was ... that has the bitterness, the passion ... if you like ... the passion of a Christian factory owner, in Hull. The feeling, you know, like ... I remember, do you remember the passion about the atrocities in Kuwait, during the war. The passion ... how ... passionately people got so worked up about the atrocities. The same bourgeois passion ... switch on passion ... switch that one on. Passion! Why? Because the other thing that’s been switched off is the oil. Switch off the oil ... switch on the passion! Now you see ... exactly the same thing here. They would have gone on being in favour of slave trade for the rest of their lives if only their competitors had not been making profits from it. And therefore the situation in Britain changed. The situation among the bourgeoisie, the rulers ... |
The situation among the bourgeoisie, the rulers ... the rulers of Britain changed. And ... there was a war ... there was a war. What happened was that a British expedition was sent to San Domingo to take San Domingo both from the slaves and from the French. It was the biggest expedition that had ever left British shores. You don’t read about it in the history books. A much bigger expedition, by the way, than the expedition that went to the Peninsular war. You’ll have all read the Peninsular war. Discuss. Discuss Wellington’s campaign in the Peninsular war. Was it successful? Discuss its military tactics. Three hours. You remember, you’ve all dealt with that. What you haven’t dealt with is, what about the thousands and thousands of people that were sent to San Domingo by the British in 1794. And fought against the slave army from 1794 to 1798, in one of the biggest wars of that time that the British had ever been engaged in. No-one really knows anything about that. But I can tell you this – that during the period of that war the Abolition Society, the great movement to get rid of slavery, in this country practically petered out. Grateful to Robin Blackburn’s book, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, in that he has spelt ... for the first time ... gone into this in great detail and spelt out exactly what happened. There were two more attempts in 1795 and 1796 to get a bill through parliament – both of them were unsuccessful – neither of them were enthusiastically supported by the Prime Minister – the Abolition Society, that is the slave abolition society met twice in the three years between ’95 and ’97. In ’97 it didn’t meet at all and from 1792 to 1800, one million slaves were taken on British ships from Africa to the West Indies and the so called New World. That’s what happened in that period. All that enthusiasm and passion about slavery just dried up. Because for a moment ... a long moment ... for four long years of warfare ... it seemed ... the eyes of the British bourgeoisie gleamed with the prospect that they would get hold of the cotton and the indigo and the sugar and the coffee of Saint Domingue and the slaves that made it profitable, that made it so profitable. And therefore their attitude changed. And therefore, of course, what Toussaint can see – Jacobin France is freeing slaves but the British are coming to restore slavery and that is one of the reasons why he changed ... he changed his allegiance. 1794 to 1798 is the war with the British. In all military campaigning you won’t read of more extraordinary military exploits than were conducted by that slave army. They could move forty miles a day to the British ten. I mean, they could move with supplies at a speed which would leave the British lumbering in the back. And this was the greatest expeditionary force ever sent – with all the history of British imperialism behind it, all the history of British militarism behind it unable to deal at all with this slave army. And what’s extraordinary about Toussaint himself is not only his vitality and his ability to command his army in these circumstances, but also his extraordinary humanity. He wrote to Brigadier General John White, very accurately named, Brigadier General John White ... his attitude ... who was in charge of the British forces. “You have demeaned yourself in the eyes of this and future generations in allowing one of your commanders, the cowardly Lapointe to issue this order which could not have been issued without your knowledge: ‘No quarter for the brigands – take no prisoners’. And that in spite of the fact that I have given instructions to my commanders to treat all prisoners with humanity. I am only a black man, I have not had the advantage of the fine education the officers of His Britannic Majesty are said to receive, but were I to be guilty of so infamous an act I should feel I have sullied the honour of my country.” That was Toussaint to Brigadier White. I mean you shouldn’t write to Brigadier White if you’re a black man anyway but to be able to write like that indicates the kind of man he was and on April the 14th 1798 the British had had enough and Toussaint led a victorious march into the capital Port-au-Prince. The British had lost eighty thousand men in that expedition, forty thousand dead and forty thousand wounded or laid low forever by disease. That is more than the total lost in the Peninsular war and the British were driven out of Saint Domingue never to return again. And this story is only understood by understanding the constantly shifting background of the French Revolution. French Revolution has reached its peak and the French Revolution is in decline. And as the French Revolution comes into decline so all those people who had benefited from slavery now felt (not) unashamed to talk about their benefits of slavery. And now started to talk openly about the need to restore slavery in San Domingue. And they sent another Commissioner, a different kind of Commissioner to the ones that had been sent to treat with Toussaint when the Mountain was in charge of the Convention. They sent now the Directory, the people that took on after Robespierre and the others. The Directory, the five reactionary people who took over, sent another Commissioner called Hédouville, who fomented war between the Mulattos and the Blacks. The Mulattos, if you like, had always played the role ... |
The Mulattos, if you like, had always played the role ... if you like ... that the middle class play in the class battle, the weathercock that blows with the wind. The Mulattos ... as ... are almost detectable when the revolution in France is at its peak and allied with the forces of the slave army, the Mulattos hundred percent with the slave army. As the thing begins to subside the Mulattos, under very, very powerful and rigorous General called Rigaud ... a very, very find General ... broke off and under the influence of French bribery and French manipulation started a war against Toussaint L’Ouverture’s black army, which was perhaps of all this story the most awful and fratricidal war which went on all the way to 1801, and it wasn’t until January 1801 that the Mulatto army was finally defeated. And Toussaint, in order to celebrate his victory over the Mulattos, marches into the Spanish side of the island ... quickly conquers the Spanish side of the island ... and enters now victorious (army) into Santo Domingo. So, the position at the start of 1801 is that he has beaten off the first counter attack of the French Republic to his revolt. He has beaten ... when I say he, I mean he and the slave army, the slave army ... have beaten the full might of the biggest expeditionary force ever to leave the British Empire, he has beaten the Spanish Empire, he has beaten the Mulattos bribed by the French and he has abolished slavery. Not a bad job for nine years, I think you’ll agree! But ... and for a very short time then you have a period, 1801 to 1802, a short peace, in which the whip is banned, hours are controlled – nine hour day; the devastation of production, which of course has taken place in the period of the war, is, very quickly starts to be made good. In fact, I’m against describing utopias – and it certainly wasn’t a utopia ... ridiculous to describe it as a utopia. Nor could it conceivably have been described as a democracy. There were very few elections that took place anywhere at all. Toussaint L’Ouverture certainly as far as I know was never elected in any capacity what so ever. But it is extraordinary how just in the very short period of time, between 1801 and 1802, when he was left alone by the various imperialisms which he’d defeated, there was at that time something (which) completely different to anything that had taken place before. In the mind of Napoleon that had to be stopped as soon as possible. ‘Napoleon’ – this is quotation from Ralph Korngold’s book on ... called Citizen Toussaint – ‘Napoleon asked what colonial system had produced the best results. He was told the system prevailing before the Revolution. Then, said Napoleon, the sooner we return to it the better’. And in much more determination that the Directory ... the Consulate ... the ... Napoleon set about the business of restoring slavery in Saint Domingue. He wrote to Decrès, the Minister of Marine, who was putting together an expedition to leave for Saint Domingue, “Everything must be prepared for the restoration of slavery, this is not only the opinion of the metropolis, but is also the view of England and other European powers. I am for the whites”, he said – “because I am white. I have no other reason”. Well he had plenty of other reasons, as a matter of fact, but he didn’t want to explain them. But that kind of argument appealed very much to the enemies of Napoleon, who were then ... at any rate in theory ... the British. And you’ll all have read in your examinations and history books, you’ll have read about the Peace of Amiens. You know, there was a peace in the middle of the Napoleonic war. There was a peace 1801, first of October there was a peace signed at Amiens. On the fourteenth of December, the same year, a French expedition sailed to restore slavery in Saint Domingue. One of the greatest French expeditions that had ever left the shores of France. Headed by General Dugua, General Humbert, who put ... who had actually tried to spark off the revolution in Ireland. General Boudet, of the Nile. General Boyet of the Nile – the hero of the Vendée, put down the peasants uprising in the Vendée. All these great Generals of the Revolution were in the expeditionary force that went to put ... to restore slavery and to knock out the ... revolution, the uprising led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. General Leclerc, Napoleon’s own son-in-law, declared ... who was put in charge, he was put in charge of the expedition and you can’t show greater faith in an expedition than putting your son-in -law in charge of it – said this: “All the niggers when they see an army will lay down their arms”. And the orders to the army as to what was to happen when the niggers have laid down their arms were as follows: ‘All women who had consorted with blacks were to be executed; all education and discussion among blacks to be ended. |
all education and discussion among blacks to be ended. There was to be no truck with any talk of rights of the blacks who have spilled French blood.’ Now, Toussaint L’Ouverture, remember this, had declared himself for Revolutionary France. He had seen himself as part of the French Revolution. He was, as he said himself he was, a Black Jacobin. And he watches the greatest, huge expeditionary force, standing on one of the peaks in the northern Saint Domingue, watches this great expeditionary force coming – to do what? And it’s obvious that it’s coming to restore slavery. And therefore he has to realign once again. He has to think again about his strategy. And the last terrible chapter of this story is another dreadful, bitter war between this expeditionary force and the slave army during the first six months of 1802. After February, March 1802, five thousand of this great French force were in hospital and five thousand were dead. You’ll have read – if you read about this at all which you don’t, but if anyone had ... well you don’t in ordinary bourgeois history you don’t read about it at all – but if you do, you’ll have read that the French army did very well but it was laid low by Yellow Fever. You’ll read that this great force went there, they all got Yellow Fever and then they all came back again, that’s what you’ll read. What you won’t read is that in battle after battle just as the British had failed to cope with the fantastic power and force and energy of the slave army, so the French were unable to do so. And one of the reasons why the French were unable to do so is that they noticed that whenever they came up against a fortress, or whenever they came up close against the slave army they were greeted with the most wonderful renderings of precisely the songs which they were meant to be singing. So they would come up to Crête-à-Pierrot, the fort which was held by Dessalines, for months and months in a massive siege (of the French) of the fort in the centre of Haiti there, in the centre of Saint Domingue. And they would come up and about to sing La Marseillaise when suddenly the most magnificent blast of La Marseillaise would hit them from inside the fort ... the Ça Ira, the great songs of the French Revolution would come back at them from people – they would say “well ... that’s our song. What are they singing? That’s our song. What are they singing ‘Allons enfants de la patri’? We are ‘enfants de la patri’! Why? How are these people, who are not enfants, they are the niggers singing these things to us.” It confused people. It worried the ordinary soldiers that were sent out there. And, what worried them, of course, much more than that was that the military tactics and the military competence and the ability to handle weapons, and so on, was much, much, much greater than anything they had ever encountered before. So of course they resorted as all great armies do when they’re beaten in the field, they resorted to treachery. And what they did was they called on Toussaint to a meeting to say “let’s, let’s discuss this. It’s been a bit of a mistake. Let’s discuss this as a joint French people. Let’s discuss it” So, like a fool and advised not to do so by his advisors Toussaint went for a meeting with General Brunet on June the seventh 1802. And as he walked into the meeting he was immediately surrounded, disarmed and his bodyguard killed and he was imprisoned, put on a ship to France and imprisoned in a deep and dark dungeon in the Jura, on the Swiss border. And of course the idea was, and you’ll get this in all bourgeois mythology, is that all revolts are led by agitators. That agitators arise with great powers, powers which are something to do with the devil. Satanic, satanic powers which converge all in one person. And all you have to do is lop the head off the person – take the person away and all those powers leave the masses. That’s always constant, isn’t it. There’s strike – whose leading it! Whose ... find someone – execute them! And the strike will go away. Now this was the feeling about the slave revolt. And they were right in a way – that Toussaint L’Ouverture was the most remarkable person, but of course he was not the slave revolt. The slave revolt, the slogan of the slave revolt was ‘Liberty or Death!’ – which was exactly the position they were in. They either got rid of slavery or they died. And that was the strength of the slave revolt from the very first moment it started to be organised. And therefore the slave revolt continued after the imprisonment of Toussaint L’Ouverture. It continued, as a matter of fact with much greater ferocity. All that humanity which I described earlier, deserts the generals that take over from Toussaint L’Ouverture. General Christophe, General Dessalines, people of that kind. All those ... these people don’t show the humanity if you like. And why should they after all, when they have behaved that way to the leader who did show humanity? And therefore, the French, by the end of 1802, were driven out of Saint Domingue, and ever since then, Saint Domingue, Haiti for all the terrible things that imperialism had done to it, for all the unimaginable exploitation and poverty that exists there. Ever since then, Haiti has been ... Saint Domingue, whatever you want to call it, has been an independent country and there has never been a slave in that island since that time. Now that is the position ... |
Now that is the position ... just come back to those early questions that I asked. Slavery was abolished not by William Wilberforce. He had opposed the slave uprising. He’d opposed the slave uprising. He was opposed to the movement to get the British Army out of Saint Domingue because it was supporting slavery. Wilberforce was opposed to it. He hated radicals and revolutionaries of every kind, Wilberforce did. And in particular he hated Toussaint L’Ouverture. The man who represented in action all those passionate speeches which he’d made in the House of Commons was utterly detested. And therefore, the first lesson, the first and elementary lesson which flows up these two hundred years is that slavery wasn’t abolished by some bourgeois Tory MP, some bloody factory owner it was abolished because the slaves emancipated themselves. I mean, Marx uses that word ‘emancipate’ when he talks about the emancipation of labour in the famous declaration, the First International. But the slaves actually did emancipate themselves, the emancipation, the end of slavery starts with the victory of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s army. It goes on and on and on and it goes on for another several decades before the black slaves of the south of America have to fight a civil war to get rid of slavery there – but the self-emancipation is the central lesson. And the second central lesson so crucial to us is that they won it, they emancipated themselves, because they made common cause with the common people of revolutionary France. There are some books. Not many. There’s one in the Left Book Club called Citizen Toussaint by Ralph Korngold who is the biographer of Robespierre. That’s a very good book indeed. There’s a rather quaint little book which you might find by the Reverend John. R. [B]eard, Doctor of Divinity, 1853, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture. A rather nice little book, not you understand about the French Revolution, of course, but it is a rather nice little book. There is a book by Wenda Parkinson called “This Gilded African”, which isn’t a bad book, came out about ten years ago. And we’ve got this wonderful history of slavery now by Robin Blackburn, which fills in some of the gaps that I’ve tried to fill in there; but a million miles, and Robin will ... not at all mind if he’s here ... he will forgive me at once for saying it, a million miles the best book, by far the best book about this question is the one that is called The Black Jacobins, by C.L.R. James – the man responsible for getting Frank Worrall captain of the West Indies cricket team. I tried to think of something more important about him to say, I mean he was a Trotskyist for many years but he did actually achieve in West Indian cricket the rights of the Blacks to control their own cricket. Anyone interested in that, whatever you’re interested ... C.L.R. James was the most magnificent writer. And this book which comes out in the late 30s, C.L.R. James from the Trotskyist tradition – writing a book about the mingling of the two revolutions – there it is – available – you can get it here. Anybody who hasn’t read that really has to testify to the almighty in some way or other. Now, Toussaint L’Ouverture himself, he died of pneumonia in that prison in the Jura, on the 4th of April 1803. And he died alone and old and nobody knows where he’s buried. As far as I know, there’s no plaque, there’s no burial ground, there’s no tomb, there’s no mausoleum, there’s no mummification. And that point was a point which interested the young poet William Wordsworth in 1803, who was himself tremendously inspired by the French Revolution – but his revolutionary enthusiasms were just on the turn in 1803. Just beginning to turn to the hideous reaction in which it ended up in the later period of the century. And somebody came along and he said, “You know, Toussaint L’Ouverture is dead, somewhere in Switzerland we know not where. He’s died and he’s not even buried somewhere.” And Wordsworth wrote what I think is his greatest sonnet. It’s one which you might not have learned by heart at school because I’m afraid to say that there is no reference in it to daffodils. TOUSSAINT! Thou most unhappy man of men! Whether the whistling rustic tend his plough Within thy hearing, or thy head be now Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s (eye)less den: Oh, miserable chieftain! Where and when Will thy find patience? Yet die not, do thou Wear rather in thy (brow) a cheerful brow: Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, Live, and take comfort. Thou has left behind Powers that will work for thee. Air, earth and skies: There’s not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee. Thou hast great allies: Thy friends are exultations, agonies And love, and man’s unconquerable mind. Top of the page Last updated on 6.7.2013 |
MIA > Archive > P. Foot Paul Foot The government that devoured itself (July/August 1995) Notes of the Month, Socialist Review, No. 188, July/August 1995, pp. 4–5. Copyright © 1995 Socialist Review. Published on MIA with the permission of the Estate of Paul Foot. Paul Foot Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2005. Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive. Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. The early summer of 95 will surely be remembered by all socialists as a time for glorious spectator sport. There seems no need any longer to say or do anything against the Tory administration. Like strange creatures from Greek legend, Tory ministers seem determined to devour themselves. Leading the field is the Prince of Crassness himself, the prime minister John Major, who in a fit of public petulance for which them is no parallel in the history of the British parliament, suddenly decided to give up his job as Tory leader and seek a new mandate from his narrow and punchdrunk electorate, the 327 Tory MPs. First to pick up the gauntlet was the far right neanderthal, John Redwood, whose total programme is to cut deeper still into the meagre benefits of the poor – and to bring back the hangman’s rope. The Review goes to press as the outcome of this bizarre contest remains uncertain, but lurking in the wings is the old fox Michael Heseltine, a politician so unprincipled that he is quite prepared to make common cause with Michael Portillo, another far right fanatic even more sinister than Redwood. If Major beats Redwood substantially, he and his lame duck administration will limp on at least as far as the Scott report, scheduled for October. If the first ballot is indecisive, the two Michaels seem the most likely to reap the prize. The Tory troubles, we are told, are caused by their long period in office. This is nonsense. The Tories happily and unitedly cling to office as long as they can. Their current discontent is caused by the inability of their economic system to solve its own dreadful crises – their ‘economic recovery’ for instance, on which so much of their rhetoric is now based, is disintegrating in front of their eyes. The tax cuts they promised turn out to be tax increases. Their ‘remedies’ – union bashing and privatisation – have been employed to the full, with no noticeable benefit to anyone except the mega rich. No longer able to balance their books by bashing unions and the poor, they have turned to bashing the hallowed middle classes. Even mortgage relief, that enormous Thatcherite subsidy for homeowners, has been breached. In anguish as they contemplate losing their seats, Tory MPs lash out at any target which presents itself. Europe and foreigners everywhere, the BBC, each other. For Socialist Review readers who have been exposing this crisis, and predicting its political consequences for years, it is tempting in these times to sit back like sadists at a wrestling match between unbacked and hated contestants, and to enjoy every injury inflicted by one Tory leader on another. Such delightful abstention, however, misses the real question – how and why are these Tories still in office? Every moment of their survival means further inroads into the living standards of the workers and the poor, further grotesque riches in high places and further disillusionment on the left. And while it is fun indeed to watch the Tories tearing themselves apart, there is no guarantee that the infighting on its own will bring the Tories down. They are entitled, if left alone, to go on until the spring of 1997: nearly two more terrible years. The plain truth is that the Tories are still there because of the spinelessness of the Labour leadership and the TUC. While the people turn against Thatcherism and all its works, the Blair leadership of Labour turns towards it, equating in its negative rhetoric ‘old Labour’ and ‘the new right’, as if nationalisation, a free health service, comprehensive education and a trade union movement unshackled by Tory laws were as great a menace as capitalism. This despicable equation lies behind the truce which has been offered to the Tories not just by Labour but by the TUC, which has watched the dismemberment of its own movement with detached passivity. Even a fraction of the protests of the weaker and less organised trade union movements in Italy and in France in recent months would have driven this government from office and spared us the ridiculous gavotte now being danced by the absurd and discredited Tories. Top of the page Last updated on 2 November 2019 |
MIA > Archive > P. Foot Paul Foot Wilson – the man who murdered reformism (28 September 1968) From Socialist Worker, No. 90, 28 September 1968, p. 2. Reprinted in Chris Harman (ed.), In the Heat of the Struggle, Bookmarks, London 1993, pp. 24–5. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. IF WILSONISM means anything at all, it means the collapse of Labour’s reformism: the end of the idea that the British Labour Party stood, in however small a way, for the aspirations of the British working class against their oppressors. Harold Wilson, since he entered parliament and politics in 1945, has seen through the various processes which led to the end of that reformism. The Labour Party manifesto for the 1945 election proclaimed an advance to socialism on two fronts: first by the nationalisation of the sub-structure of British industry – coal, steel, power, transport, gas, electricity; second, by an advance in social welfare provisions. To some extent at least these promises were kept. Coal, steel and most of transport was nationalised. Some welfare provisions were enacted. By 1950 Wilson and his associates were claiming that these policies had ‘created’ full employment: that any dismantling of them would mean a return to the 1930s and to slump. A new slogan decorated Labour Party banners: Towards Equality! was the name given to the executive policy statement of 1956, and all the Labour leaders, including Wilson, unleashed a stream of propaganda aimed at cutting public ownership out of the programme and putting in its place a vision of a decent, free, egalitarian capitalism. The 1959 election was fought on old Fabian slogans for doing better by the old, the unemployed and the young. It cut no ice. The election was lost by 100 seats, and the Labour leaders searched around for another ‘rethink’. The inspiration came to them from overseas, in America, where, in Wilson’s words, ‘under a new and youthful president, they are flexing their muscles once again. They are looking to New Frontiers.’ Old Frontiers like helping the old, the sick, the unemployed, the badly-housed had clearly to be forsaken. What was needed was ‘a new leadership’ – Kennedy-style, dynamic, abrasive, gritty, chunky which would – to quote Wilson’s famous phrase in Signposts for the Sixties – ‘clear the dead wood out of the boardrooms’. Similarly, in foreign policy, opposition to Dulles’ anti-Communist foreign policy no longer attracted votes. Dulles’ policies suddenly became accepted by the Labour Party for the unanswerable reason that they were being carried out by Kennedy. Old loyalties and old sentiments die hard, and the new broom did not sweep out all the cobwebs from Labour’s policy. At the 1962 Conference the party stood firm by old imperialist traditions (the Commonwealth) against new capitalist aspirations (the Common Market), and, for a brief moment, the party even opposed the control of Commonwealth immigrants. But, as soon as Wilson became leader, most of these inconsistencies were sorted out. Immigration control, for instance, suddenly became part of Labour’s programme. And, to the hysterical cheers of the Labour left, Wilson led the party firmly rightwards – away from the welfare reformism of 1959 to the new dynamism of 1964. It is perhaps fortunate for historians that, in the midst of all his hectic talk about technology and change, Wilson paused for a moment to define socialism. ‘Socialism’ he told an audience in Birmingham in January, 1964, ‘means applying a sense of purpose to our national life, economic purpose, social purpose, moral purpose. Purpose means technical skill ...’ Socialism, in short, means applying technical skill to our national life, exactly the same as capitalism. For the chief priority of modern capitalism over the world is the application of the most advanced methods of technology in order to defeat competitors. It is this need which is driving national capitalism into greater and greater solidarity, monopoly and merger, and, as the margins allowed by the rebuilding of Germany and Japan and a permanent arms economy become narrower, to take increasingly confident swipes at the working class. What has happened since 1964 has relegated all talk of welfare reforms to the realms of fantasy. The reforms have either been abandoned, like the promise to build 500,000 houses by 1970; or put into effect and then rescinded (like the abolition of prescription charges); or enacted in a manner which makes them useless (like the Rent Act); or reversed to make the situation even worse than it was under the Tories (like the decision to postpone the school-leaving age). Incomes policy, productivity bargaining, balance of payments surpluses are now trumpeted abroad as the grand achievements of a socialist government! The supreme achievement of Harold Wilson has been his ability to proclaim such transparently capitalist policies as stark necessities, not only forced upon British Labour but also adapted by them in the most pragmatically socialist manner. It requires only for the 1968 Labour Conference to set the seal on the whole grisly process with the annual ritual – the standing ovation. Top of the page Last updated on 22 October 2020 |
MIA > Archive > P. Foot Paul Foot Democracy A grand delusion (November 2003) From Socialist Review, No.279, November 2003, p.17. Copyright © 2003 Socialist Review. Downloaded with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive. Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive. Capitalism as economic democracy? Paul Foot has heard it all before For at least a hundred years there has been a continuous and hard-fought struggle between capitalism and democracy. Now a miraculous solution has been discovered by New Labour in the shape of its dynamic secretary of state for trade and industry, Patricia(n) Hewitt. Capitalism and democracy, she asserts in her new pamphlet A Labour Economy: are we nearly there yet?, are the same thing! There was a time when Patricia was a committed social democrat. She was general secretary of the National Council of Civil Liberties, which was founded in the main by stalwarts of the Communist Party in 1934 to defend the basic liberties of British citizens. Then she was press secretary to Neil Kinnock when he was leader of the Labour Party. Then she was a founder of a New Labour think tank called the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which in turn set up a Commission for Social Justice under a Labour peer (and director of the union-busting Daily Mirror) Lord Borrie. On the day John Smith died in May 1994, Hewitt became a director of research at Andersen Consulting, then firmly attached to the US-based accountants Arthur Andersen. Hewitt left Andersen in 1996, but not before the firm had arranged a special conference in Oxford at which almost a hundred Labour front benchers were lectured by City experts on the importance of governing in tune with business. As soon as the New Labour government took office in 1997, Hewitt, by now an MP for Leicester, was rapidly promoted to her present high cabinet office. As she scaled the heights of office, the Labour government released Arthur Andersen from their ban (imposed by the Tory government under Thatcher) from all government work because of the firm’s dubious relationship with the crooked entrepreneur John De Lorean. Not long afterwards Arthur Andersen was disgraced in the Enron scandal, and its business was wound up and shared out between the other accountancy moguls. This glittering history had an electric effect on the cool new secretary of state. She rapidly revised her old-fashioned views on social democracy. Her department of state became, in the view of Bill Morris, the not very radical general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, effectively a subsidiary of the Confederation of British Industry. Decision after decision from the department favoured the bosses and by the same token infuriated the unions. Now the secretary of state has exalted this slide into reaction in a new pamphlet published by her old comrades in the IPPR. The pamphlet takes up the familiar line that the workers already own a lot of industry through their pension funds and investments in insurance companies. A Labour government, she asserts, can pass laws to ‘encourage’ those funds and their trustees to use their clout to force the corporations into fairer and more democratic policies. The problem with this theory is that no Labour law has a hope of democratising the trustees that control these funds. As was horrifically demonstrated by the case of that heroic Kinnock supporter Robert Maxwell, the employers and their class can easily buy off and corrupt the trustees of their pension funds, and the insurance millions are even more closely and tightly controlled by City slickers. Any law to try to democratise these autocratic giants can be sidestepped or suppressed by a flick of the capitalist tiller. Much more disastrous than this ancient remedy is the objective that inspires Hewitt’s pamphlet. This is that Labour Party members, if only they would concentrate on business and entrepreneurs, can lead us all to the glittering prize of an ‘economic democracy’. Capitalism itself, she suggests, contains within it the essence of democracy. This is an argument often paraded by capitalists. The very dynamic of the market, they argue, is essentially democratic. The choice offered to consumers by the variety of goods and services for sale – and the fact that they choose what to buy and use – ensures a form of democracy in the economy. The problem with this argument is obvious. If income and earnings are grossly unequal, as they are in all capitalist economies, then the whole principle of democratic choice of goods and services is corrupted from the outset. The choice for someone with wealth is entirely different to that for someone with no money. Indeed for the latter there is no choice at all. The fundamentally undemocratic nature of the system becomes much clearer in the facts about control of the system. The idea that a man who owns four newspapers and a couple of engineering firms is equally represented in society with anyone who works in those factories or reads those newspapers is quite obviously absurd. It is the wholly undemocratic distribution of wealth and control of undertakings that drives the capitalist world, and ensures for instance that the trustees of pension funds and directors of insurance companies remain absolutely true to the ‘principles’ of the stockmarket. Capitalism is intrinsically, irretrievably undemocratic. Nothing helps the capitalists more than the statements of trade union leaders and Labour ministers that the system is fundamentally democratic. Top of the page Last updated on 28.11.2004 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss Trotskyism Today (Fall 1960) From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.4, Fall 1960, pp.106-110.. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Some of Trotsky’s admirers say his ideas have no current relevance. A look at the competing tendencies in today’s international labor movement tells a much different story TWENTY years after the murder of Leon Trotsky by a Kremlin agent in Mexico, August 21, 1940, there is more reason than before his death to believe that the ideas and movement he represented will play a decisive role in the epoch in which we live, the epoch of the revolutionary transformation of society from capitalism to socialism. The opponents of Trotskyism will, of course, vigorously object to this proposition. While many, including some who admire Trotsky as an individual, are willing to grant that he possessed a rare and magnificent genius and accomplished great works in his time, they insist that the ideas of Trotsky and the movement that survived him have little, if any, bearing on the world today. Isaac Deutscher, for example, who has done truly brilliant and tireless work in excavating the truth about Trotsky from under a mountain of Stalinist lies, regards Trotsky’s efforts to build the Fourth International, in contrast to his previous achievements, as a piece of inexplicable folly doomed in advance to failure. Trotsky himself had a different view of the place his struggle for the Fourth International had in the totality of his life’s work. While exiled in Norway and France in 1935, the monstrous spectacle of the Moscow Trials unfolded before Trotsky’s eyes. An entire generation of Russian revolutionary leaders, constituting the great majority of the Leninist cadre that led the Bolshevik revolution, was being destroyed. Trotsky understood the meaning of this better than anyone. The Stalinist bureaucracy aimed not simply at the physical extermination of the Leninist vanguard but above all at the annihilation of Leninist ideas. For the Stalinist usurpers, the ideas of Leninism, which after Lenin’s death they called “Trotskyism,” were a threat to their power that had to be buried along with its living representatives. Under these conditions Trotsky regarded the work of building the Fourth International as pre-eminent. It meant nothing less than the struggle for the continuity of Marxism. In his 1935 Diary, March 25, he wrote: “The work in which I am engaged now, despite Its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life – more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other ... The collapse of the two internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third Internationals.” Philistines will rub their eyes in astonishment at such a statement. How Trotsky could compare his work in small propaganda circles; the painful rebuilding of contact and correspondence with tiny, isolated and hounded groups of oppositionists; the drafting of theses and resolutions for conferences attended by a handful of people; with his celebrated role in the October insurrection and the Civil War is beyond their comprehension. Trotsky, however, knew the indispensable role of ideological preparation and the building of revolutionary cadres in preparing for socialist victories. TREMENDOUS events have taken place since 1935: the Spanish Civil War; the general strike in France in 1936; World War II, the defeat of the Hitlerite invasion of the Soviet Union; the victory of the Chinese Revolution; the vast sweep of the anti-imperialist, colonial revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America; the enormous growth of Soviet economy; the default of the post-war revolutionary attempts of the working class in Western Europe; the recreation of conservative bourgeois regimes in West Germany and France; the return of the Tories in England; the social transformation of Eastern Europe into the Soviet orbit effected by bureaucratic and military means; the independent revolutionary working class struggles for socialist democracy in East Germany, Poland and Hungary; the cold war and the nuclear arms race; the prolonged prosperity in the United States accompanied by an unprecedented witch hunt and the relative quiescence of the labor movement; the new upsurge of the Negro struggle marked by the Southern sit-in movement; the wave of revolutionary events signalized by the June movement of workers and students in Japan, the most highly industrialized country of Asia. How does the program of Trotskyism stand up in the light of these events? |
How does the program of Trotskyism stand up in the light of these events? Or more precisely, how does the program of Trotskyism, in comparison with the programs of other tendencies in the working class, stand up in relation to the world situation today? An objective balance sheet of these events will show that on the whole the socialist revolution has scored major advances and that imperialism has been seriously weakened. But it has by no means been an even or unbroken process. Not a few defeats have been suffered by the working class, as the recent victory of De Gaulle in France demonstrates. Capitalism has recouped some of its losses. It is sufficient to note that as a result of the betrayal of the working class by the reformist Labor party leaders in England the golden opportunity offered by the Labor victory in 1945 for a combined movement against imperialism in the colonial countries and in an advanced capitalist country was lost. Instead of such a favorable development, the treachery of the Labor leaders, allowed the Tories to regain power and thereby give new power and thrust to the Western imperialist drive towards World War III. Moreover, the default of the Labor party in England reinforced the blockade of the Chinese revolution, compelling China to develop its socialist revolution while cut off from the main centers of industrial power in the world. It is only with the new developments in Japan as well as the symptoms of a left wing rebirth in England that the shifting of the center of gravity of the socialist revolution to the most advanced industrial countries is again on the order of the day, and with this comes the prospect of freeing the revolutions in the economically underdeveloped areas from the terrible bureaucratic deformations and distortions imposed upon them by inherited poverty and backwardness. In our view, the basic premise on which the Fourth International was formed, the need to solve the crisis of proletarian leadership, remains fully operative today. To bring about the definitive victory of the socialist revolution and thereby avert the catastrophe capitalism threatens to inflict on humanity, the working class requires a revolutionary program and leadership. The program of Trotskyism, which is essentially the fundamental ideas of Marxism as continued by Lenin and enriched by the Russian Revolution, represents the revolutionary tendency within the working class. Trotskyism has, in our opinion, continued, applied and further developed this body of principle and experience. The Trotskyist program has been confirmed by all the successes of the socialist revolution, and the need for this program has been underscored by the failures of the revolution. TROTSKYISM, therefore, stands in opposition to the reformist and class collaborationist tendencies in the working class which rest upon labor bureaucracies of diverse types. Since 1923, the reformist tendencies have divided into two fundamental groups – Stalinism, based on the Soviet bureaucracy, and Social Democracy, based on the bureaucracy of the labor movement in capitalist countries. We can examine the program and function of Trotskyism only in relation to the other two tendencies – Stalinism and Social Democracy. There are two interrelated historical tasks confronting the peoples of the world: The abolition of capitalism in its chief industrial centers as well as in the former colonial possessions of imperialism; The democratization of economic, social and political life in the countries that have overthrown capitalism, a process which will simultaneously realize the program of socialist democracy and give enormous impetus to the economic development of these countries. These two tremendous tasks go hand in hand. Every victory against capitalism relieves the pressure of hostile imperialist encirclement of the workers states. This pressure, and the inherited economic backwardness are the chief causes for the growth of bureaucracy and the stifling of workers democracy. And every victory of the Soviet orbit workers against the bureaucracy and for socialist democracy helps to clear the way for the revolutionary regroupment of the working class in capitalist countries and thereby promotes the socialist revolution. If the existing tendencies predominating in the working class were carrying through these tasks or have shown capabilities for this, then there would be no historical necessity for a separate Trotskyist program, movement and leadership. However, since Trotsky’s death, neither the Social Democracy nor Stalinism has so changed their characteristics as to eliminate the necessity for a genuine Marxist leadership. In the advanced industrial countries the Social Democracy, seconded by the Stalinists, do not mobilize the workers in the struggle against capitalism. On the contrary, they are in league against the working class in their search for alliances with “peaceful and progressive” capitalists. In the Soviet bloc countries, despite all the progressive changes and reforms since Stalin’s death, the Stalinist bureaucracy remains the principal obstacle to the introduction of socialist democracy into Soviet life. And the Social Democracy, which is completely subservient to the cold-war Western imperialist alliance, serves to promote the continued power of the Soviet bureaucratic caste by helping to prolong the pressure of capitalist encirclement on the workers states. The Trotskyist movement, on the other hand, exerts all its efforts to promote the independent action of the working class against the rule of the monopolists in capitalist countries and above all in its central strongholds. And it supports by all its efforts the working class, the youth and the intellectuals in their fight to gain democratic control over the economy and political institutions of the Soviet orbit. Despite the indubitable disparity in their official influence, the existence of the three main tendencies in the working class movement, in which Trotskyism stands opposed to the other two, is generally recognized. This is confirmed by the fact that our opponents are compelled, at least tacitly, to accept this framework, since in their opposition to Trotskyism they invariably take up positions ranging themselves behind Stalinism or Social Democracy. Conversely, those who break with Stalinism are constrained to move towards Trotskyism, or, in the opposite direction – towards Social Democracy. The same holds true for currents breaking away from Social Democracy – they move either towards Stalinism or Trotskyism. The point is that each of the three tendencies represent classes and social strata deeply rooted in the social relations of our times and are not arbitrarily designated on the basis of some superficial and secondary distinguishing characteristics. IN THE tradition of Marxism, the central idea of the Trotskyist program is that the working class can gain its emancipation and free humanity from the degradation of class society only through its own revolutionary action and organization. |
This simple though profound principle means that the working class must at all times fight for its political independence from the parties of the capitalists and middle class. At the summits of the workers movement, however, the enormous economic, social and cultural pressure of capitalism operates daily to produce and reproduce a privileged crust of bureaucrats which systematically separates itself from the class interests, ideology and political needs of the working class it is supposed to represent. The fact is that capitalism continues to rule in the greater part of the world today only by virtue of the fact that it maintains its domination over the working class, directly and indirectly, through these bureaucratic formations. The forward march of the socialist revolution, therefore, depends on the capacity of the working class to throw off the bureaucracy, free itself from the bureaucratic ideology of subservience to capitalism and forge its own authentic instruments of struggle. The argument against Trotskyism turns chiefly on this question: Must the working class create its own party and its own program in order to win the struggle for socialism? Or can it be done at a cheaper price as the ideologists of Stalinism and Social Democracy assure us, namely, through reliance on one or another section of the labor bureaucracy? Those in the orbit of Social Democracy, in the US for example, will say: Look at the power of the labor movement with its seventeen million members and all the gains it has won under its present leadership of Meany and Reuther. Who are you Trotskyists to say that further social progress cannot be made, including bringing about socialism, through this type of leadership? Those in the orbit of the Stalinists argue: Look at the power of the Soviet Union, its industrial and technological progress. All this was accomplished under the leadership of Stalin and his successors. Who are you Trotskyists to say the full victory of socialism throughout the world cannot be achieved under this leadership? There are a number of flaws in this type of argument. It operates on the assumption that the officials “in charge” of a union or a workers state are obviously responsible for all progressive achievements of the working class. Plausible as this formal view may be to middle class mentality, it is far from being a fact. Very often the given officialdom had little to do with the basic struggles of the working class that achieved progressive results. Often the officials of today were the most zealous opponents of the struggles that led to progress. After the opposition of these officials had been broken by the mass action of the workers and after the wave of militant struggle has receded, the officials, old and new, swarm into the places of power, organize the privilege-seeking apparatus men and, taking advantage of a period of lull and passivity “take charge” by ousting the militant leadership that stood at the head of the struggle. This cycle is familiar to everyone who has experienced the ebbs and flows of the mass movement – whether on the scale of strikes and unions or revolutions and workers states. Furthermore, history is replete with examples of how the most powerful organizations of the working class were utterly destroyed and all past achievements wiped out because of the false policies of the allegedly all-wise and all-powerful officials. The example of how fascism destroyed the German working class organizations while its leadership floundered helplessly should forever be a reminder to shun the dogma that those currently at the head of the movement must know best. THE basic reason for the defeat in Germany was the people’s front policy of the Social Democracy which led the majority of the working class. According to this policy, called the “Iron Front,” the German workers were told to rely on the bourgeois liberals to stop fascism. The Stalinists on the other hand led the revolutionary workers into the blind alley of its then ultra-left sectarian policies of “social fascism” (which declared the Social Democracy and not fascism to be the main danger) and the “united front from below” (which ultimatistically demanded in effect that the Social Democratic workers leave their party if they wanted united action with the Communist workers). The Stalinist policy proved incapable of winning the German workers from the disastrous course of the people’s front. The liberals buckled in the face of Hitler’s drive to power. The Social Democratic leaders, to the very end refused to turn from its reliance on parliamentary deals with the liberal capitalists; they refused to heed Trotsky’s insistent warnings and his urgent proposal that the Communist and Social Democratic parties form a working class united front of action from top to bottom in order to stop the Hitlerites. The Stalinists likewise turned a deaf ear to the Trotskyist united front proposal and dubbed it “left social fascism.” Thus the German working class was paralyzed by its leadership and Hitlerism triumphed. Few today will dispute the correctness of the Trotskyist program for Germany. Few will deny the fact that the false policies of both the Stalinists and Social Democrats led to the greatest catastrophe in history. The point is, however, that the very policy that led to the downfall of the German labor movement is today still promulgated not only by the Social Democracy but also by the Stalinists. In every capitalist country in the world the Stalinists assist the Social Democracy in saddling the working class with the treacherous policy of relying on the liberal bourgeoisie in the struggle against the threat of war, reaction and fascism. Even the cold war has not broken this common front. Where the Social Democrats refuse to admit the Stalinists into the sacred precincts of its coalition with the liberals, the Stalinists base their whole policy on the hope of persuading the Social Democrats to relax their adherence to the cold war sufficiently to allow them to become partners in the reformist class collaboration game. Meanwhile the Communist parties led by the Stalinists are educated in the spirit of parliamentary reformism and are utterly incapable of revolutionary action. The rise to power of De Gaulle in France, without any effective opposition from the working class is an ominous warning signal. IF WE shift our attention from the current political to the theoretical plane, matters are, if possible, even worse. Both the Social Democrats and Stalinists have, each in their own way, completely abandoned even a pretense of adhering to the revolutionary Marxist doctrines. |
The Social Democrats of Germany have gone so far as to explicitly renounce the goal of socialism and include private capitalist ownership of the means of production in their new program. The right wing British Laborites are maneuvering to attain the same end. Stalinist “theory” has fared no better. Beginning with the invention of the theory of “socialism in one country” by Stalin himself in 1924, the barrier to a formal renunciation of the revolutionary class struggle program of Marxism was removed. The latest theoretical expression of this process took place at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist party where Khrushchev’s proposals to scuttle Lenin’s concept of imperialism and the revolutionary road to power were adopted. The theoretical bankruptcy of Stalinism and Social Democracy is strikingly manifested in the fact that neither of them even professes to offer any theory of the nature and function of labor bureaucracies. The Stalinist theoreticians don’t even recognize the fact that a labor bureaucracy exists in capitalist countries. There are only “progressive” and “conservative” labor officials and unhealthy bureaucratic practices are occasionally mentioned. But the Leninist concept of the Social Democratic bureaucracy as a privileged social caste resting on the relatively satisfied and corrupted labor aristocracy, directly and indirectly bribed by some of the super profits of imperialism, has long ago been abandoned in the interests of partnership with the labor bureaucracy. At the same time the Stalinists are, of course, incapable of countenancing a theory of the Soviet bureaucracy. In his secret speech to the Twentieth Congress, Khrushchev admitted a whole number of monstrous crimes of the Stalinist regime. But he attributed these crimes to Stalin’s falling victim to the “cult of personality.” He didn’t dare answer the question: what kind of a regime would support such unspeakable crimes? To tackle such a question Khrushchev would first of all have to admit the existence of a bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union. This would lead to uncovering the fact that Lenin himself was a “Trotskyist”; that before his death he was preparing an open struggle in his own name against the bureaucracy in the Soviet State and Communist party; that he insistently urged Trotsky to open the fight when illness prevented him from carrying out his plan; and that Trotsky continued the struggle after Lenin’s death. Khrushchev preferred to repeat the Stalinist lies about Trotskyism. “We must affirm that the party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyists ...” he said, “and that it disarmed ideologically all enemies of Leninism. The ideological fight was carried on successfully ... Here Stalin played a positive role.” IT ISN’T true that Trotskyism was defeated ideologically in the Soviet Union. It was crushed by force. How else explain the fact that the struggle against Trotskyism employed the almost unlimited resources of the Soviet state under Stalinism to organize a massive slander campaign, falsify history, imprison and exile thousands of oppositionists, expel tens of thousands of Trotskyist supporters from the factories, the schools and the party, and then organize assassinations of Trotsky, his secretaries arid members of his family? If Trotskyism was defeated ideologically why was it necessary to organize the infamous Moscow Trial frame-ups? To answer these questions Khrushchev would be opening the dykes to a torrent of critical reexamination of the whole history of Stalinism, its social roots and its theoretical premises. Better keep silent even if it leads to such ludicrous consequences as are evident in the latest revised edition of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union where the old lies about Trotskyism are partly retained up to the point when the Moscow Trials took place. The Khrushchev historians then introduce a quaint innovation. They simply don’t mention the Moscow Trials! Such a glaring omission eloquently discloses how the specter of Trotskyism haunts the consciousness of the Soviet bureaucracy today. And for good reason. Trotskyism represents the inevitable program and banner of the gigantic struggles for socialist democracy that lie ahead. We have only seen the faint anticipation of such struggles in East Germany, Poland and Hungary. When the industrial workers of the Soviet Union, who are imbued with a socialist consciousness, begin to raise their demands for equality and democracy, they will find in Trotskyism the explanation of the bureaucratic regime and the guide to a revolutionary socialist struggle against it. Naturally, the Social Democracy is likewise incapable of offering a theory of labor bureaucracy since such a theory would only explain the social and economic basis for its own birth, growth and imminent death. It has no more need for such a theory than capitalism has for the Marxist theory. Nor can the Social Democrats accept the Trotskyist theory of the Soviet bureaucracy. If the Social Democrats viewed the Stalinist power in the Soviet Union as based on a bureaucracy, they would have to answer a bureaucracy of what? This would lead to the “danger” of understanding that Stalinism is a bureaucratic growth on a workers state and that despite Stalinism this workers state must be defended against imperialism. The Social Democratic theorists resolve the problem by designating the Soviet bureaucracy as a “class” possessing features more reactionary than capitalism. They thereby justify their allegiance to Western imperialism in the cold-war “crusade for freedom.” Thus neither in political program nor in theory do the Social Democrats and Stalinists offer the working class an explanation of the world today or the way to achieve socialism. |
They thereby justify their allegiance to Western imperialism in the cold-war “crusade for freedom.” Thus neither in political program nor in theory do the Social Democrats and Stalinists offer the working class an explanation of the world today or the way to achieve socialism. HERE we must deal with a recurrent challenge to Trotskyism by critics who demand to know: Don’t the revolutionary transformations in Eastern Europe and the leadership of successful revolutions by the Yugoslav and Chinese Communist parties disprove the Trotskyist thesis that Stalinism is incapable of leading the socialist revolution? Walter Kendall, a writer for the British Independent Labor party paper, Socialist Leader, offers a typical statement of this challenge October 31 in an article, The Crisis of Trotskyism: “In the China of the late twenties and early thirties Stalin’s policy, the Comintern thesis (of supporting Chiang Kai-shek) went down to utter ruin. Trotsky’s conclusion that the Chinese Revolution could triumph only under the leadership of the proletariat with the Communist party at its head seemed proven beyond all doubt. [In] 1948-49 the Chinese Community party IN DEFIANCE OF STALIN’S EDICTS [emphasis W.K.] carried the long drawn out civil war to a triumphant conclusion. A largely peasant army occupied China’s proletarian centers and established a revolutionary government in which a sta-tized economy controlled by the Communist party replaced the old regime ... The Trotskyists whose critique of Stalinism had previously seemed watertight now found themselves in a dilemma. The Chinese Communist party had achieved the impossible ... under Stalinist rule it had conquered power. The economy was statized. How then characterize Chinese society? China, replied the Trotskyists, is a workers state ... Yet if a workers’ revolution can be carried out by peasants without the workers lifting a finger to help themselves, not just Stalinism but also orthodox Trotskyism collapses. China poses a problem which Trotskyism has so far been unable to solve.” Let us see. The Chinese Communist party did not act according to Stalinist theory and practice when it led the revolution to power. Why then should this create an insoluble dilemma for Trotskyism? If, by following the Stalinist program the Chinese Communist party had overthrown imperialism, landlordism and capitalism, then indeed it would be necessary to reexamine the Trotskyist theory of Stalinism. But what are the facts? Kendall himself indicates them. The Chinese CP “in defiance of Stalin’s edicts” took the power. According to the recently “leaked” records of the July 1945 Potsdam Conference, published in the Minneapolis Tribune August 22, 1960, Stalin, in his meeting with Churchill and Truman, referred to Chiang Kai-shek as “the best of the lot.” Stalin said, he “saw no other possible leader and that, for example, he did not believe that the Chinese Communist leaders were as good or would be able to bring about the unification of China.” Clearly the Kremlin wanted the Chinese CP to continue its ruinous policy of working for a coalition with the Chiang regime. It was only when the situation became so rotten ripe for the overthrow of the inwardly decomposing and demoralized Nationalist government, and when the elemental movement of the agrarian revolution swept the Chinese CP leaders along with it that they could no longer abide by Stalin’s directives. This is the simple fact about how and why the Chinese CP took power. A similar process obtained in the Yugoslav revolution. The Yugoslav CP conquered power despite the Kremlin’s repeated efforts to change its course away from the formation of Proletarian Brigades, away from the struggle against the Michaelovitch forces supported by British imperialism, and away from all social revolutionary measures where the Communist partisans held power. As a matter of fact in Yugoslavia the Kremlin gave military aid to the bourgeois forces that were shooting at the partisans. Thus the world headquarters of Stalinism was on the opposite side of the class barricades of a Stalinist party leading a revolution. The unique combination of contradictory processes in these revolutions has upset – not Trotskyism – but the schematic concept our critics impute to Trotskyism. They argue, for example, that the working class didn’t stand at the head of the Chinese revolution as it did in the Russian. And doesn’t this upset all of Marxism? No. The basic norms of the Marxist theory are never realized in ideal form. The Russian Revolution also appeared to violate Marxist norms when the socialist revolution took place first in the most backward country of Europe instead of the most advanced. Lenin rejected the Menshevik injunction that the October Revolution was an impermissible adventure because it violated this schema. He explained how the norm is realized through an extended process and above all by revolutionary struggle. We shall see how the Chinese revolution while masking and distorting the role of the working class, gave expression to it in the distorted form of its Stalinized party. The Trotskyist movement never envisaged that the breakup of the world Stalinist monolith would follow some preconceived blueprint. The fact that the Yugoslav and Chinese Communist parties had to tear loose from their Stalinist moorings in order to lead socialist revolutions did more than prove that Stalinism is incompatible with revolutionary leadership. These events served to profoundly deepen the crisis of world Stalinism, a crisis that has been developing in direct proportion to the progress of the world socialist revolution. To be sure, neither the Yugoslav nor the Chinese Communist parties ceased to be Stalinist. |
To be sure, neither the Yugoslav nor the Chinese Communist parties ceased to be Stalinist. But they did contribute profoundly to the eventual negation of Stalinism. Trotskyists have never claimed a franchise on revolutionary theory and practice. On the contrary, all of our work is directed toward convincing the working class and its parties to take the revolutionary road. It is to be noted, however, that in order to take such a road, a Communist party is compelled to defy the Kremlin, the basic policy of Stalinism, and its own entire ideology and tradition. This is one important aspect of the contradictory nature of the process whereby Stalinism will be removed as a barrier to the socialist revolution. THE reaction of the Kremlin itself to the Yugoslav and Chinese revolutions is the best proof of the basically anti-Stalinist character of these events. World Stalinism cannot embrace new revolutions and independent workers states. In Eastern Europe, where the capitalists were expropriated by bureaucratic and military means under the direction of the Kremlin while the independent workers revolution was brutally suppressed, the Kremlin can tolerate only regimes completely subservient to its command. As for Yugoslavia, Moscow was compelled to open a savage campaign against Titoism when the Yugoslav CP, having led a revolution to victory, refused to act like the pliant creatures of the Moscow-appointed regimes in Eastern Europe. The intolerable contradiction introduced within Stalinism by the victory of the Chinese revolution is likewise quite evident – only on a larger scale and with higher stakes. It occurs, moreover, in a world setting favorable to deepening the revolutionary factors that are upsetting the equilibrium of the Stalinist monolith. For the last few years Peking has increasingly manifested an open break with the Kremlin on at least three basic questions of Marxist theory: It has defended important aspect of Lenin’s analysis of imperialism and the struggle against imperialist war as against Moscow’s theory of peaceful coexistence; It has likewise invoked Lenin’s teachings on the revolutionary road to power in capitalist countries as against Moscow’s open abandonment of the revolutionary class-struggle theory; It has taken issue with Moscow’s directive to Communist parties to enter coalition governments with the bourgeoisie of the former colonial countries. These sharp differences with the Kremlin have developed despite the fact that the Mao regime is beset by bureaucratic deformations of its own and is saddled with the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country. These points in common are apparently insufficient to offset the obvious fear Peking has that the Kremlin will sacrifice the interests of the Chinese revolution in order to make a deal with Western imperialism. Such a fear is based on reality. The Chinese CP leaders knew they came to power despite the Kremlin’s readiness to sacrifice the Chinese Communist party in a deal with the US and Great Britain. Whatever their motives, the struggle the Chinese leaders are waging against Khrushchev’s policy is bound to have far-reaching effects in helping to bring about a revolutionary rearmament of the advanced workers in all countries. In Japan, where the mass action of workers and students last June against the imperialist pact was possible because the leaders of the movement had broken with the Stalinist line of “peaceful coexistence,” the debate being waged by the Chinese CP against Moscow can only encourage the young revolutionists and reinforce the arguments they have up to now learned only from the Trotskyists. In Cuba, the position of Peking can play a crucial role in preventing Stalinism from interposing its influence in order to halt the deepening of the socialist character of the revolution. In England and the United States, the Trotskyists have made significant gains in the last few years in struggle with both Stalinism and Social Democracy as a result of the shattering crisis of Stalinism following Khrushchev’s revelations. The opposition of Peking to Moscow’s Stalinist line will likewise help to encourage a revolutionary reorientation of Communist workers and youth. Such a reorientation can only lead them to a fusion with Trotskyism. PERHAPS the best test of the viability of each of the three tendencies in the working class movement has occurred right here in the United States. An examination of the reciprocal relations among the three, under the blows of the cold war witch hunt, the prolonged prosperity and political reaction, and the crisis of the American Communist party, discloses the fact that both Stalinism and Social Democracy have withered and suffered a sharp decline in influence. (See Case History of an Experiment, by Murry Weiss in the Spring 1960 issue of ISR.) The Trotskyist movement, on the other hand, has stood the acid test of this long period of adversity, gained in forces particularly among the youth, and is today the only one of the three tendencies with the capacity and will to offer a socialist challenge to the two capitalist parties in the 1960 elections. The Social Democrats and Stalinists have responded to the difficulties of these last years by a process of increasingly dissolving themselves into the labor bureaucracy and its fringes and into the swamp of the Democratic party. They have thereby alienated the best of the new generation of radicals that has begun to appear on the American scene. If the struggle between Trotskyism, Social Democracy and Stalinism is by its very logic a struggle for the next generation of radicals in the US, Trotskyism can enter the battle with confidence of victory. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 29.1.2006 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss Stalinism and the Twenty-Second Congress (Winter 1962) From International Socialist Review, Vol.23 No.1, Winter 1962, pp.10-14. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The body of Stalin lies buried in the Kremlin wall but the ghost of the dictator’s policies continues to haunt those who served him well while he lived THE events surrounding the 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party last October 1961 constitute a remarkable refutation of imperialist cold-war propaganda. The central prop of the cold-war argument is that socialism and tyranny are inseparable; and that the working masses in the capitalist world should never embark on a socialist revolution since the frightful consequences inevitably will be Stalinism. If the US State Department theory made sense, then the industrial, scientific and cultural growth of the Soviet Union would lead to the strengthening of Stalinism. In actuality, however, the impressive advances of socialism in the USSR, which capitalists don’t even try to deny, is resulting in de-Stalinization and tangible gains of democratization rather than the growth of bureaucratic tyranny. For all its democratic pretensions, imperialism favored Stalinism in the Soviet Union as against the robust and thriving socialist democracy. This is why the trend towards socialist democracy and internationalism within the Soviet orbit is bad news for capitalism and good news for the socialist movement. A Turkish diplomat, now residing in the US, wrote in a letter to the New York Times, Nov. 23, that Khrushchev “had no desire to alter Soviet policies.” Nevertheless, his “... peasant shrewdness ... led him to the best and only alternative. By denouncing Stalin’s crimes – and the more violent the better – he was disassociating himself and the Soviet Union from such policies and without undertaking any housecleaning, simply by indirection was creating an image of a more liberal and humane Khrushchev and Soviet Union ... This I sense to be the underlying theme of de-Stalinization, against which we must watch carefully, for in the long run it would deprive us of the one infallible weapon that we have against communism.” (emphasis, M.W.). This super-clever imperialist diplomat imagines he is matching wits with a super-clever Khrushchev. This reasoning is based on the premise that heads of state can arbitrarily manipulate their respective nations at home in accordance with the needs of diplomatic propaganda. The diplomat perceives a threat to world capitalism in the dethronement of the Stalin “cult” and the demolition of Stalinism. He correctly senses that a blockbusting power is aiming at the capitalist system. A resurgence of socialist democracy in the Soviet Union will indeed deprive capitalism of its “one infallible weapon” against communism. In the face of this Soviet transformation the whole cloth of the cold-war ideology will be cut to shreds. So, take note all imperialist policy makers, a guided missile of a new type is heading your way. What counter-weapon can you command in your arsenal? Radicals Ill-Prepared But the radical movement also has by no means reacted to the 22nd Congress without apprehension. Since the 1956 Khrushchev revelations of Stalin’s crimes at the 20th Congress, those in and around the American Communist Party as in all CPs throughout the world have been unable to find their bearings regarding the crucial question of Stalinism. Some radicals cherished the illusion that the nightmarish specter of Stalin and Stalinism would somehow blow over, go away and disappear. One of the reasons why the radical movement was ill-prepared to cope with Stalinism was the way Khrushchev presented the 1956 revelations. The facts about Stalin’s frame-ups and mass murders demanded a serious Marxist explanation of the social cause for the “cult of the individual.” But Khrushchev couldn’t or wouldn’t provide an explanation. Instead he wound up the revelations as follows: “We consider that Stalin was excessively extolled. However, in the past Stalin doubtlessly performed great services to the party, to the working class and to the international workers’ movement ... We cannot say that these were the deeds of a giddy despot.” THIS soothing syrup became bitter medicine. The 22nd Congress revealed that Khrushchev could never salvage the cracked image of Stalin. It had to be completely shattered. Stalin had to be exhumed from the Lenin Tomb at Red Square. More and more revelations were required. Instead of Stalin alone bearing the blame for the crimes, mounting to a veritable chamber of horrors, it became imperatively necessary to provide the names of some of those who shared Stalin’s criminal deeds. |
Instead of Stalin alone bearing the blame for the crimes, mounting to a veritable chamber of horrors, it became imperatively necessary to provide the names of some of those who shared Stalin’s criminal deeds. Khrushchev pointed an accusing finger at the “anti-party” group of Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov and Voroshilov as those, and presumably those alone, who were guilty of assisting Stalin’s blood purges. But since Khrushchev is naming some, what of the others? Dorothy Healy, executive secretary of the Communist Party in Southern California, stated to a witch-hunting committee, according to the Los Angeles Times, Oct. 7, 1961, that she was “more devastated by Khrushchev’s [1956] revelations of past crimes by the Soviet regime than you.” She said further that she “would like to see the Soviet Union progress democratically to the point where there would be more than one party on the ballot there.” Without the slightest aid or comfort to the capitalist propaganda, Healy has raised a key subject of the need for socialist democracy. We for our part would certainly favor the right of socialists to create an independent working class party in the Soviet Union because at present the existing CP in the USSR is completely monopolized by the Soviet bureaucracy. But the prospect of the right to organize an independent party rivaling the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union is posed concretely at this time over the deep debate between the Khrushchev faction in power and the alleged “anti-party” group of Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov and Voroshilov. Why does Khrushchev refuse to grand Molotov’s constitutional right to present his views at the 22nd Congress? Why this torrent of denunciations of the “anti-party” group while it is muzzled? The reason is quite apparent. If Molotov were allowed to talk at the party congress this might disclose that everything Khrushchev said about the “anti-party” group as accomplices of Stalin would be just as true about Khrushchev! And once each faction in the bureaucratic regime had listed its record of denunciation and a counter-record of equally damning denunciations the result would be – the disclosure not of one pack of scoundrels or another pack but a sociological phenomenon: a bureaucracy; not bureaucratic errors or bureaucratic crimes but a social and historical development of a parasitic bureaucratic caste. The working masses are exerting enormous pressure on the whole regime to yield concessions of socialist democratic rights. The bureaucracy in power, headed by Khrushchev, are maneuvering for time to find the line of demarcation between imperatively necessary concessions and repressions in a desperate attempt to save the entire rule of the bureaucracy. JUST consider the statements of the Khrushchev group at the congress in the light of the record: At the congress Khrushchev warned the members of the “anti-party” group to beware “lest their role as accessories to the mass reprisals [instigated by Stalin] come to light.” He added, “We are in duty bound to do everything to establish the truth.” Everything? As the chief of the Ukraine in Stalin’s time Khrushchev declaimed in 1936, “Stalin is the hope, the beacon which leads all progressive humanity! Stalin is our banner! Stalin is our will! Stalin is our victory!” During the peak years of Stalin’s blood purge, Khrushchev said, “The Ukrainian people cry out: Long live our beloved Stalin!” When the Stalin gang murdered the Red Army’s Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky, Khrushchev described this executed victim as “a traitor that the party had unmasked and liquidated, throwing him like dust to the winds so that no trace should be left.” But now at the 22nd Congress, Khrushchev refers to Tukhachevsky as “a distinguished military leader.” When the Ukrainian General I.E. Hakir was executed, Khrushchev referred to him as “that scoundrel who opened the gates to the German fascists, feudalists and capitalists.” Now at the congress Khrushchev describes his victim as “a trusted party man.” One of Khrushchev’s colleagues at the 22nd Congress, N.D. Podgorny, said, “Kaganovich [in the Ukraine] surrounded himself with a pack of unprincipled bootlickers, beating up the cadres of faithful to the party and hounding and terrorizing the leading workers of the region.” But Khrushchev was Chairman of the Ukrainian CP during this whole period! Doesn’t this pose point blank the role of Khrushchev as an accessory of Stalin? If the 20th Congress raised the question of the bureaucracy as the social source of the “Stalin cult,” the 22nd Congress posed the question even more sharply. Keeping in focus the problem of the nature of Soviet bureaucracy, let us discuss some of the recent reactions in Communist Party and radical circles shortly before the 22nd Congress and following it. Mandel Requests In the People’s World October 14, 1961, “Two diverse views of Soviet discussion” were presented by William Mandel, a writer about the Soviet Union, and John Pittman, the PW’s correspondent in Moscow. Mandel said, “Many letters” in the Soviet press, “support the program’s [Khrushchev’s draft] undertaking to fight bureaucracy. Various amendments are offered to the proposed party rules in that respect but only one writer [in Trud] asks that the program include an explanation of why bureaucracy still exists, in view of the disappearance of the reasons for its existence stated in the program of 40 years ago.” Referring to the letter writer in the trade union paper, Trud, “who wants an explanation of bureaucracy,” Mandel concludes, “There is great approval of the condemnation of the ‘cult of the individual,’ but no hint that failure to permit discussion of policy (as illustrated above) instead of techniques may reflect a ‘cult of individual’.” Pittman takes Mandel to task for adding “a new dimension to presumptuousness” in complaining that there is a “failure to permit discussion of policy instead of technique” in the current discussion in the USSR on the draft program. |
Pittman is inconsistent. In the first place he argues that there is a policy discussion in the Soviet press and cites some examples which unfortunately do not show such a discussion. In the second place he argues that since there are thousands of daily and factory papers in the Soviet Union how could Mandel assert that there is no discussion. But in the third place he argues that such a discussion is not necessarily required. Here is what Pittman said: “It is not enough that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people are undertaking to create a society of abundance for all, to establish the world’s highest living standards, to safeguard humanity from thermonuclear extinction, to assist colonial peoples to achieve liberation and to help newly liberated peoples develop their countries, and to pioneer man’s conquest of the cosmos. In addition to these undertakings, in order to win Mandel’s approval they must discuss and agree with his ideas about Dr. Zhivago, final ballots with more than one name, why a magazine in Yiddish appeared in 1961 instead of 1954, and whether the theoretical resolution by Lenin and Stalin on the issue of ‘cultural-national versus regional autonomy’ half a century ago was really a mistake! Of course, neither Mandel nor I can be sure that these subjects have not been discussed. But I would be surprised if they were ... I doubt very much if people here would consider them pertinent to the building of a communist society.” THIS is simply not the way to conduct a discussion. It is begging the question to dismiss the need for an explanation of bureaucracy by referring to “grand” questions. This is getting up on a high hobby horse and looking down at a trouble maker who wants to quibble about trivial questions. But these are not trivial questions, neither the Jewish problem, the national problem, freedom for writers and scientists, the multiple choice of candidates on the ballot – or the problem of bureaucracy. Mandel, moreover, doesn’t demand that the CP of the Soviet Union and the people must agree with him to gain his approval. He only raised the question of an explanation of bureaucracy and the source of the “cult of the individual” and regretted the absence of answers and discussion on this point. Trotsky’s Prognosis All indications agree that the further course of [Soviet] development must inevitably lead to a clash between the culturally developed forces of the people and the bureaucratic oligarchy. There is no peaceful outcome for this crisis. No devil ever yet voluntarily cut off his own claws. The Soviet bureaucracy will not give up its positions without a fight. The development leads obviously to the road of revolution. It is not a question of substituting one ruling clique for another, but of changing the very methods of administering the economy and guiding the culture of the country. Bureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy. A restoration of the right of criticism, and a genuine freedom of elections, are necessary conditions for the further development of the country. This assumes a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of Bolsheviks, and a resurrection of the trade unions. The bringing of democracy into industry means a radical revision of plans in the interests of the toilers. Free discussion of economic problems will decrease the overhead expense of bureaucratic mistakes and zigzags. Expensive playthings – palaces of the Soviets, new theaters, show-off subways – will be crowded out in favor of workers’ dwellings. “Bourgeois norms of distribution” [that is, inequality of income] will be confined within the limits of strict necessity, and, in step with the growth of social wealth, will give way to socialist equality. Ranks will be immediately abolished. The tinsel of decorations will go info the melting pot. The youth will receive the opportunity to breathe freely, criticize, make mistakes, and grow up. Science and art will be freed of their chains. And finally, foreign policy will return to the traditions of revolutionary internationalism. – Revolution Betrayed, by Leon Trotsky. Deutscher’s Prognosis The dynamics of economic and cultural growth determine the prospects of domestic policy. The Soviet Union is an expanding society, emerging from a period of “primitive socialist accumulation,” rapidly increasing its wealth, and enabling all classes and groups to enlarge their shares of the national income. |
The Soviet Union is an expanding society, emerging from a period of “primitive socialist accumulation,” rapidly increasing its wealth, and enabling all classes and groups to enlarge their shares of the national income. This makes for a relaxation of social tensions and antagonisms. On the other hand, the social and cultural advance tends to make the masses aware of the fact that they are deprived of political liberties and are ruled by an uncontrolled bureaucracy. In coming years this will impel them to seek freedom of expression and association, even if this should bring them into conflict with the ruling bureaucracy. No one can forsee with certainty whether the conflict will take violent and explosive forms and lead to the new “political revolution” which Trotsky once advocated, or whether the conflict will be resolved peacefully through bargaining, compromise, and the gradual enlargement of freedom. Much will depend on the behavior of those in power, on their sensitivity and readiness to yield in time to popular pressures. Towards the end of the Stalin era the antagonisms and tensions within Soviet society were acute; and if the ruling group had rigidly clung to the Stalinist method of government, it might have provoked a political explosion. This did not happen, however; and in consequence of the reforms carried out since 1953 the social and political tensions have been greatly reduced. Should the ruling group attempt to cancel these reforms, then it would certainly heighten the tensions once again and exacerbate the antagonisms But if the government remains flexible and sensitive to popular demands, there will be little likelihood of any explosive internal development. The prospect would then be one of further gradual reform, of increasing well-being and social contentment, and of growing freedom. – The Great Contest, by Isaac Deutscher. The Poles The Communist Party leader, Wladislaw Gomulka, gave his report on the 22nd Congress to the Polish CP’s Central Committee last December 1961. “Broader explanations on the part of our Soviet comrades may be required,” he said, and offered his own line of explanation of Stalinism as “one dark page among the glorious pages of the Soviet Union’s history.” Asking how the “cult of personality” had come about he referred to “The extremely narrow economic base left over by Czarist Russia” and how it “affected the struggle of Russian revolutionists in a multinational country ... No other socialist country had comparable difficulties.” “Under such conditions,” Gomulka continued, “the Soviet state of the dictatorship of the proletariat had to be merciless ... It could not tolerate opposition groups, which under pressure of existing difficulties sought ways of solving them through wrong means.” In his further explanation as to why groups had to be suppressed, Gomulka said, “Because collectivization inevitably provoked resistance, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat had to strike back. But it should not have done this blindly. Organs appointed to combat the enemies [of collectivization] supervised and inspired by Stalin, exceeded the measure. As a result of Stalin’s theory of the inevitable aggravation of class warfare parallel to the building of socialism and of his slogan about ‘enemies of the people’ the NKVD [secret political police] could brand as enemies ... anyone who dared to utter a word of criticism.” Referring to 1937 in the Soviet Union, Gomulka said, “When heads of marshals, generals, and high-ranking personalities of party and state were falling, people were caught by fear, became suspicious, and the mania of spying spread ... Even taking into account all the negative features of his character [Stalin], it cannot be imagined that he would have embarked upon the bloody purge of the high command and the officers corps without the deliberate misinformations planted by the Gestapo.” Gomulka also offered an explanation for the notorious “confessions” at the Moscow trials in the thirties, when old Bolsheviks like Zinoviev, Kameney, Radek, Bukharin, Rykov, Krestinsky, Preobrazhensky (all members of the Bolshevik Central Committee of the 1917 October Revolution) fell victim to Stalin’s executions. These Bolshevik leaders, in Gomulka’s phrase, suffered “their silent endurance of Stalin’s violence.” Gomulka said, this was “not merely caused by fear,” although “of course, one’s head is dear to everyone.” But, he maintained, “Communists are courageous people, men of ideals ... Stalin directed the building of socialism in the Soviet Union. A Communist therefore had to face this question: Will he not act to the disadvantage of communism, if he acts against Stalin? This question disarmed Communists and kept them from struggling with Stalin.” IT IS significant that Gomulka has opened a line of explanation on the cause of Stalin’s Moscow Trial frame-ups and the mass murders. To refrain from any explanation is, of course, the first line of defense of the bureaucratic regime in the Soviet Union and the respective bureaucratic formations in the other workers states in Eastern Europe and Asia. One of the reasons why the CP of Poland is among the first to venture into this explosive realm – the social basis for bureaucratic crimes – arises from the events of the last five years. In Poland the mass of industrial workers had vast experience in a direct collision with the bureaucratic regime in 1956. The June 1956 general-strike uprising in Poznan ignited a wave of mass demonstrations of workers and youth throughout Poland to overthrow the Kremlin-controlled Warsaw bureaucratic tops. In October 1956 the Warsaw factory proletariat mobilized around a dissident CP wing of the leadership, Gomulka, who was framed by Stalinism in 1949 as a “Titoist fascist” and locked up in prison for four years, and this wing triumphed against the Kremlin-controlled faction. Over the weekend of Oct. 20-21 the traditionally socialist Warsaw working class, alerted at the work benches, dispatched delegation after delegation to the Political Committee to support Gomulka as against the Khrushchev appointed Polish functionaries. |
The Kremlin’s Red Army was poised for an attack. But it was the revolutionary mass organization of the working class, deeply anti-Stalinist, that won the day and hurled back the Kremlin’s direct control. But the Polish CP bureaucratic caste was not shattered, it was reconstituted with a shift in relation of forces between the bureaucracy and the greater voice of the proletariat. Under these conditions, however, in comparison to the Soviet Union itself where the Soviet proletariat has not directly attacked the bureaucracy as yet, Gomulka is compelled to deal with an explanation of Stalinism which has been openly talked about among workers and youth for five years. Gomulka, however, as the new representative of the bureaucracy, continues to refrain from dealing with the nature of bureaucracy as such. He draws a thread of connection between broad objective, historical, economic and social forces – with the personality of Stalin. The missing link is a bureaucratic social formation transmitting objective pressure, pressures that are only personified in a Stalin or a Khrushchev. This is the sensitive, sore point – a bureaucratic caste – and the bureaucracy itself cannot bear to identify the malignant malady or how socialist democracy will conquer it. A Pat, Tidy Apology An interpretation of the 22nd Congress was presented in the National Guardian, November 13, 1961 by David Wesley, who offered an explanation of Stalinism as follows: “China, Vietnam and Korea, like the USSR, have had to industrialize and collectivize virtually from scratch, and are now in a stage roughly comparable to that of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1934, when Stalin carried through the basic Soviet economic development with ruthless authoritarian control. The Far East states feel the need for similar methods, and it is the Stalin of that period (and of wartime) that they remember and respect. Moreover, they will require those harsh methods for some time to come; for these members of the camp – and for Albania – Khrushchev’s call for an end to dictatorship seems decidedly premature.” If Wesley thinks he is arriving at a pat, tidy apology for Stalinism, he had better think again. Stalinism was required, you see, for one period in the Soviet Union; is required for a “roughly comparable” period for China, Vietnam, Korea and Albania thrown in for good measure; and Khrushchev’s mistake is a premature call for an end to Stalinist dictatorship for the Far East. QED! Let’s consider only a few of the contradictions arrived at by this sophistry. If this is a search for the sequence of objective economic causes giving rise to the Stalinist political form, why does Wesley designate the years 1928 to 1934 as the economically motivated “ruthlessness” of Stalin and does not allude to years before and after 1928-34 in which Stalinism prevailed? In the years from 1924 to 1928 Stalin began the destruction of workers democracy in the name of unyielding opposition to industrialization, planned economy and collectivization. Trotsky’s proposal for a five-year plan was derided by Stalin as “super-industrial”; when Trotsky proposed collectivization and warned of the capitalist danger of wealthy peasants, Stalin leaned on the Kulak and the petty-capitalist forces and refused to carry out the Left Opposition’s policy. During 1928-34, Stalin deepened the process of extirpating workers democracy, the strangulation of the Soviets, the trade unions and the Bolshevik party itself – this time in the name of planned economy, industrialization and collectivization in recoil from the previous period which brought a capitalist restoration to within an inch of realization. In the period following 1934, when Stalin, according to Wesley had already “carried through the basic Soviet economic development,” the utter elimination of workers democracy was consumated in earnest under the sign of frame-ups, witch hunts, and mass murders including the repeated execution of Stalin’s own henchmen, layer after layer. WESLEY’S schema is to box in the “authoritarian” period of Stalin to these six years since that was the period the Stalin faction finally came out for industrialization after demolishing the Trotskyist Left Opposition for proposing this course. In this way, Wesley can justify a historical cause-effect relation between the need for industrialization and the Stalinist destruction of workers democracy. Moreover, this schema implies a necessary and required relationship between carrying through socialist production and the need for a ruthless despot. But why not stop to ask: what did the Russian workers, who carried through three revolutions against landlordism, Czarism, capitalism and imperialism, through the historical agency of workers democracy, think about the need for a Stalinst dictatorship and the elimination of socialist democracy? And ask: did the Soviet workers submissively accept Stalinism without a struggle? Were they simply a mass of unthinking sheep just waiting for Stalin to cripple their revolutionary creative capacities in order to allow the all-wise bureaucrats to carry out objective historical tasks of industrialization? If Wesley really ponders this question he might find that he has arrived at the very thesis on which both Stalinism and imperialism agree: that socialist construction in the Soviet Union was synonymous with Stalin and Stalinism, for better or for worse. This is why it is neccessary to go beyond the reference to Stalin alone and perceive the existence of a social formation known as “bureaucracy” and its polar opposite, workers democracy. The ever widening and more open debate within the Soviet orbit and the world Communist parties is accompanied by the sharper “debate” Khrushchev is waging against the silenced opponents in the “anti-party” group. But it is becoming clear that these debates are not restrained from fear that the imperialists will discover the “secret” of their differences. The bureaucratic hierarchies fear more than anything else that the working class and youth will enter the open arena, take sides, arrive at judgements, enunciate demands, define goals and drive to achive the restoration of workers democracy. |
LEONID F. Ilyichev, a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, indicated the tightrope which the Russian bureaucracy is walking on in its “de-Stalinization” campaign. At a recent national conference on ideological problems the secretary warned, “We must not allow, comrades, a blow to be dealt to the foundation of Marxist-Leninist theory under the pretext of combating the personality cult in this theory. We must not allow all kinds of anti-Leninist views and trends, long ago defeated and discarded by our party and by Lenin, to come to the surface and leak into our press.” Does this refer to Trotsky, who while Stalin was alive, became the authoritative spokesman for workers democracy against the entire bureaucratic caste? Does Ilyichev’s warning disclose that the demand to examine the views of Trotsky is reappearing in the Soviet Union? Audacious fresh approaches to basic problems are appearing in all countries of the Soviet orbit, and within the Communist parties throughout the world. The Italian Communist Party, for example, has plunged into the stream of this discussion. The party newspaper, l’Unita, November 28, 1961, hailed the 22nd Congress’ denunciation of “errors and aberrations of the past.” But even more to the point, the article said: “The question cannot exhaust itself in a simple denunciation of Stalin’s negative qualities and his errors. How was it possible that in the construction of a socialist society there were so many errors and deformation and what can be done to guarantee that they will not be repeated?” This is indeed a good question. One of the leading representatives of the Italian CP, Amandola, a proponent of one of the tendencies in the Central Committee, according to France Observateur, said, “It is a matter of returning to Leninism by returning political discussion to the international level. This naturally implies that debate on the problems raised take place in realistic terms and not in ritualistic language. This equally requires a critical study of the political documents presented by the communist parties of other countries.” In keeping with this bold Leninist spirit, it is appropriate that the Young Communist League of Italy should take the lead in defying the Stalinist practice borrowed from the Roman Catholic Index Expurgatorius and publish in its paper a photograph of Trotsky beside Lenin. The Italian YCL official paper, Nuova Generazione, refers to Trotsky as “one of the most original personalities of the October Revolution, about whose ideas discussion is now reopened. Among other works, he is the author of one of the most interesting histories of the Revolution and some of the finest pages on Lenin.” The YCL proceeds to discuss critically and thoughtfully the views of Trotsky. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 28.1.2006 |
Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murray Weiss “A Symbol of Our Way of Life” (2 July 1948) From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 28, 12 July 1948, p. 4. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Nominating speech by Murray Weiss of Farrell Dobbs at the 13th National Convention of the SWP Comrades, we nominate differently, we nominate different people, different kinds of people, we are, as Comrade Trotsky put it, a different kind of a party. There has never been a party like ours in history before. We are the Bolshevik type of party, a party founded on principles and on people Who take their principles so seriously that their whole lives become action and thought to carry through these principles consistently to the very end. In nominating Farrell Dobbs, and contrary to the mockery of nomination speeches and traditions of bourgeois parties, we don’t leave the name until the end, although everybody knows it in the beginning. In nominating Farrell Dobbs, I think it is more than a phrase to say that we are nominating a symbol, an individual who is a symbol of our ideas, our methods, and our way of life. Not an individual who suits his principles and his declarations on political questions to the needs of a political career, but an individual symbolizing the whole current thought in history of our movement, whose whole life has been devoted to carrying out the central ideas of emancipating revolutionary socialism. Comrade Farrell’s name is associated with two crucial episodes in the history of American Trotskyism. The first episode that I refer to is the test of the ideas and the powers of American Trotskyism in the field of the American working class mass movement – the Minneapolis Strikes, where we demonstrated to the hilt we were not sectarian phrase-mongers, that our principles were not text book ideas, but living doctrines and guides to revolutionary action, and could be applied to the given stage of the American working class movement with the greatest skill, with revolutionary innovation, with boldness, sincerity, and determination. We showed a model of leadership in the class struggle that has already made history in the class struggle. The second episode, and just as important, complementary to the first, was shown when Comrade Farrell along with the 17 other leaders of our Party stood up under the test of class fire, the fire of the ruling class, headed by Roosevelt and all the other war-mongers, the united political opposition of the bourgeoisie and their trade-union lackeys, who directed the fire properly against our party and its leaders at the beginning of the 2nd World War. We showed them, Comrade Dobbs among the others showed then, that not only could we unfold our ideas in the class struggle, win positions of influence and prestige in the mass movement, but we could take all this influence and prestige and officialdom and power that went with it and throw it into the waste basket when it came to a test of principle, integrity, revolutionary doctrine in the face of the bourgeois war, of the imperialist world slaughter. I think in these two episodes alone, one needs go no further, we have in Comrade Dobbs, and I think in the next nominee as well, a worthy representative of the cause of American Trotskyism, and cause of the Socialist Workers Party. And I formally nominate Comrade Farrell Dobbs as the presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party. Top of page Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 2 November 2022 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss McCarthyism: Key Issue in the 1954 Elections After the Army-McCarthy Hearings (July 1954) From Fourth International, Vol.15 No.3, Summer 1954, p.76-80. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). SENATOR McCarthy took the 36 days of the Army-McCarthy TV hearings as a priceless opportunity to shape a political image before millions of viewers – the image of himself as savior of America. He played up to the mass audience, pandering to .their, prejudices, shocking, arousing, repelling them – and at the same time fascinating them with his brazenness, his arrogant assurance, his utter contempt for his opponents. Above all, he pounded tirelessly on his fascist charge of “20” and “21 years of treason.” The hearings over, the Wisconsin fascist leader retired to a secret hide-out to recuperate and plot his next move. The sudden relief the liberals felt from the daily fascist rasp on their nerves induced reckless speculation: they told each other that McCarthy was finished, and they held funeral services for him in their newspaper columns. He had turned out to be his own worst enemy, the liberals assured themselves. The American people, they declared, had got a good look at McCarthy and his methods and had decided they, didn’t want any part of either. But life is unkind to illusions. McCarthy returned, and it became clear that the fascist beast was still alive and kicking, and that the nightmare wasn’t over by any means. The next act of this political drama is now to be played against the backdrop of the 1954 elections. What will McCarthy’s role be? Will he split from the Republican party after the primaries and form a separate fascist party? Or will a new modus vivendi, based on common determination to win a witch-hunting victory over the Democrats, be established between McCarthy and the other Republicans? To assess the role of McCarthyism in the coming elections, it is first necessary to make a realistic estimate of the results of the Army-McCarthy hearings. It is possible to draw a pleasing sketch of McCarthyism in decline since the beginning of the year. A superficial comparison of McCarthy’s power before and after the hearings has led commentators to the hasty conclusion that McCarthyism is routed. Not only the highly impressionable liberal columnists but some of the more sober observers, including those in the official trade union camp, have drawn this conclusion. Labor’s Daily, July 13, announces in a headline, “Joe’s Strength Ebbing Fast,” and opens its story: “Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy was under attack from all sides today and it appeared his strength was ebbing even in his home state.” There is some truth to the contention that McCarthy has suffered a setback. But only a grain of truth. And this grain cannot be properly understood unless it is put in context. For while suffering blows and tactical setbacks, McCarthyism has in the same period made important advances in its basic development as a fascist movement. The year 1954 opened auspiciously for McCarthy. Early in February, he went on national tour under the official sponsorship of the Republican National Committee, and proceeded to denounce the Democrats for their “20 years of treason.” Within the Senate, McCarthy seemed unassailable. On Feb. 2 the Democrats and Republicans collapsed and voted 85 to 1 for the appropriations he demanded for his committee. McCarthy’s Senate power was further strengthened by his appointment to the all-important Rules Committee. McCarthy’s prowess as a witch hunter was at a high point. In his first public skirmish with the Army, over the Peress and General Zwicker affair, McCarthy scored a hands-down victory, the Army beating a fumbling and apologetic retreat before him. The extent of his power in relation to the Army Department was revealed in the fantastic picture that came out later, in the Army-McCarthy hearings, of Army Secretary Robert T. Stevens chasing up and down the country trying to curry favor with Pvt. G. David Schine, a McCarthy protegé. And McCarthy’s success in building a spy network in government agencies was evidenced in the appointment of his personal henchman, Robert E. Lee, to the Federal Communications Commission, and the placing of his lieutenant, Scott McLeod, in charge of State Department security. A Pleasing Score Card If we now list the tactical blows and reverses McCarthy has suffered during the last few months, without examining the situation further, it is quite possible to draw the altogether erroneous conclusion that McCarthy’s power is being smashed. Since the hearings, McCarthy’s faction has been on the defensive. A majority bloc of the three Democrats on McCarthy’s committee, plus Republican Sen. Potter, has forced McCarthy to accept the resignation of his personal favorite, Roy M. Cohn, chief counsel of the committee. Sen. Flanders’ resolution to remove McCarthy from his committee chairmanships is still pending. McCarthy’s attempt to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency has been temporarily blocked. And President Eisenhower himself has finally spoken out against McCarthy, censuring him for his “reprehensible” methods. Even the press seems to have swung against McCarthy. The mass-circulation pro-McCarthy press has adopted a more cautious attitude, and the mildly critical tone of such papers as the New York Times and Herald Tribune has given way to a crusading anti-McCarthy editorial policy. In the electoral field there are indications of a shift against McCarthy. The outspoken anti-Semite and McCarthyite, Jack Tenney, was badly defeated for State Senator in the California primaries. |
The outspoken anti-Semite and McCarthyite, Jack Tenney, was badly defeated for State Senator in the California primaries. And in the Maine primaries, Robert L. Jones, McCarthyite opponent of incumbent Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, was swamped by a 5 to 1 margin. Finally, it can be said that McCarthy’s prestige as a witch hunter has suffered. The fact that he was forced to defend himself at the hearings, and to demand nights he never gave others, damaged his awesome appearance as the grand inquisitor who stood above all questioning. And yet, despite this superficially comforting picture of McCarthy’s fortunes in decline, it would be disastrous to fail to see that actually American fascism experienced a profound development precisely during the last months. Deepening of the Process The point we must grasp is that while the incipient fascist movement has experienced tactical setbacks, these setbacks are related to the deepening of the process of formation of a distinct fascist faction in the administration and in the Republican Party. They are also related to the mobilization of a fascist mass following. Without such blows a fascist movement does not develop. The blows from the old-line capitalist political machines represent their resistance to the emergence of a powerful fascist threat to their own form of capitalist rule. Historically, the fascist movement has always used such attacks to enhance its appearance as the party of the “underdog,” the “little people” who hate the powers that be. If we listen to pollsters who have sampled public opinion since the hearings and who prove that McCarthy has no more than 25 or 30% of the populace in his camp, we might conclude that McCarthyism is no longer a threat. But the conclusion is false – for the simple reason that fascism is not running for election in America. Is it necessary to recall that the Nazis suffered a serious election defeat immediately before Hitler took power? When we look: at McCarthyism as a fascist movement in the process of formation, the figure of “only” 25 percent looms as the most ominous political fact of 1954. If we regard the events of the first six months of 1954 as a test of whether McCarthyism was just another strain of the reactionary breed of capitalist politics, or something qualitatively different, then the fact that the McCarthy faction has withstood all attempts to integrate it into the Republican machine is a strong indication that McCarthyism is no ordinary current. The growing differentiation of a fascist faction within the capitalist parties is a sign of the maturity of the threat to the working class. One of the gravest signs of the extent of the fascist danger is the hardening of the core of McCarthy’s following through the “ordeal” of the hearings. The fascist movement is crystallizing, not only among government functionaries and national politicians, but at the grass roots. The selection of a fascist cadre with a broad following is taking place: The process is by no means complete, and before it is complete the working class will have its opportunity to reverse it; but it is already developing in outline form. We leave it to people who believe in miracles and the Democratic party to ignore such a phenomenon. We must look at the social base of McCarthy’s mass support. Who are the hard-core McCarthy supporters that make up 25 percent of the population? Unfortunately the pollsters do not take their point of departure from the reciprocal relations between the three social classes in American society – capitalist, middle class and working class. Nevertheless, they do indicate in their findings that the main support for McCarthy comes from sections of the lower middle class and among unorganized workers. Insofar as social composition is treated in the polls, there is a high percentage of the uneducated, the small farmers, small businessmen and declassed elements in the pro-McCarthy columns. Will this mass following go all the way with the fascist movement? That depends. It depends above all on what the workers’ organizations do. During the hearings the labor officials stood aside and watched the Democrats carry the ball. All they did was to cheer a little from the sidelines. As a result McCarthy gained where it hurt labor most – in the consolidation of a mass following. History will not permit many blunders like this without visiting severe punishment on the working class. A New Test The army-McCarthy hearings, which disclosed the whole anatomy of a conspiracy to shackle the United States with a fascist dictatorship, should have been the signal for a mighty offensive of the labor movement against this ominous threat. The moment was missed. And now a new test is before us – the 1954 elections. The elections will not pass without McCarthy utilizing them in the same way he utilized the hearings – to build a mass following, to cultivate the legend of invincibility, and to grab every bit of radio and TV time possible for his fascist propaganda. He is planning to open his first big skirmish with the labor movement precisely during the election campaigns. What else does his plan to investigate “subversion” in defense plants signify? But the labor bureaucracy persists in its strategy of leaving the defeat of McCarthy to the Democratic party. They preach that with the election of a Democratic majority in Congress in 1954, and a Democratic president and administration in 1956, all the basic problems of the working class, including the problem of McCarthyism, will be solved. The Democratic stategists, in their turn, also promise that McCarthy will be taken care of if a Democratic majority is elected to the Senate. They argue that if they are the majority McCarthy would be removed as chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee without even a struggle – since under the ordinary rules of Senate procedure McCarthy would then be replaced by the senior Democrat on the committee. Can anything more asinine be imagined? The whole problem of defeating American fascism is reduced to the electing of Democrats instead of Republicans – to a maneuver in Congress – to a re-shuffling of posts! And all this, after the experiences of Italy and Germany and Spain! Perhaps salvation lies not with the Democrats but with the Eisenhower Republicans? |
After all, they have been doing the main fighting, even though they are somewhat inept and at times downright idiotic. The extent to which the Eisenhower Republicans can be depended on to handle McCarthy can be measured by the fact that McCarthy has no reason to split from the Republican party at this time. McCarthy aims at 1956 and the presidency. The organization of a separate fascist party can wait until the experiment of capturing the Republican party has played itself out. In the meantime, the GOP is a perfect arena for McCarthy at this stage of development of his fascist movement. The fact that McCarthy doesn’t have the support at this time of the main sections of the Big Business rulers of the Republican party is not decisive in his calculations. His is a long-term perspective. The crisis of world capitalism is having an explosive effect on the stability and inner equilibrium of the American capitalist political structure. McCarthy obviously senses this. He is ready for sharp turns, sudden upsets, and for any number of cleavages and weaknesses to develop in the most solid and conservative section of the bourgeoisie. Those who think that the biggest and most powerful sections of American finance capital will never throw in their lot with McCarthy do not know these capitalists, their moods or their problems. It is not only the new and fabulously rich oil tycoons who are fascist-minded. The key sectors of America’s rulers would turn to fascism in a moment if they thought that it could solve their problems. That’s what McCarthy must prove to them, and that’s all he must prove. Aim to Win the Elections The Republican aim is to win the elections. That’s the Democratic aim also. This is not meant to be facetious. American capitalist politics is unprincipled to the core, dominated as it is by an overriding concern for the enormous advantage that control of the administration gives to the capitalist group in power. In order to win, each side will resort to any lie, trick or device that can bring victory. Last November Brownell showed how the Republican strategists operate. He accused Truman of harboring and promoting a Russian agent. The whole charge was calculated to swing the tide against the Democrats in the California Congressional race then pending. The string of Democratic victories in the nationwide off-year elections had unnerved the Republican high command, and they resorted to this smear to discredit the Democratic party and stop the Democratic election trend. What was the result? In answering Brownell, Truman characterized Brownell’s method as “McCarthyism.” Whereupon McCarthy demanded and got equal time with Truman to answer him. Having seized the initiative, McCarthy took over the debate and beat the Republican party and even Eisenhower himself over the head with the same club he used on Truman. From then on it was McCarthy’s show. But this experience didn’t inhibit the Republican high command from playing ball with McCarthy. They sent him out as their chief spokesman in opening the 1954 election campaign. Feeds on Witch Hunt McCarthy took advantage of this opening so aggressively and skillfully that the Republican administration had to make a stand against him. The line between the permissible and the impermissible had to be drawn – and the administration made its stand through the Army-McCarthy hearings. But it is precisely these hearings which revealed that their strategy is not to destroy McCarthy but merely to establish a modus vivendi in which the fascist demagogue would voluntarily restrict himself within certain limits. These limits are exactly what McCarthy must overstep in order to build his fascist movement. He overstepped them before, in taking advantage of the openings his Democratic and Republican opponents gave him. Such openings arise from, the official witch hunt and its inevitable consequence – inter-party and inner-party witch hunting. Is there any reason to believe that McCarthy’s opponents will now at long last refrain from creating new openings for him? It can be confidently predicted that the temptation to witch hunt opposing candidates in the prevailing fetid atmosphere will not be heroically resisted by the power-hungry contenders. While McCarthy makes the “treason” charge the kernel of his fascist program to “save America” and to establish his own dictatorship, the old-line machine men of the Republican party can see a lot of merit in that charge as a formula for winning elections – if the necessary hysteria can be worked up to swing it into high gear. And isn’t the Republican administration, with Eisenhower and Brownell in the lead, working day and night to build the hysteria and create precisely such a national lynch atmosphere? The moment another episode like Brownell’s smear of Truman last November takes place, McCarthy will at one stroke wipe out any tactical losses he suffered in his fight with the Army and the administration. He will be completely vindicated. All grounds for anti-McCarthy maneuvers within the party and administration will be removed. McCarthy will then be able to make a new and powerful push in building his fascist network in all government and military agencies, as well as in mobilizing a mass following. The present relationship of forces between Democrats and Republicans in Congress is very close in both the Senate and the House. The Democrats are obviously depending on the usual mid-term swing against the “ins” during periods of economic decline. The Republicans also are worried that the recession – which looks very much like a depression to the workers – will provoke a swing to the Democratic party in 1954 that could roll on to 1956. At the same time, the farm vote hangs in the balance, and there is already evidence that a section of Eisenhower farm support has turned against him. Under all these circumstances, with the fate of their whole administration at stake, it can hardly be expected that the Republicans will not use the witch hunt technique. There is no getting away from it. The witch hunt has a logic of its own, independent of the intentions of its authors and users. |
The witch hunt has a logic of its own, independent of the intentions of its authors and users. It was inevitable that the witch hunt, started by the Democrats under Truman, would develop until the capitalist politicians began to devour one another. And in this process, a fascist movement can maneuver with ease, gaining the initiative at every critical turn. A New Force in Politics This election year of 1954 is not merely another year in the see-saw between the two capitalist parties. Something new has been added. For the first time in American history a powerful fascist movement is on the political scene. And the defeat of this fascist movement is now the main order of business before the working class of this country. When the Socialist Workers Party says that the drive of a fascist movement toward power must be met by a counter-drive of the workers toward power, the labor officials and liberals smile indulgently and return to the “practical” questions of the day. But there were a lot smarter labor officials and liberals in Italy, Germany and Spain, who rejected the reality of the struggle with fascism – and woke up in concentration camps or in exile. Other elements in and around the ideological fringe of the labor bureaucracy talk airily about “fighting fascism,” but are too sophisticated and too lacking in revolutionary faith in the capacity of the American proletariat, to talk of such “cliches” as a “struggle for workers’ power.” The worst of these elements within the labor bureaucracy for trying to crash the bureaucracy) is the Stalinists. The Stalinists not only refuse to talk of an orientation toward workers’ power; it is their prime objective to prove that they have nothing to do with such “irresponsible” perspectives. For them, all strategy in fighting McCarthyism is reduced to the slogan: Get into the Democratic party. And yet any sober reflection on the real situation in the United States and the experience of Europe shows that we face precisely that alternative: workers’ power or fascist power. It may be objected: Are you serious? To whom, are you addressing this program of struggle for workers’ power as the only means to smash the fascist menace? To the American labor movement, with its corrupt, capitalist-minded labor bureaucracy? Isn’t this somewhat ludicrous? The need for a revolutionary socialist strategy to successfully fight McCarthyism is not a laughing matter. What is ludicrous is not the distance between our socialist program and the program of the labor bureaucracy, but rather the disproportion between the program of the labor bureaucracy and the objective reality. That is both ludicrous and tragic. The Reality in America Our program conforms to reality. It is based on both theoretical analysis and historical experience. But the program of the American labor bureaucracy is based on memories of the past, on a relation of class forces that is about to be blown up by the deepening of the world capitalist crisis within the American sector. That’s why it is a worthless program. The reformist program of the bureaucracy and the Stalinists had some semblance of “realism” in the epoch of the rise of capitalism, or in countries like the US where the crisis of capitalism was delayed by way of imperialist expansion – that is, by way of thrusting the rest of the capitalist world into a deeper crisis. As long as capitalism operates more or less efficiently, the relations between the three classes, capitalist, middle class and working class, are maintained with a degree of equilibrium. The middle class follows the capitalist class, and even drags the workers along with them through the labor bureaucracy. The class struggle, while constantly upsetting this equilibrium, doesn’t fundamentally destroy it. But as soon as capitalism enters its decline, this relationship of class forces is sharply altered and the brittle political superstructure resting on the previously stable class relationships begins to crack up. The crisis of capitalism brings ruin and despair to the middle class and the working class. The alternating currents of boom and bust resolve into the alternatives of catastrophic war or catastrophic depression. This whole process creates an unbearable social tension, and a collective conviction arises that a change must absolutely be made. In such times the working class is presented with the opportunity to take the helm and steer society out of the capitalist morass. The middle class, suffering acutely from the effects of the capitalist crisis, is at that point the natural ally of the working class and would readily follow its lead toward a fundamental change in the social system. But should the working class falter, should it prove unable to rise to the tasks imposed by revolutionary times, then the whole situation deteriorates. All the worst features of the middle class – its prejudices, its inability to act as a cohesive class pursuing its own interests, its collective hysteria in times of crisis – become favorable factors for the rise of a fascist movement. The fascists then issue a counterfeit of the revolutionary program that the workers’ organizations failed to present. They turn the program into its opposite. While appealing to the mass feeling that some change is absolutely essential, the change which they offer is a counter-revolutionary fascist change. All this is dressed up with whatever unrestrained demagogy the moment requires. At the same time the capitalists, who have lost the ability to rule through middle-class liberal politicians and the labor bureaucracy, become receptive to the idea of using the fascist movement to establish their unquestioned rule by means of a blood-nurge of the working class and the establishment of the iron-heel dictatorship of Big Business. This, in broad outline, is the perspective that confronts this country. There is no use looking the other way, or bemoaning our fate. There is no use complaining that the alternatives of fascism or socialism confront us too soon – that we need more time. The alternatives are here, now. The fascist movement is not waiting. The workers cannot and dare not wait. Thus the problem of problems now before us is to hasten the awakening of consciousness in the working class to the fact that the next few years will decide who will rule in the United States. A showdown crisis is before us. |
A showdown crisis is before us. Either the capitalists will rule through a fascist dictatorship, or the workers will rule through a Workers and Farmers Government. Those who think that all is lost and that fascism must succeed are the worst traitors and liars. The American workers have a tremendous capacity to rise to historic needs. The workers have learned a great deal since they first organized and beat the corporations, in the Thirties. Everything intelligent, everything heroic, everything that made the American workers the most productive and most militant working class in the world will become aroused and active in the mortal struggle with fascism. For our part, we proceed with the utmost confidence. The present labor leadership will be shoved aside. Its pro-capitalist political program will be rejected by the new, young, militant layers of leader-fighters which are today taking shape even during the darkest moments of reaction. And the program and leadership of the revolutionary socialists will be embraced by these millions of proletarian fighters who will smash and scatter the fascist movement. July 10, 1954 Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 14 April 2009 |
Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss The Problem of Smashing McCarthyism A Marxist Analysis and Proposal (January 1954) From Fourth International, Vol. 15 No. 1, Winter 1954, pp. 3–9. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). WHEN Eisenhower was sworn in a year ago, the most authoritative newspapers confidently predicted that the General would squelch McCarthy without any difficulty. But the Wisconsin upstart, whose name has become synonymous with witch hunting, has by no means been squelched. On the contrary, his power has grown enormously in one year of the Eisenhower regime. Two questions deserve close attention from the outset of any analysis of McCarthy and McCarthyism: What is the nature of his power and what is its source? One school of thought, represented in high circles of the Republican and Democratic parties, contends that McCarthy is absurd and McCarthyism is a hoax. The stock in trade of this school is to measure McCarthy’s “accomplishments” with their own witchhunt rule: “How many Communists has McCarthy caught?” McCarthy, they point out, began his career in big-time witch hunting with a sensational stunt at Wheeling, West Virginia, Feb. 9, 1950. Speaking to the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club, he announced, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 ... a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” In one day the charge was altered to 205 “bad security risks,” and “57 card-carrying Communists.” Ten days later this was reduced to “three big Communists.” Then it was raised to “81 cases.” The proponents of the “absurdity” theory of McCarthyism triumphantly point out that to this day not one “Communist” has been uncovered in the State Department as a result of McCarthy’s “exposé.” The same point is made about McCarthy’s investigations at the Fort Monmouth radar research project. Headlines blared “Spy Ring,” “McCarthy Charges Soviet Got Secrets,” “Monmouth Figure Linked to Hiss Ring.” McCarthy reported 12, then 27 suspended victims as if they were “spies” caught red-handed. Again when the smoke cleared, not one “spy,” or one proved “Communist” had been discovered. McCarthy blithely shifted his story to “potential sabotage.” His opponents scornfully exposed these maneuvers. In the meantime, McCarthy set up shop, and alerted every fascist hoodlum and reactionary bigot in the United States that he was their man. The “Madman” Theory Alongside the theory of “absurdity” is the “madman” theory of McCarthyism. How could anyone but a madman accuse Truman, Acheson, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, along with war-time Chief of Staff Marshall, all in one breath, of a Moscow-directed conspiracy during World War II? Most of the anti-McCarthy Republicans and Democrats attack McCarthy’s type of witch hunting as “irresponsible,” “reckless,” and “unfair.” They accept McCarthy’s premise, the internal and external “red menace.” But they don’t fully realize what they are accepting. Another group of opponents of McCarthy, such as I.F. Stone and the liberals of the Nation, say flatly that McCarthy’s “red menace” in America is a hoax. They grant the international “red menace,” but describe the internal domestic menace as sheer fabrication. This group doesn’t fully realize what it is rejecting in McCarthyism. McCarthy’s witch hunting has a character basically different from all others. Leaving aside the common denominator of a reactionary, pro-war, pro-capitalist program, McCarthy proceeds from different premises, and has different objectives. Before McCarthy, the large-scale witch hunt was motivated as a “security measure.” Its primary aim was to depict the world anti-capitalist revolution as a “Kremlin conspiracy” and to smear in advance all actual or potential anti-capitalist opposition at home as a “fifth column.” In other words, Truman’s witch hunt pursued the actual aim of lining up the American people for Wall Street’s counter-revolutionary cold war; the ostensible aim was to prevent internal treachery. McCarthy has a different formula. He contends that “great treachery” has already taken place. It must now be uncovered and avenged. A repetition of the “great treachery” must be prevented. For McCarthy, the number one task in the “security” field is to root out the traitors who sold us out during the last war. There is a big difference between this and the witch hunt started by Truman. Superficially the difference appears to be merely a question of quantity. It looks like McCarthy is using the witch hunt against some of the chief witch hunters. And that is true as far as it goes. But there is a deeper aspect to the problem which explains the source of McCarthy’s power and the difference between McCarthy and the run-of-the-mill capitalist reactionary. The Middle Class In order to fix precisely McCarthy’s place in American politics it is necessary to trace briefly the recent economic and political evolution of the American middle class. During the last dozen years the middle class has swung steadily to the right. Aside from ups and downs, and taking into account notable exceptions, the middle class has profited by the Second World War and the post-war armaments boom. The comeback of the Republican Party of Big Business is the political expression of this swing. The big capitalists were able to offer the country a war prosperity. |
This attracted a large section of the farmers and small businessmen and even a section of the workers to the party which is openly the instrument of Big Business. The Second World War seemed to open the perspective of a long reign of prosperity based on America’s conquest of the world. Every other country was ruined, but didn’t the US come out on top once again? The Luce publications even projected a “Pax Americana,” an “American Century,” and drew comparisons with the Roman empire of antiquity and the British of modern times. But conquest turned into bitter defeat. The world revolutionary anti-capitalist upsurge, the elimination of China and Eastern Europe from the capitalist orbit, the growth of the Soviet bloc, destroyed the perspective of endless national enrichment at the expense of the world. The rosy dream of an American century turned into a nightmare of fear and insecurity. McCarthy was the first to seriously tap the elements of social fury building up in the disoriented middle class as a result of this unforeseen turn of affairs. In a speech to the US Senate, June 15, 1951, McCarthy posed the question of “why we fell from our position as the most powerful nation on earth at the end of World War II to a position of declared weakness.” His answer was. very simple: It is the result of a Kremlin-directed conspiracy, headed in the United States, not by Browder and Foster, but by Roosevelt, Truman, Acheson, the State Department and war-time Chief of Staff Marshall. The answer to why the US fell from power, said McCarthy, cannot be obtained “without uncovering a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black, as to dwarf any previous such venture, in the history of man.” In a television appearance, shortly after the Senate speech, he elaborated on this theme: “In view of the fact that we’ve been losing, losing this war to international communism at the rate of 100 million people a year in a general war and losing the Korean war, a disgraceful planned disaster, that perhaps we should examine the background of the men who have done the planning and let the American people decide whether these individuals are stupid, whether we’ve lost because of stumbling, fumbling idiocy, or because they planned it that way.” In a word, he left it up to the American people to decide “whether these individuals (Roosevelt, Truman, Marshall and Eisenhower) have been dupes ... or whether, they are traitors.” Such is McCarthy’s explanation in a nutshell: All our troubles, the cold war, the Korean war, inflation, strikes, the threat of depression, the farmers’ troubles, the anxieties, the fear of atomic annihilation, the fear of “Communist aggression,” and any other ills, real or imaginary, are due to “Communist” treason in high places. We were sold out by “traitors,” “dupes” and “eggheads.” We were betrayed by “perverts” in the State Department, and by the “twisted thinking intellectuals (who) have taken over both the Democratic and Republican parties.” Fascist Premise The conclusions flowing from McCarthy’s formula are ominous and sweeping. To the ruling capitalist politicians they present an awesome prospect. It means a complete overhauling of the government apparatus, from top to bottom. It doesn’t matter that McCarthy’s formula is even a bigger lie than Truman’s. The important thing is that McCarthy has a sizable audience who find in this lie a rationalization for their fury and frustration. At first sight it appears that McCarthy’s formula of “high treason” is a matter of purely internal interest to the capitalist class. One group of politicians accuses the other of the worst crimes. Of what concern is this to the workers? Actually the question is of tremendous importance to the workers. In an atmosphere of impending social crisis, when the props have been taken out from under the world conditions for the economic stability of American capitalism, McCarthy’s formula is a ready-made premise for a fascist program. The middle class feels betrayed and insecure. It feels the hot breath of depression on its neck. It must, find a new orientation. McCarthy makes his bid for the support of this mass, and offers a way out – destroy the traitorous gang in power and replace them, with leaders bathed in the fire of McCarthyism. With this formula McCarthy lays the groundwork for posing as the crusading enemy of the scoundrels in high places. By accusing the previous Democratic administration, the Democratic Party, and half the Republican Party of treachery, dupery, bungling, corruption and blundering mismanagement, he bids to become the champion of the “small people” who are Justifiably suspicious of the “big shots” in high places. He hopes to become the champion of the discontented and the opponent of the status quo. This kind of demagogy by McCarthy, when taken together with other symptoms, signifies an attempt to rally a mass movement around a fascist banner. The “big shots” of course have an out. They can avoid being smeared as “traitors” by the simple device of joining McCarthy, and many of them have taken that course. Or they can stave off the day when they will be smeared bv keeping out of McCarthy’s way and hoping he won’t notice them, and many have taken that course. The theme of “Communist” treason in the top institutions of government can be turned high or low according to the political situation and the extent to which McCarthy is ready to develop his independence from the Republican Party. But there are corollaries to the theme which can be kept going at all times. Rooting out “spies” and “Communists” who were covered by the high traitors (through deliberate intention or criminal stupidity) is a year-around business for McCarthy. It keeps the pot boiling. It creates the atmosphere of hysteria and terror that he needs. “High treason” in foreign policy has its inevitable counterpart in “high treason” in domestic policy. Here, McCarthy does not have to be original. He can simply lift the point out of the Republican program. |
McCarthy has “revealed” that the Democratic administration was selling out the country to the Russians. But the Republicans have long said that the New Deal-Fair Deal was “creeping socialism.” McCarthy, who is not interested in fine distinctions, has a ready-made hook-up. While the Democrats were selling out the world position of America to the Russians, they were at the same time introducing “Communism” at home. And then it is well known that practically all the trade union officials supported the New Deal-Fair Deal. Obviously they were in on the “great conspiracy.” McCarthy, like every fascist before him, will say: “I am not opposed to unions. I am only opposed to the ‘Communist traitors’ who run them.” He can very well prove his friendship for unionism by pressing for “free” 100% American unions, to replace the “Communist infested” AFL and CIO. And with a mob of fascist supporters, McCarthy will set out to destroy the “Communist” unions, by direct action, in the good old-fashioned American way, so much admired by lynchers, the Klan and vigilantes. If anyone thinks such prospects are “fantastic” they had better read McCarthy’s speeches more closely. Thus we come to the conclusion: The source of McCarthy’s power is a large layer of the middle class who are deeply disturbed by the world and domestic crises. This layer is often decisive in the balance of electoral power. That is why McCarthy wields such great power within the Republican party. More Than a Witch Hunter But McCarthy is distinguished from the rest of the reactionary capitalist politician’s. While arising out of the general atmosphere of the witch hunt, McCarthyism is yet different from it. McCarthyism is the American fascist movement at a particular stage of development. The most convincing evidence of this is the inability of the old-line political machines to stop McCarthy. All attempts have ended in fiasco, with McCarthy stronger than ever. It isn’t that the machines don’t want to break him. They can’t break him. McCarthy brawled his way up from the political bush leagues of Wisconsin to a position of great power in the US Senate. He reduced Robert Taft, “Mr. Republican” himself, to the position of a henchman. Eisenhower is impotent before his power. And the Democratic Party opposition periodically collapses and capitulates, each time more miserably than before. Imprudent Congressmen who dared to cross him have had their hides nailed up on the walls of Capitol Hill as warning to all future critics: If you want to stay in office, don’t tangle with McCarthy. McCarthy conducts his intervention in election campaigns along the same lines as he conducts his investigating committee. If a witness or a candidate is not a stool-pigeon or a McCarthyite captive, he is automatically an agent of the Kremlin. The mildest thing McCarthy can say about such people is: “It appears that (the accused) never actually signed up in the Communist Party, and never paid dues ...” The capitalist political machines can break any upstart who is a part of their machine. But when a fascist political machine arises, then it is a different matter. If the Republican and Democratic party machines have proven impotent in curbing McCarthy by direct attacks, their attempts to eliminate him by outflanking maneuvers have proved nothing less than catastrophic. The most dramatic example of this was, in the recent Republican-sponsored spy-smear of ex-president Truman by Attorney General Brownell. The Republican high command thought it could kill two birds with one stone. It could use McCarthy’s technique to win a badly needed election victory in California. And at the same time, it could deflate McCarthy by stealing his thunder. McCarthy was the real gainer in the whole episode. After Truman tried to defend himself in a national broadcast, McCarthy demanded and got $300,000 worth of free radio-TV time, attacked both Truman and Eisenhower, and brought the issue right back to where he wanted it – for McCarthy or for the “spies.” McCarthy’s fascist machine cannot be broken by capitalist politicians. The only political force that can destroy McCarthy is one completely independent from the Democratic and Republican parties; namely, the working class, organized in its own political party. The point is that capitalist reaction has developed a split personality. The ruling power itself has developed pronounced police-state features. The enormous growth of the FBI secret police, the vast increase in the power of the military hierarchy, and the increasing concentration of special powers in the Executive (Truman’s unauthorized declaration of War in Korea) are all features of a growing Bonapartist tendency in the capitalist state. HARRY S. TRUMAN “... launched an offensive against all democratic traditions ...” The witch hunt under Truman already evinced the inability of capitalism to rule by the old methods. In addition to repressive laws against labor’ and the increase of direct intervention by the state in economic affairs, the Truman regime was compelled to launch an offensive against all democratic traditions, become more and more “anti-popular,” isolated and estranged from mass support. The crisis of the 20-year coalition between the labor bureaucracy and the capitalist state began under Truman. The rupture of that coalition was consummated under Eisenhower. But alongside the “police statification” of the structure of capitalist rule has come the first significant signs of the emergence of a fascist mobilization. McCarthyism, while playing the role of pace-setter in the witch hunt, is at the same time developing a marked independence from the traditional parties of capitalism and from the old state apparatus. |
McCarthyism, while playing the role of pace-setter in the witch hunt, is at the same time developing a marked independence from the traditional parties of capitalism and from the old state apparatus. McCarthy swings a club over the heads of the old-line capitalist politicians. It is the club of the mass movement that has rallied behind him. This is the most important element of the political situation in the United States today. It is a symptom of the results of prolonged delay in the formation of an independent Labor Party. It is a sign of the emergence of a new and far more threatening anti-labor machine. The emergence of an independent fascist movement, headed by a powerful political machine in Congress, with a platform based on the theme of “national betrayal” by the war-time leaders, with powerful financial backing, and the coalescence of the fragmented fascist organizations of the past under its banner, is the warning-signal to the American working class: Once again history is posing the choice – fascism or socialism. It is important to recall that Hitler began in Germany with the theme of “betrayal from within.” And this remained the basic ingredient of all Nazi demagogy. The “Communist conspiracy,” the “international Jewish bankers,” “Russian aggression,” were all linked to the central theme: Germany was defeated in the First World War because of “betrayal at Versailles.” In order to restore Germany to its rightful place, the criminal authors of this treason had to. be exposed and extirpated. Hitler’s social demagogy was also built around this theme. Hitler didn’t merely compete with the Social Democrats and Communist Party in social demands. He linked the demagogic promises of the Nazi party with the action crusade necessary to save Germany and destroy the “treacherous conspiracy from within.” The analogy to Hitlerism, is valid if we understand its limitations. The most important of these pertains to the stage of development. It could give rise to the most serious errors to identify McCarthyisrn with the Hitler movement of 1931–32, in the period of its march to power. Hitlerism, as all fascist movements which became fully developed mass organizations, matured to the degree that the working class defaulted a series of revolutionary opportunities and failed to resolve the social crisis through socialist revolution. In Germany, the attempts of the working class to take power in 1918, 1923, and to a certain degree even as late as 1929, failed as a result of the successive defaults of proletarian leadership. It was this failure which gave rise to a tumultuous mass growth of fascism and the possibility of its taking power and crushing the working class through civil war. With the default of working class leadership, the middle class, frustrated in its hopes for a solution to its problems under the leadership of the Working class, became easy prey for fascist demagogy and was attracted to the anti-capitalist facade of the fascist program. Thus they became raw material for an anti-labor militia. In the name of anti-capitalism the fascists mobilized the middle class of Germany to do the work of monopoly capitalist reaction. Subsequently the mass organizations of the middle class, particularly their armed organizations, were beheaded and demobilized, but only after they had accomplished their mission of destroying the organizations of the working class. In America If we study closely the history of the United States since the birth of the CIO we see analogous elements of default. The CIO displayed tremendous attraction for the “small people” of the country. CIO was the “magic” symbol of new life for the oppressed. Fascist and semi-fascist formations that tried to directly challenge the CIO were hurled back. But with the breaking of the Little Steel strike by a type of fascist campaign, modeled on the Mohawk Valley Formula in the spring of 1937, the pendulum began to swing toward the appearance of more aggressive fascist activity. This swing was helped by the failure of the CIO to fulfill its promise of becoming an independent political party of the workers. On the basis of this “default,” the economic recession of the late Thirties and the social instability preceding the outbreak of the war gave rise to such figures as Mayor Hague of Jersey City, Father Coughlin, Pelley, and Gerald L.K. Smith. The Second World War cut across this development. War by its very nature rallies all the potential fascist elements to the existing state apparatus. It puts a uniform on the discontented and frustrated middle class; it offers, in its own distorted way, some hope of change; it provides action to the middle-class and de-classed youth; it vastly expands the officer corps. In addition, the war brought full employment to the workers and enrichment to the middle class. With the end of the war, in anticipation of demobilization, the fascists began an intensive exploratory operation. Would-be fascist veteran organizations sprang up everywhere. The prospect of using veterans, as anti-labor shock troops was very tempting to big capital and to a new crop of fascist contenders. But the colossal strike wave of 1945-46 answered this fascist dream. American labor mobilized the veterans on the picket lines. However, the fact that the official leadership of the labor movement supported the war and the no-strike pledge, and continued its adherence to the capitalist parties, constituted a manifest default in working-class leadership which laid the ground for the current stage of political development. The years of post-war prosperity are giving away to symptoms of economic crisis. Above all, confidence has been destroyed. And the first signs of major disturbances in the middle class are observable. These signs are contradictory. On the one hand, there is the indubitable popularity of McCarthy, a sign of grave importance. |
On the one hand, there is the indubitable popularity of McCarthy, a sign of grave importance. On the other hand, there is the recent tendency of the middle-class vote to swing to the Democratic Party. These and other contradictory symptoms are indicative of the immaturity of the situation for the emergence of a full-fledged fascist mobilization. The world crisis of capitalism has not yet erupted in full force in the United States. With the outbreak of the crisis the pendulum will undoubtedly swing to mass working class radicalization, before it swings to fascist reaction. And it will never swing to the fascists if the working class carries out its mission, breaks with capitalist politics, mobilizes the people of the United States behind a socialist program and takes the power into its own hands. But the basic elements of the contradictory alternative of the future – fascist victory or socialist victory – are already implicit in the current political situation. The contest will not take place in separated time sequences – first a pure working class radicalization, and then, if it fails to reach its historic goal of workers power, a pure fascist mass mobilization. The tendencies toward socialist revolution and fascist counter-revolution will run concurrently. The American workers will have to cope with fascism from, here on in. Whether it will be “incipient” fascism, or full-blown mass fascism, with all “classical” features in full evidence, will depend on the working class, on how successfully it wages the struggle. The European experience teaches us that the fight against fascism will fail if it is not based on a revolutionary anti-capitalist program and the perspective of workers’ power. But part of the education of the working class, in the process of acquiring such a program, is the direct struggle with the fascist threat. McCarthy and Labor When McCarthy came to Washington in 1946, before he was even seated as a junior Senator from Wisconsin, he called a press conference. Two capable journalists, Jack Anderson and Ronald May, in their book McCarthy, The Man, The Senator, The ’Ism, tell how startled the reporters were at this arrogance of a “rookie” Senator: “The reporters were so amazed at his audacity that they showed up mainly out of curiosity.” The subject of the press conference was the strike of the coal miners. “Now then,” said McCarthy, “about this coal strike, I’ve got a solution. The army should draft the striking coal miners. That would solve the problem.” “What about Lewis?” asked a reporter. “Draft him too.” “And what if they refused (to mine coal)?” asked another reporter. “Then they could be court-martialed for insubordination, and you know what that means.” Anderson and May report: “The newsmen could hardly believe their ears. One of them, searching for a headline, asked: ‘You mean you would line up men like Lewis and have them shot?’ Joe (McCarthy) shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘what else?’” JOHN L. LEWIS McCarthy: “Draft him too ... Should be court-martialed.” A few days later the New York Times quoted McCarthy: “... I believe the President should use his powers to immediately draft John L. Lewis into the armed services. Lewis should be directed to order his miners to mine coal. If he does not do that, he should be court-martialed. We should go straight down the line. If subordinates of Lewis fail to order the miners back, they should be court-martialed. All this talk about you can’t put 400,000 miners in jail is a lot of stuff. They won’t go to jail. They will mine coal first.” This was McCarthy’s first venture in making national headlines. The anti-labor theme is significant. McCarthy subsequently abandoned this direct anti-labor belligerence. After all, such fire-eating statements about action against strikers are not suitable to the fascist demagogue in the period of his rise to prominence. As a matter of fact, McCarthy today maintains a studied silence on the question of labor. In a Congress bristling with Taft-Hartleyism, he is conspicuously silent about such legislative anti-labor measures. His approach is different. In the specific McCarthyite formula of witch hunting, the attack on the labor movement is oblique, and therefore, for the time being, more effective. This was demonstrated in. his “investigation” of General Electric. Opponents of McCarthyism are fond of citing such historic precedents as the witch hunt in England in the 17th century and the Salem, witchcraft trials. In their book, Jack Anderson and Ronald W. May devote a chapter to an historic episode: “Three hundred years ago, England was swept by a wave of hysteria against witches. Fear and suspicions haunted the people ... Then a man named Matthew Hopkins appeared on the scene with a new and ‘infallible’ method of detecting witches; it consisted of some original techniques in torture. Within a short time he became one of the most powerful men in England, feared even by the King himself, who conferred upon Hopkins the title of ‘His Majesty’s Witch-Finder General’ ... |
Within a short time he became one of the most powerful men in England, feared even by the King himself, who conferred upon Hopkins the title of ‘His Majesty’s Witch-Finder General’ ... No one dared to oppose him, for he had power of life and death over all ‘suspects’ brought before him to be ‘tested.’ Those who failed his tests were put to death; and for each victim Hopkins was paid a sum of money ... But his fees grew more exorbitant, and the atmosphere more chaotic, until a group of officials took matters into their own hands and arrested the Witch-Finder General himself – as a witch. He was subjected to a series of tests so severe that his health was completely broken, and soon afterward he died and was buried at Mistley, August 12, 1647.” The inference of this historic parallel is that McCarthyism is a virulent stage of a disease which will run its course and destroy itself. The trouble with the analogy is the different historic settings. England of the 17th century was at its infancy as a capitalist nation, the United States of 1953 is part of the world capitalist system, in its death agony. The historical tendency of capitalism in its ascendency was to throw off the dead hand of medievalism with its witches and witch hunters. This was part of the main trend after the English revolution led by Cromwell. The capitalists sought to change all social and political relations in the interests of freedom for investment of capital. The power of witchcraft vanished in face of the new forces. Democratic parliamentarism became the form of political rule most suited to capital at this stage. In the period of capitalist decline which set in with the First World War, capitalism inclined to shed its historically acquired democratic forms. It showed the closest affinity for every reactionary, semi-feudal relic in world culture. It became retrogressive. Declining capitalism in Europe thrust nation after nation into fascist barbarism. Now the threat of fascism has become manifest in the US With a fascist victory in this country the historic cost would be incalculable. The barbarism of Hitlerism would prove to be a mere dress rehearsal for the barbarism of American fascism. A fascist America, with an enslaved working class, would threaten the whole world with barbarism. But the time is not yet ripe for counter-revolution in the United States. Socialist revolution will have its chance before fascist counter-revolution. However, if the socialist revolution is to succeed, a sharp turn must be made in the policy and leadership of the working class. Independent Political Action The failure, after the formation of the CIO, to organize an independent Labor Party, opened the reactionary swing of American politics, which in turn helped mature the conditions for the reappearance of a more powerful fascist movement. This failure was not written in the stars. It was thrust upon the workers by a bureaucratic caste of “leaders” who fell under the influence of the American capitalist politicians and proved incapable of tearing loose. Even now it is clear that the formation of an independent Labor Party would change qualitatively the whole political situation. McCarthyism would be scattered to the four winds, and before it could assemble the pieces for a counter-offensive, the workers could take political power in the United States with the vast majority, of the people behind them. Such are the objective possibilities. But everything depends, not on these objective possibilities, which have long been ripe, for a socialist reorganisation of society; everything depends on the subjective factor, that is, on the factor of working class leadership, consciousness and will – in a word, on the revolutionary party. As the social crisis deepens – and the objective factors guarantee that this will happen – the working class will seek the way out on the road of radical solutions. The labor bureaucracy will stand in their way. And standing in the way of the working class mass surge toward the revolutionary road, it will stand in the way of the united front of the working class and the middle class on the program of socialist opposition against Big Capital. If the bureaucracy succeeds in preventing the junction of an anti-capitalist front of workers and farmers, the road will be opened to the mass growth of the McCarthyite movement far beyond its present dimensions. Thus the problem of leadership becomes the problem of overthrowing the dead weight of the existing bankrupt bureaucracy and building a new revolutionary left wing leadership in the American labor movement. The policy of the labor leadership of all wings, except the revolutionary socialist, is a compound of cowardly silence, capitulation and dependence on the Democratic Party in the fight against McCarthyism. It would seem that the labor bureaucracy, including the Social Democrats and the Stalinists, is bound and determined to commit the very mistakes in the United States that paved the way for the victory of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco in Europe. The bureaucrats are in no mood to profit by the tragic experience of the European labor movement. Is it a hopeless cause then to think that we can prevent the victory of McCarthyism? Not in the least! We do not depend in the slightest on “convincing” Reuther and Meany. But we do depend on the fusion of the ideas, experience and cadre of the Socialist Workers Party with the mass of workers in the United States. As the social crisis deepens, the workers will move to radical solutions. But they will encounter not only the obstacle of the right-wing bureaucracy; they will also find an enormous advantage in the left-wing leadership built around the SWP. This junction of the radicalized worker mass and the revolutionary socialist left wing will seal the doom of the bureaucracy. The American Trotskyists have never been and never will be mere “talkers” on the question of fascism. We have the only consistent record of action in the struggle against the American fascists. |
We have the only consistent record of action in the struggle against the American fascists. We already possess a large fund of experience in the fight. And our party is determined to imbue the whole American working class with the spirit of militant combat against the fascists ... Our conception of fighting the fascists is to crush them in the egg. Never give them a chance to become powerful antagonists. For every blow the fascists deliver against any section of the working class or minorities, we propose that labor strike back with ten blows. The fact that there are deep traditions in the American working class that support such a program was demonstrated to the whole country by the militant action of the San Francisco longshoremen last Nov. 3 when they organized a 24-hour protest strike against the McCarthyite House Un-American Activities Committee. This model action of the San Francisco longshoremen shows that once the American workers start moving and recognize the McCarthyites for what they are, they will make short shrift of American fascism. Meanwhile, left-wing workers must pitch with all their might and hasten the mobilization of a working-class, fighting, anti-fascist front. Above all we must fight for a revolutionary socialist program against McCarthyism. For it is only through the adoption of such a program by the working class that, a final victory against fascism will be possible. January 18, 1954 Top of page Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 22 March 2019 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss Case History of an Experiment (Spring 1960) From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.2, Spring 1960, pp.49-53. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Why did American Socialist fold up? It could be charged to a failure of nerve. But closer study yields some instructive lessons AFTER six years of publication, the American Socialist, a monthly magazine which made considerable impression in radical and student circles when it first appeared, announced December 1959, “This is our last issue.” In a statement to their readers the editors admitted that the decision to close up shop “stems from more than just financial difficulties.” What then were their political reasons? The editors of the American Socialist felt that the promise of a favorable regroupment among radical forces in the US had not been realized. In the absence of a radical upsurge, they explained, they never thought that a regroupment would result in a new socialist party. But they did hope “that it might be possible to start a modest educational society outlining a body of ideas and approaches for a New Left if enough of the old radicals took the cure, rid themselves of their past misconceptions, derelictions, and bad habits, and grew up to understand the requirements of the epoch.” This was an illusion, they conclude, “In retrospect, we can see that the regroupment discussion of several years ago had no chance. The decay had gone too far, and the atmosphere in the country was too forbidding to encourage a new beginning.” So what should be done now? The prospects appear dispiriting. “There are a number of possibilities open to us to overcome our difficulties, but these add up to converting ourselves into still another messianic sectlet. We have rejected such a course in the past and we do so now.” Has the American Socialist then nothing further to say? It seems not. “We have already exceeded the life-span for non-institutional ‘little magazines’ in this country and the time has now clearly come to close up this particular venture.” What of other publications or other currents in the radical movement? Should readers of the American Socialist turn to any of these? The editors seem embarrassed. They say that the socialist movement must make “fresh investigations” into many questions including “a number of classic socialist assumptions [not identified]. But we never believed – we do not believe now – that the Kremlin or the State Department were the best mentors, overtly or covertly, wholly or partially, for these researches.” Interpreting this Aesopian language, we take this as advice to stay away from both the Communist party and the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. What of the Socialist Workers party and the Trotskyist movement generally? You would never guess from reading the American Socialist that editors Bert Cochran, Harry Braverman and J. Geller had spent the greater part of their adult life in the Trotskyist movement, breaking from it only in 1954. Do they finally draw some kind of balance sheet on this experience in the final issue of the magazine they founded? No. They conclude their experiment as they began it – without an explanation, without a programmatic accounting. Like fleeting, ghostlike birds of passage one could say of them: “From nothing, through nothing, to nothing.” Cochran, Braverman and Geller thus end their magazine experiment with ideological bankruptcy. Although they gratuitously include the whole socialist movement in this, they are really only speaking for themselves. To indict the movement as a whole, it is necessary to do more than assert; it is necessary to discuss points of disagreement, to attempt to prove one’s contentions. In other words, it is necessary to engage in ideological struggle. But this is exactly what the three editors have always refused to do, avoiding controversy by assuming a blase manner: It is all too, too wearisome to squabble about ancient issues that interest no one but devotees of sectlets. With all its appeal for the tired and the demoralized, such posturing signifies the abandonment not simply of Marxism but of all science, all method and all efforts to test contending programs in the laboratory of experience. Is this criticism too harsh? In defense of Cochran, Braverman and Geller it can be argued that in their final statement they profess optimism about the prospects of the sixties. “From a number of signs,” they say, “it would appear that the tensions which have built up in our society will lead to a new burst of political creativity in the coming decade.” We agree with that forecast. But for Marxists the next question is how should we prepare for the new upsurge? How can we help transmit to the young socialists of the sixties the precious lessons of more than a century of Marxism? Don’t such tasks call for organized Marxist activity, even if it is reduced to the bare essential of running a mimeograph? The editorial trio apparently thought of this – and excluded it: “Of course, the Left is by now too shrunken to permit any continuity between the movements of the thirties and any manifestations in the sixties.” (Our emphasis.) What does this mean? If there is no possibility of any continuity between the radical movement of the thirties and the coming movement of the sixties, then the next generation, which will undoubtedly be called upon to solve fateful problems, will be left, hanging by itself; it will be excluded from the benefits of learning from the-experience of the generation of the thirties, in both their positive and negative aspects. THEY are condemned to start from scratch in considering such mighty questions as the failure of the working class parties to stop the rise of fascism in Europe; the failure of the labor movement to prevent World War II; the liquidation of the revolutionary-socialist parties into class-collaborationist popular fronts in Europe; the rise of a bureaucratic dictatorial regime in the Soviet Union; the stifling of all independence and revolutionary integrity of the Communist parties of the world by the Kremlin; |
the stifling of all independence and revolutionary integrity of the Communist parties of the world by the Kremlin; the successive betrayals of reformist Social Democracy; the decimation of radicalism in America due to supporting capitalist parties; the defeat of the militant and radical wing of the American trade-union movement and the rise of the present labor bureaucracy ... If the Marxist movement today does not do everything in its power to transmit such lessons, then it is indeed bankrupt. And if one argues that there’s nothing wrong with Marxism but no humans in this country exist capable of giving continuity to its body of thought, as Cochran does, it comes to the same thing. A theory that resembles some “truth” of the spirit world, unconnected with any living tendency, is hardly a useful guide to action. WHY accept such a nihilistic diagnosis? It is not related to social reality but to emotional collapse. The editors express despair at the incapacity of the “old radicals” to rid themselves of their past “misconceptions, derelictions, and bad habits,” their inability to grow up “to understand the requirements of the epoch.” Wouldn’t a Marxist begin by explaining such phenomena in order to overcome them? Precisely what were these “misconceptions, derelictions and bad habits?” In what way did the old generation fail to understand the “requirements of the epoch"? And what are these requirements? The American radical movement showed great promise at the beginning of the century; it became a powerful force among industrial workers in the thirties; then it suffered rout and demoralization in the fifties. How did the misconceptions and derelictions (not to speak of bad habits) lead to this? Aren’t the youth entitled to this wisdom? If the movement of the coming decade is to succeed where the movement of the thirties failed, such questions must be answered by the Marxists. This will be demanded by young militants who will enter the ranks in the years to come. For the knowledge-hungry youth turning to socialism this work of Marxism provides indispensable answers to their urgent questions. But the youth will not find even a hint to the answers in the American Socialist. The editors abandoned their project, bitterly skeptical, disillusioned, without anything to say to the future. If this were merely the default of a few individuals, the subject would hardly be worth pursuing. But there is much more involved. Important lessons can be learned from the evolution of the group that launched the American Socialist. This evolution is itself a part, of the story of the decline of the American radicalism in the fifties. To understand the main features of this group and what made them act as they did is therefore part of the preparation for the future we have been talking about. In essence Cochran and his followers broke from the Socialist Workers Party in 1954 over the concept and role of a Leninist party. The American Trotskyist movement was founded in 1928 as part of the international struggle begun by Lenin and Trotsky against the rise of Stalinism. The bureaucratic caste that arose in the Soviet Union displaced democratic workers rule. In other countries the Communist parties were reduced to servile appendages of the Kremlin. Consequently, they were unable to measure up to their tasks in one revolutionary situation after another. The Leninist tendency, led by Leon Trotsky, carried on the chore of expounding the theories of Marxism and Leninism against the systematic revisionism of the Stalinists and their unending falsification, slander, frame-ups, and murder. In every crucial situation in the world the cadre of Leninists, called “Trotskyists” by the Soviet bureaucrats, fought for revolutionary-socialist policies and painstakingly analyzed the causes of the defeats resulting from the Stalinization of the Communist parties. This work was carried on first by the Left Opposition, which sought to reform the Communist parties, and then the Fourth International, which was founded after the Third International and the Communist parties adhering to it had lost all elementary revolutionary reflexes. The historical significance of this was the maintenance of the continuity of Marxism throuahout the period of Stalinist reaction. The new generation that came to radicalism found intact the most advanced scientific theory of the class struggle. Without this, Stalinism would have succeeded not only in blighting the first workers state with a police regime and in wrecking many promising revolutionary opportunities, but in burying the socialist “memory” of the working class for decades to come. THE single most important precept of Marxism rescued from Stalinist revisionism is the need for an independent party of the working class. Lenin devoted his life to advancing and refining this principle, bequeathing a rich legacy to subsequent generations. Lenin’s key thought was that the party is the concrete manifestation of the program and the indispensable agency for giving it life. Marxism would be palatable to many dilettantes and dabblers in radicalism if it weren’t so insistent upon converting its program into an organized working-class political struggle against the parties of the rich and the middle class. The American Trotskyist movement from the outset fought for this Leninist view. In 1940 a petty-bourgeois opposition, reflecting the pressure of the oncoming war, sought to persuade the party to give up unconditional defense of the Soviet Union. The debate then also turned on the Leninist concept of the party. |
The debate then also turned on the Leninist concept of the party. The anti-Leninist faction headed by James Burnham and Max Shachtman felt itself “imprisoned” the moment it sought to reduce key principles to mere phrases – good for times of peace but not so good in war. Cochran and the other editors of the American Socialist were reared in the Leninist school and played a considerable role in building the Socialist Workers party and defending its basic principles. They were an integral part of the Trotskyist cadre shaped in hard struggles such as the one against the Shachtman-Burnham deserters. Their break, beginning in 1952, with the program, theory and tradition of the SWP understandably resulted in a severe internal struggle. The Cochran group did not, of course, commence with an open declaration against Marxism and against the Leninist concept of the party. As Rosa Luxemburg observed in 1899 in her instructive essay against the reformist revisionism of Eduard Bernstein: “To expect an opposition against scientific socialism, at its very beginning, to express itself clearly, fully and to the last consequence on the subject of its real content; to expect it to deny openly and bluntly the theoretic basis of Social Democracy [Marxism] – would amount to underrating the power of scientific socialism. Today he who wants to pass as a socialist, and at the same time would declare war on Marxian doctrine, the most stupendous product of the human mind in the century, must begin with involuntary esteem for Marx. He must begin by acknowledging himself to be his disciple, by seeking in Marx’s own teachings the points of support for an attack on the latter, while he represents this attack as a further development of Marxian doctrine. On this account, we must, unconcerned by its outer forms, pick out the sheathed kernel of Bernstein’s theory.” (Reform or Revolution?) The revisionists of the Cochran group ran true to form in this respect. For some time they held to ambiguous formulas with double meanings which could be read different ways by different people. In the Socialist Workers party a minority is guaranteed full opportunity to present its views but the Cochranites were slow to spell out their thinking. When they finally made their position more or less clear it went as follows: Trotskyism was all right in its time but the events of the postwar world have upset the old Trotskyist conceptions. The Stalinists were able to lead a revolution in China, they argued. In Eastern Europe the Kremlin initiated a bureaucratically rigged social revolution. With Stalin’s death, Malenkov and the other heirs of the dictator turned toward democratic reforms. Here in the US the Reuther wing of the labor officialdom is to the left of the workers in some respects. Now if revolutions, however distorted, can be led by Stalinists and without a Marxist program, and some labor bureaucrats are quite leftist, who are we to say that it can’t happen that way right here in America? Then what’s the point of insisting on the need for a Leninist combat party? Why make sacrifices for socialist ideals? Why go through the ordeal of election campaigns with limited forces? Why put time and energy in party-building projects? To understand this mood it is helpful to recall the social pressures at the time. The Korean War was still on. The McCarthyite witch hunt was mounting in fury. The trade-union bureaucracy had been transformed into a direct agency of the cold war and was collaborating with the FBI in hounding radicals out of the plants and unions. Less dramatic, perhaps, but profoundly important in its effects was the transformation taking place in what had formerly been the most militant and advanced section of the American working class. A DOZEN years of war and armaments boom substantially changed the economic position and political outlook of the militant industrial workers of the thirties. This was supplemented by the cold-war hysteria. The normal influx of youth into the radical movement was reduced to a trickle. These were rough years for a revolutionary party, rough on the nerves, rough on staying power and on the composition of the membership. The Cochran faction in the last analysis reflected this heavy pressure by falling into a mood of despondency and inclination to give up what seemed like a lost cause. It might appear that the developments of this period elsewhere in the world should have offset the pressures bearing down on American radicals. The Chinese revolution had gained a sweeping victory against imperialism and its native supporters; in Korea its forces had held back the world’s most powerful imperialist army; in Eastern Europe capitalism had been replaced by workers states even if via military-bureaucratic action and without the independent revolutionary struggle of the masses. In Western Europe powerful mass Communist and Socialist parties and trade unions still existed although capitalism had succeeded in regaining relative stability. Situations like the general strike in France in the summer of 1933 indicated the workers’ urge to struggle. Yet, through doctrinaire reasoning, the Cochran group responded to these encouraging international developments in a pessimistic and demoralized way. Instead of seeing in these world revolutionary advances, whatever their form, a source of fresh confidence and inspiration, a vertification of the theory of Marxism, they became disoriented. The revolutionary advances took place without first settling accounts with Stalinism. Therefore, they argued, Trotskyism (or “the old Trotskyism”) had to be “junked” and everything rethought from the beginning. As if Marxist analysis could be reduced to a simple logical sequence and its power judged on how perfectly this sequence fitted the actual history of the destruction of Stalinism! Instead of seeing the revolutionary advances as a premise for further progress of the international socialist movement and therefore as a prelude to the most profound crisis of Stalinism, they took the momentary appearance for the whole reality. |
Instead of seeing the revolutionary advances as a premise for further progress of the international socialist movement and therefore as a prelude to the most profound crisis of Stalinism, they took the momentary appearance for the whole reality. The Communist parties in China, Yugoslavia, etc., stood at the head of the movement, they reasoned. Therefore, this brought into question the need for Leninist-type revolutionary parties in bringing about a successful revolutionary change. The consequences of such reasoning – or, better, such emotional reaction – could not but be devastating to a disheartened group in the US. If Stalinism, or labor bureaucracies in general, can act as the prime agencies of social change, why bother to build a Leninist party in the US? Every effort involving party building became intolerably burdensome to them. A section of the Cochran group was composed of trade unionists who had experienced in their own way some wear and tear. Beginning as militants devoted to the socialist cause, these unionists had become isolated and softened with prosperity until they came to feel that nothing “real” or tangible was left in the Marxist program. They were ripe for systematic adaptation to the “reality” in the labor movement; that is, to the powerful bureaucratic machines that proscribe organized socialist activity. In this the Cochran group was hardly guilty of innovation. During the rise of the CIO almost every section of the radical movement was ridden with the opportunist disease of finding new virtues in the labor bureaucracy or the equally fatal sectarian disease of “rejecting” the CIO because it was headed by the bureaucracy. The American Trotskyist movement, however, retained its Marxist balance. It stressed the dual character of the development – the enormous progressive significance of the appearance of industrial unionism and the new ground for struggle it gave against the regrouped and reinforced labor bureaucracy. The Trotskyists saw the CIO as the auspicious beginning of the mass radicalization of the American workers, requiring more than ever a revolutionary left wing and continuous struggle against the capitalist-minded labor bureaucracy. The Cochran group was familiar with this. Some of them were organizers during the rise of the CIO. But they seemed to suffer from amnesia. They looked at world phenomenon comparable in its main lines to their own experience as if it were utterly without precedent. This reaction to the big world events, which was really a way of caving in to isolation and prosperity-reaction resulted in a pell mell flight from Marxism, a new and awed attitude towards entrenched bureaucracies and a general throwing overboard of principles, program and – above all – “tradition.” Unfortunately, this is still not the whole story. Marxists are capable of withstanding pressures greater than these. To suffer such precipitous collapse one more impulsion was required: authoritative backing from within the Trotskyist movement itself. This they received from a most unexpected source, a source that should have remained firmly against them, the group in the European Trotskyist movement in charge of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International. This was an important test of the world Trotskyist movement since the assassination of its founder. The challenge of the Cochran group to the basic ideas of Trotskyism raised a question of international importance: does the Trotskyist movement represent the continuity of Leninism? Were the cadres assembled by Trotsky capable of carrying on the work after his death? History has answered these questions in the affirmative, we believe, but the answers were not given without struggles. In response to the new world developments since World War II, the group of Trotskyists entrusted with the grave responsibility of co-ordinating the international efforts of the Trotskyist movement, began to see “new features” in Stalinism, not in the sense of its decay but in its possibly playing a progressive role under certain circumstances. Ordinarily such new opinions in the Fourth International and organizations like the Socialist Workers party which sympathize with it are submitted to rigorous and fully democratic discussion. In the process differences are generally resolved without too much difficulty. However, the incipient conciliationism towards Stalinism displayed by this European Trotskyist group, which was headed by Michel Pablo, greatly encouraged such groups as the Cochranites. On top of this Pablo used his formal authority as secretary to encourage and inspire the Cochran group to more vigorous action along the course it had taken. UNDOUBTEDLY Pablo regarded Cochran with some hopes in 1954 as a possible American protagonist. Cochran, however, wasn’t interested in any subtle revisions of the Trotskyist program, once he had launched his faction on a course of split. He wasn’t interested in conciliation with Stalinism. As subsequent events showed, Cochran was moving away from Marxism without any intention of taking it stage by stage in the manner described by Rosa Luxemburg. But while he was forming his faction he was not averse to using the authority of Pablo for the moment to pick up support from Trotskyist workers in the US intensely devoted to the concept of internationalism. In fact, he couldn’t have taken many of them with him in his break from the Socialist Workers party without this assistance from Pablo. Under fire from the SWP majority, Cochran needed the cover and direct assistance supplied by Pablo. This is the bitter truth about what happened. It is a tragic irony that immediately after the split, the Cochran group was designated by the Pablo leadership as the “official Trotskyists” in the United States. This probably gave the Cochran group some amusement. They shortly explained to their European allies that they hadn’t the slightest intention of playing such a game and in fact weren’t much interested in further correspondence. While we are on the point, we might add that Pablo’s role in encouraging this kind of a split-off from the Marxist movement in the US was reproduced in both France and England. The startling shift of the Lawrence group in England and the Mestre group in France from Trotskyism to Stalinism demonstrated that when a revisionist tendency is in flight from revolutionary socialism, it is unwise to take surface adherence to the phrases of Marxism for good coin. |
The startling shift of the Lawrence group in England and the Mestre group in France from Trotskyism to Stalinism demonstrated that when a revisionist tendency is in flight from revolutionary socialism, it is unwise to take surface adherence to the phrases of Marxism for good coin. And it is fatal to provide such groups with the cover of subtle arguments to facilitate their transition to the camp of anti-Marxism, as Pablo did. Pablo and his group did not follow Cochran. Undoubtedly they were even surprised by its “sudden” evolution to anti-Trotskyism. This did not say much for the capacity of these leaders to forsee and to prepare – and not to persist in repeating the same mistake because of prestige considerations. Six months following the split of the Cochran group from the SWP, Harry Braverman, one of its leaders, summed up its “achievements” in a speech published in the June 1954 Educator, a mimeographed publication. Braverman said: “We carried through the split and re-formed our ranks in excellent order. We remained just about 100% solid.” The major accomplishment, according to Braverman, in addition to the launching of the American Socialist was “the decision not to conduct a polemic with the SWP.” This curious accomplishment meant a refusal to explain to militant workers, or anyone else, why they left the SWP, what the issues in dispute were, and on what program they now stood. The reason Braverman gave for such a suicidal political course was that “.. the Trotskyist movement had wasted away so badly that there was absolutely no periphery – I repeat and underline – absolutely no circle of sympathetic opinion before whom we had to wrestle with them. Second, the point of view against which we would be polemicizing is not a natural growth representing a trend of opinion in the US, but a hothouse product of sectarianism, and as such entirely without interest for any part of American labor or radical circles, and by that I mean any part ...” The empirical facts provided some justification for Braverman’s explanation of why the American Socialist group decided to make an anonymous entry on the stage of radical publications. His description of the SWP periphery at that time is not greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, the decision was a fatal mistake and expressed in its way the basic defect of the group which foredoomed it to impotence. Any political group which conceals its programmatic origins (for whatever reason, be it “shrewd” tactical duplicity, or the claim that no one is interested) has broken with the most elementary requirements of Marxism. Once the discipline of programmatic accounting is tossed aside, a group becomes highly vulnerable to impressionism, moods-of-the-moment, personal caprice and arbitrary regimes. Laboratory proof of this is offered by the experience of the American Socialist group. Having launched themselves as a group solidly agreed on acting like political amnesiacs unable to remember where they came from, the “100% solid” very soon discovered they had disagreements. Did they then engage in a serious internal discussion allowing each point of view full rights of expression, as they were accustomed to in the SWP? Of course not! That would have been reverting to the habits of sectarianism. Instead Cochran simply struck the names of the dissident editors, including George Clarke and Mike Zaslow, off the masthead, and threw a large majority of the New York membership out of the organization. That’s living, nonsectarian politics! This split, too, was not reported or explained to anyone. The Socialist Workers Party, meanwhile, repaired the breach left by the desertion. Younger members moved forward into positions of responsibility and leadership. A few retrenchments had to be made but all the party institutions were saved. Despite the witch hunt, new recruits joined. By 1956 the party was able to swing into the presidential election campaign in effective fashion. In that same year came a test that was to prove decisive in the further development of both the American Socialist group and the Socialist Workers Party, if not every tendency in the American radical movement. This was the regroupment opportunity. The faction led by Cochran made much of its eagerness to influence the radical movement and its know-how in accomplishing this aim in contrast to the “old” Trotskyists who were much too rigid, inflexible and altogether too dead to play any role in this. However, when the great shakeup of the American radical movement came, following Khrushchev’s famous revelations and smashing of the Stalin cult, it was the SWP that moved into the crisis, mapped out a flexible policy, began joint discussions and common actions and – this is now admitted by the SWP’s worst enemies – emerged from the regroupment process as the only gainer in relation to either the radical movement or new forces. The capacity of a Marxist movement to inspire a new generation of radical youth is a decisive measure of its freshness, vigor and determination. Beginning with 1956 it was the SWP alone of all the radical groups that attracted a dynamic youth movement genuinely interested in revolutionary socialist politics and participation in the struggles of young people both North and South, Negro and white. THE American Socialist group, in contrast, displayed the obverse side of organic opportunism during the regroupment period; namely, sectarian aloofness, snobbishness, a you-come-to-us-or-else attitude, and, finally, an Olympian pronouncement on the eve of the big shakeup that everyone’s bankruptcy barred anything coming of the whole turmoil. The Cochran group proved utterly incapable of building a youth following – and it must be admitted that if good journalism is sufficient they had every chance to succeed at it. The American Socialist was well written and well illustrated. It published informative articles that took a general socialist point of view. But it had no theoretically grounded program and therefore no plan to organize a serious movement. Thus it could not really inspire new converts to socialism to work for the goals that inspired past generations of socialists. In the same conference, six months following their split, the Cochran group adopted a resolution, Our Orientation. (This was never publicly distributed.) “Our purpose,” the resolution reads, “is to bring our ideas into the mass movement, and to gradually raise the consciousness of the ranks to the historic tasks. |
But the last thing in the world we should attempt is to inculcate the ranks with the necessity of adopting our specific traditions, and impressing upon them the truth of all the evaluations and proposals broached by Trotsky from 1923 on.” All this sounds very broadminded and realistic. In the atmosphere of the prosperity-crazed, McCarthyized, hysteria-ridden US it gave the impression of having one’s feet planted solidly a good distance from immature sectarian nonsense. On closer examination you get a different impression. After all, what are these “evaluations and proposals broached by Trotsky from 1923 on"? They happen to be nothing less than the systematic exposition of the Marxist class-struggle policy for every situation of major importance in the international workers’ movement for more than a quarter of a century. They happen to be also the Marxist evaluation of the causes for some major catastrophes such as the working class falling victim to fascism, to pauperizing depressions, and a second world war. All this is dismissed as simply outward trappings, inner-group jargon, family circle memories and old grudges lingering from ancient factional squabbles! But in the regroupment test this absence of theory proved fatal. On the other hand the doctrines, methods and theory to which the SWP adhered gave another indication of how practical they really are. In their despairing Statement to Readers, the editors of American Socialist dolefully express the feeling that what is happening in the radical movement across the Atlantic in Britain is much superior to what is happening in the US. “What has been done in Britain in the past two years,” they say, “was not and could not be duplicated here.” We don’t know specifically what the editors regard as hopeful in Britain. But they are right in concluding that real progress is being made there. This, however, is a result of following the very course they turned their backs on. In Britain during the past two years a major group of highly qualified intellectuals and workers in the mass movement broke away from the Communist party. The break was programmatic, entailing thorough review and study of the very “Stalin-Trotsky dispute” which Cochran and his collaborators put in the same category as the Dempsey-Tunney fight. Among those in Britain who have broken definitively with Stalinism there has been impressive ideological ferment. A significant group, having studied the programmatic issues to the end, turned toward fusion with the British Trotskyists. This resulted in formation of the Socialist Labor League, a group within the Labor party and the unions dedicated to advancing the Marxist view. As an organizing center of both class-struggle action by militant unionists and theoretical struggle for Marxism, the SLL has been selected as a target for witch-hunting. The British capitalist press and the right-wing trade-union bureaucrats are displaying the keenest alarm over the fact that the SLL has become an inspiring and attractive force for radical youth, for trade-union militants, for the entire left wing in the Labor party. The SLL is in the forefront of every struggle to unite workers, students and intellectuals in the fight against British imperialism, for withdrawing British troops from every part of the world, for ending the H-bomb tests, strengthening the socialist program of the Labor party and defeating the right wing’s attempt to scuttle the party’s stand in favor of public ownership. The SLL is taking the lead in the fight for full democracy in the unions, the Labor party and in every aspect of British life. The SLL has shown its fighting mettle in beating back racist attempts to whip up a lynch movement against Negro workers in London. Where did this magnificent movement come from? It is obviously without a trace of sectarianism or disdainful aloofness from the actual movement and life of the working class. It is popular, energetic and colorful in its public appeal. The real secret of the strength of the SLL is in its concern for the theoretical basis of socialism, its “pre-occupation,” if you please, with the “old disputes” and its rejection of every attempt at light-minded improvisation in the field of principle. This is true of the SLL and its leadership as a whole, both those who came recently from the Communist party as well as the older Trotskyist cadre. The British Trotskyists prepared for the opening of the kind of opportunities prevalent in their country today and that will surely confront us in the US tomorrow, by struggling against their own Cochran faction, the Lawrence group, back in 1953. They faced the same problem as the American Trotskyists in coping with destructive factional intervention on the part of Pablo. They, too, had to overcome the effects of a split that was unnecessarily deep due to Pablo’s influence. Their success in overcoming the internal dispute in a principled way, in strict accordance with Leninist tradition, is what prepared them to play their magnificent role today. [1] Historically England “mirrors” the future of the United States. Marxists have long felt that the American trade unions will eventually follow the British example and organize a Labor party. The differences between the US and Britain assure that such a development will most likely occur at a far swifter tempo and depth in this country than it did across the Atlantic. We hope that when this time arrives – and it can be relatively soon – the Socialist Workers party will prove itself capable of living up to the Marxist traditions as well as the British Trotskyists have. To put such ventures as the American Socialist under the microscope, as we have tried to do in this post-mortem, is part of the necessary preparation. Footnote 1. Pablo has not displayed precociousness in learning. He has persisted in sniping at the British Trotskyists despite all their successes, as if he were still fighting the battle of 1953-54 and had hopes of turning up another Cochran. In the witch-hunting attack on the Socialist Labor League, Pablo has failed, up to this time at least, to take a public stand in defense of the victims. This was not due to lack of time, for he has busied himself with getting in touch with the few intellectuals who buckled under the pressure. |
He has even gone so far as to defend members of the Labor party who took an equivocal stand on the witch-hunt attack against the Socialist Labor League. It is difficult to see what advantage he sees in this for his faction in the Fourth International. It would seem more practical, and certainly a lot more principled, for a leading member of the Fourth International, whatever faction he belongs to, to make clear which side of the picket line he stands on, above all where Trotskyism is the principal target. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 28.1.2006 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss Two Concepts of Socialist Unity What Basis for Regroupment? (Winter 1957) From International Socialist Review, Vol. 28 No. 1, Winter 1957, pp. 3–11. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The question of the regroupment of revolutionary socialist forces has been posed before the radical “workers in the US for close to one year – that is, since the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union disclosed a severe crisis in Soviet society and precipitated crises in the Communist parties throughout the world. The discussion on regroupment obviously signifies a profoundly altered relation of forces among the three basic tendencies in the international working class movement – Stalinism, Social Democracy and revolutionary Marxism. It is a discussion that can lead to far-reaching progressive changes in the political life of the advanced section of the working class. It is therefore timely to consider the following questions: Precisely what do the various tendencies in the working class mean by regroupment? In what direction are these tendencies and their various sub-groups moving in their actual political evolution? Our Approach to Regroupment A brief comment is in order on the approach of the American Trotskyists to the problem of revolutionary socialist regroupment so that the reader may bear in mind the standpoint from which we evaluate the positions of other tendencies. We believe that the discussion on regroupment arises primarily from the mass action of the working class in the Soviet orbit. The revolutionary motion of the Soviet and East European working class has already resulted in the toppling of the Stalin cult – the main ideological pillar in the system of bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union. With the revelations emanating from the Twentieth Congress and the revolutionary ferment in Eastern Europe – Poznan in June 1956, the October days in Poland, the October-November insurrection in Hungary – the bureaucratic equilibrium of the Communist parties throughout the world was irreparably disrupted. A chronic crisis developed in all these parties. In turn, this altered drastically the situation in the working class movement as a whole. The crisis of Stalinism raised all basic questions of socialist program and practice for millions of Communist workers. In all radical organizations it reopened the question of the character of Stalinism, the prospects for a socialist solution to the crisis in the Soviet orbit and all the problems of building revolutionary socialist parties in capitalist countries. “Closed” programmatic questions which had become fixed into traditional positions of the various tendencies were unlocked and became subject to re-evaluation. In our opinion the revolutionary upsurge of the Soviet orbit working class is in its first stages. The struggle is bound to spread and become more intense. The working class and youth in the Soviet Union itself are heading for open mass struggle. The goal of this struggle is the overthrow of the Soviet bureaucracy and the restoration of workers democracy on the foundations of the socialized property forms established by the October 1917 revolution. This means that the forces which gave rise to the crisis of Stalinism and posed the problem of regroupment can be expected to continue to operate with even greater power. At the same time world capitalism is suffering all the agonies of a dying social system. Round after round of colonial uprisings is undermining imperialism and preparing the conditions for a revolutionary upsurge in the most powerful centers of world capitalism. The crisis of capitalism, no less than the crisis of Stalinism, sharply poses the need for building revolutionary socialist parties. The Significance of Program We think the circumstances call for a thorough discussion of program as the prelude to organizational steps leading towards actual regroupment. The question of program, in our opinion, is decisive. Mere unity, without a correct program, can be just as catastrophic for the fate of socialism as working class disunity. History offers many examples of powerful and unified labor organizations and political parties which, because of false programs, suffered devastating defeats. A Marxist program is decisive because it embodies the distilled experience of the international working class in centuries of struggle against capitalism; it organizes and systematizes our understanding of the lessons of these struggles; it assimilates the lessons of the first victorious working class revolution against capitalism in Russia and the decades of struggle to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack as well as struggle against Stalinist degeneration of the first workers state. The Marxist program incorporates the invaluable and bitterly learned lessons of the victory of fascism over the German, Italian and Spanish workers; |
The Marxist program incorporates the invaluable and bitterly learned lessons of the victory of fascism over the German, Italian and Spanish workers; it enables us to grasp the significance of the vast upheavals in the colonial world and their place in struggle against world capitalism. For the American workers a Marxist program is decisive because the problem of problems in this country is to free the American labor movement from the blight of class collaborationism in the economic and political fields. A struggle for a Marxist program in the US is not, as some depict it, the preoccupation of sectarian dogmatists and hair-splitters; it is a life and death matter for the class-conscious vanguard to wage this struggle and to pit the Marxist program of class-struggle socialism against the pro-capitalist ideology of the class-collaborationist labor bureaucracy. Radical workers fighting for a socialist society are divided by program. The basic dividing line is class struggle versus class collaboration, i.e., revolutionary Marxism versus reformism. The two major proponents of class collaboration are Stalinism and Social Democracy. For all the difference between these two tendencies, the theory and practice of class collaboration is the one thing they have in common. In the case of the Social Democracy, class collaboration operates through a labor bureaucracy wedded in its material privileges and political ideology to the capitalist system. In the case of Stalinism, subordination to an oppressive bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union has led the Communist parties to advocate their own brand of class collaboration – with the “progressive” and “liberal” capitalists, of course. The task of regroupment, in our view, does not consist in ignoring or watering clown the programmatic differences between revolutionary Marxism on the one hand and Stalinism and Social Democracy on the other. On the contrary, the task is to regroup the radical workers around the program of revolutionary Marxism and thereby create the class-conscious vanguard that will enter the mainstream of the working class to bring militant socialist consciousness to its struggle. The Next Step How is this task to be carried out? What are the next steps that should be taken in view of the deep ferment in the radical movement? In its statement on Regroupment of Revolutionary Socialist Forces in the United States, published in the Militant, Jan. 11, the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party poses the problem as follows : “In the next stage of the discussion [on regroupment] two different ways of proceeding are counterposed: (1) Shall we first attempt a general unification, leaving the discussion and clarification of programmatic questions for a later time? Or (2) shall we first explore the different views, clarify the various positions, and try to reach agreement and unification on at least the minimum fundamentals? It seems to us that the latter procedure is preferable and that the serious elements taking part in the discussion will agree that programmatic issues have to be considered and clarified before durable organizational conclusions can be reached.” To be sure, there undoubtedly will be situations where political organization appears to take precedence over clarification of programmatic questions. If, for example, a mass political breakaway from capitalist politics were taking place in the US and the formation of a Labor Party were on the order of the day, revolutionary socialists would participate in the organization of such a party despite the inadequacy or falsity of its program. The struggle for a revolutionary socialist regroupment would then take place within the arena of such a mass political party of the American workers. But in this case the very formation of a Labor Party would signify the enormous advance of the programmatic principle of independent working class politics. In the present situation, however, the immediate prospect for such a Labor Party does not yet exist. And certainly the necessary conditions for such a development will not, in our opinion, be brought into existence by merely uniting the various radical formations on an undefined and confused program, or worse yet, on the program of the very tendencies – Social Democracy and Stalinism – whose bankruptcy has provoked the regroupment discussion. Moreover, we will find that the proposals for “unity first, discussion of program later,” have a definite programmatic content. The unity-first advocates often try to make it appear that it is merely a question of putting aside the “old divisive issues.” But on closer examination it turns out that programmatic conditions, and even ultimatums, are closely tied in with their proposals for unity. We think it is wiser to discuss questions of program under conditions free of such organizational pressures and maneuvers, with all opinions openly expressed. Now let us turn to the evolution of the different positions on regroupment and the political tendencies they express. The Communist Party After the first impact of the Twentieth Congress and even before the Khrushchev revelations became public, Eugene Dennis, in his report to the April 28-May 1 meeting of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the US, said: “Not the least important of the new and serious problems we should concern ourselves with as we probe and re-assess the present status of our Party – is the question that keeps coming to the forefront in respect to the possibility of organizing a new and broader mass party of socialism ... This of course does not call for any move to form a new party of socialism prematurely ... Considerable headway can surely be made in this direction in the next year or two. But this will be a process. It will necessitate sharp political and ideological struggles, as well as collective participation with the bulk of the socialist-minded elements in united front activity in concert with other progressive forces.” The fact that this was no mere routine comment was established shortly by the opening of a series of symposiums and debates on socialist program in different parts of the country in which the representatives of the Communist Party appeared on the same platform with representatives of other tendencies in the radical movement. To be sure the CP leaders inclined, at first, to engage in such discussions primarily with the Social Democrats and pacifists, but it is notable that they did in time agree to include representatives of the revolutionary socialist position in these discussions. In any case the Twentieth Congress impelled the CP not only to open an internal discussion on the question of the Stalin cult, it was also compelled to redefine its attitude and relations to the other political tendencies in the working class. |
This was a most welcome and heartening development. The Khrushchev revelations prompted the Daily Worker editors to emphasize strongly the re-groupment issue. In an editorial, June 6, on The Khrushchev Speech they said: “The present situation in our opinion, underlines the urgency of the outlook put forward by Eugene Dennis at the National Committee meeting of the Communist Party of a new ‘mass party of socialism in our country’ and the need to ‘create conditions for such a necessary and historic development.’ We believe that the situation calls for an all-out effort and co-operation of all socialist-minded forces, in order to bring about such a new party without unnecessary delay, and as quickly as circumstances will permit.” The Gates Group It should be noted that this emphatic formulation of the question came from the group of Daily Worker editors headed by John Gates, who, by this time, had emerged as a faction in the CP characterized by a more outspoken criticism of the Kremlin. While the Gates faction, along with the rest of the CP leadership, has failed up to now to probe the fundamental questions regarding the roots of Stalinism, it certainly has reflected the feeling of revulsion against the Kremlin oligarchy in the ranks of the party. Side by side with this tendency at least to loosen, if not break, the ties with the Kremlin, the Gates group has displayed a disposition to accentuate all the reformist and class-collaborationist dogmas implicit in Stalinism. In this respect it appears to propose that the crisis in the CP be overcome by a reconciliation with the American labor bureaucracy and Social Democracy. Nevertheless, the Gates group should be viewed as an important expression of the break-up of Stalinist monolithism in the American CP. Undoubtedly there are many in the ranks of the party who look to it for leadership in breaking with Stalinism in a revolutionary socialist direction. The most hopeful aspect of the Gates group in this respect is that it has been the most insistent on maintaining the discussion within the CP as well as participating in the interchange of views in the radical movement as a whole. The Gates group’s position on the regroupment issue found its way into the draft resolution of the Communist Party NC, not without some modification of course. The Draft Resolution, issued Sept. 13, states: “For some months our Party has had under consideration the question presented in Eugene Dennis’ report to the National Committee meeting last April, of our attitude towards the perspective of a united party of socialism in this country. The new developments point to a certain revitalization and growth of socialist-oriented and pro-Marxist currents and groupings. In the past we tended to assume that all that was worth while in other socialist currents and groupings would inevitably flow into our own organization. This assumption was always incorrect and should be replaced by a serious and painstaking effort to assist in the eventual development of the broadest possible unity of all socialist-minded elements. Such a development can by no means be expected as a quick and easy solution to the common problems of all socialist groupings, or to the specific problems of our own Party.” Differences on Regroupment This agreed-upon formulation in the Draft Resolution merely covered up the actual disagreements between the two factions in the leadership, headed respectively by Gates and William Z. Foster. In the October 1956 issue of Political Affairs Foster directs the following attack at the Gates position: “The Right [Gates group] also seized upon Comrade Dennis’ proposal at the April meeting of the National Committee to the effect that the Party should look forward to the eventual formation of a ‘new mass party of Socialism’ through a merger of the Communist Party and other Left groups in this country ... The Rights, by giving the whole project an air of immediate possibility, also used this slogan in a liquidationist manner. For there would be no point in rebuilding the Communist Party if it were soon to be replaced by a new and glittering mass party.” Gates retorted to this in the November 1956 issue of Political Affairs: “I do not agree with those who say the slogan of a new united party of Socialism should be de-emphasized and put on the shelf. In actuality this would mean to discard it and not to work seriously for it. Of course it will not come about overnight, but we must be foremost in working for socialist unity.” Apparently in the heat of the factional struggle within the CP, Foster found that his frontal attack on this point met with considerable disfavor in the ranks. Whereupon he beat a retreat. In the CP Discussion Bulletin No. 5, issued Jan. 15, Foster makes this revealing remark: “Another basic lesson newly learned by practically our entire Party is that henceforth we must take a more cooperative attitude towards other Left groupings. This has been a serious weakness in the past. Our Party will – has in fact – abandoned its erstwhile conception, actual or implied, that it has a ‘monopoly’ upon the propagation of socialism in this country. It must also orient upon the expectation of eventually merging with some of these groups into a United Party of Socialism. Early tendencies to look upon such a development as an immediate possibility have been at least partly liquidated. Only a political novice could ignore the political unifying effect in the Party of this new attitude towards the broad Left, which is being almost unanimously accepted.” (Our emphasis) For a time, as the Foster faction pressed an offensive against the Gates group, there was a toning down in the Daily Worker of any mention of a “new mass party of Socialism.” More recently, on the eve of the Communist Party convention, Gates again expressed himself on this question in a manner which would indicate that he feels considerable confidence in a popular reception for his position on regroupment in the party ranks. In the Feb. 11 Worker he says: “There are many differences among forces on the Left, serious and important. In the first place, we need to discuss these differences with each other, argue things out; we must also strive to work together and act together on those things about which we Can agree, and in these discussions together, working together, acting together, we will be able to achieve – finally – organizational unity on a socialist program ... |
But if we cannot learn to respect the differences within our ranks in the Communist party, we will never learn to respect the opinions of others, outside our ranks.” The Foster Group Why is the idea of regroupment so popular in the ranks of the Communist Party? We should not discount the appeal it has for such elements that would like to return to the days when the CP had close relations with the labor bureaucracy and the capitalist liberals. Such elements probably think of re-groupment in that sense. But at a deeper level, the workers in the party who are striving towards a revolutionary socialist solution to the crisis, see in the idea of orienting towards a new, unified socialist party two basic things: They see a means for assuring a genuine break with Stalinism and the bureaucratic domination of the Kremlin over the Communist parties; and they see a means for continuing the discussion within the CP and among all radical organizations. Foster’s barbs at the Gates group on the question of regroupment are not directed against the Social Democratic and “liquidationist” tendencies implicit in the Gates position. On all fundamental questions which touch on attitude towards reformist, class collaboration and the labor-bureaucracy, Foster is at one with Gates. The leaders of both factions favor support of the Democratic Party and “multi-class coalition” politics. Neither Gates nor Foster have broken with Stalinist people’s frontism in favor of the position of class struggle socialism. Foster’s antagonism to the re-groupment idea stems from his determination to restore Stalinist monolithism in the Communist Party. This determination has been strengthened by the recent “back to Stalinism” declarations of Khrushchev and Co. Foster wants to end the crisis within the CP by reimposing the rule of the gag on all criticism and discussion. His appeal to the workers in the party against Gates’ liquidationism is purely demagogic. Yet many workers in the party, according to all evidence, recoil from the Gates group and tend toward the Fosterites, precisely because of the fear that Gates and his associates want to break with Stalinism only to lead them into the swamp of State Department “socialism.” On the other hand, these same workers display a keen hostility towards Foster’s thinly disguised plans to turn back the clock and re-establish the power of the old bureaucratic machine in the party. We see, therefore, that the devoted revolutionary militants within the CP have been unable thus far to find a focal point in the national leadership for their strivings to get back to the revolutionary path. The rank and file CPers have a generally low opinion of all the leaders and see inadequacy and grave faults in both groups. This has resulted in the appearance, on a local basis, of a number of groups in the secondary leadership and the rank and file that are seeking to work out the basic programmatic problems, acquire an understanding of how Stalinism arose, and determine how revolutionary workers can reorient in this crisis. This process requires time and patience. The break-up of Stalinism and the socialist regroupment of worker-revolutionists who adhered to it is a painful and tortuous process. It will vary in form and tempo from country to country. In the US, where the pressure of prosperity-reaction continues to be dominant, the process confronts additional and exceptional difficulties. Above all the process requires the continuation of the discussion and its advancement to a higher level. That is the main point that the rank and file of the Communist Party appear to be grasping and that is why they favor the idea of regroupment, however it may have been formulated. The greatest help that can be given to the continuation and maturing of the discussion within the Communist Party is to advance the broader discussion within the radical movement as a whole. The broad discussion can help prevent the hard-shelled Stalinists from abruptly reimposing their bureaucratic regime on the CP. It can also help considerably to provide nourishment to elements within both the Foster and Gates groups who are seeking a way to revolutionary Marxist conclusions. In addition the broad, organized and inclusive discussion provides an arena for the thousands of revolutionary elements who have left the Communist Party during the recent years and for additional thousands who were in the periphery of the American Stalinist movement. We must therefore regard Foster’s policy as the greatest threat to the progressive outcome of a discussion on revolutionary socialist regroupment. Foster’s policy, however, is not the only obstacle to the discussion that has appeared. A threat has also appeared from the direction of the American Social Democracy. Thomas Walks Out After the first impact of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the iSoviet Union had registered on the consciousness of the radical workers in the US, an important meeting took place May 27 in New York City at Carnegie Hall at which both Norman Thomas and Eugene Dennis were present on the platform. This meeting, while excluding revolutionary socialist representation from the speakers’ list, was the beginning of the process of interradical organization discussion. At the May 15, 1956 meeting of the National Action Committee of the Socialist Party the following discussion was noted in the minutes: “It was reported that the Fellowship of Reconciliation was sponsoring a meeting at Carnegie Hall at which speakers would include Norman Thomas, Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party, A.J. Muste and William DuBois. There was discussion as to the advisability of cooperating in programs which give an audience to Communist Party spokesmen.” By the beginning of September, 1956 the “discussion as to advisability” had already led to outright opposition to such activities. At the Sept. |
At the Sept. 1-2 meeting of the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party it was reported that the Los Angeles Local was scheduling a debate with the Communist Party. The NEC passed the following motion: “That it is the feeling of the NEC that the cause of American socialism is not advanced by the actions of the Socialist Party groups which engage in joint activity with the Communist Party or any of its affiliates.” On Nov. 15, when a bitter dispute on the Hungarian revolution was raging in the Communist Party, the NEC took note of a projected symposium in Detroit that was to include Norman Thomas and a representative of the CP. A motion was passed. “To delegate Comrade Myers to convey to Norman Thomas the NEC feeling that it is unwise for Socialist Party speakers to appear on panels with spokesmen for the Communist Party and various Trotskyite groups.” Thomas then publicly withdrew from the speakers’ list. Moreover, he wrote an article for the December Socialist Call in which he laid down the conditions for unity with anyone who was “tainted” by previous association with both “Stalinists and Trotskyists.” In this article Thomas said that while he was “inclined to accept the belated sincerity of American Communists who, since Khrushchev gave them permission for criticism, have gone beyond him in their reaction to Soviet intervention in Hungary” he would “want a period of probation to put the sincerity of Communist reformation to the test.” He spelled out exactly what he meant by “reformation.” “We must insist,” he declared, “that reformed Communists, Stalinists and Trotskyists, must repudiate doctrines and practices set up not by Stalin but by Lenin.” Thus the discussion on regroupment was confronted with two actions by the Socialist Party leadership: A ban on discussion with representatives of the Communist Party, any affiliates of the Communist Party, any representative of the Socialist Workers Party (the American Trotskyists), or with any groups that had previously been in the CP or SWP. An ultimatum to these organizations demanding that they renounce Lenin and Leninism as a pre-condition for any discussion of unity. SP-SDF Merger This policy of Thomas and the Socialist Party developed against the background of the approaching merger between the SP and the Social Democratic Federation which was consummated in New York, Jan. 18–19, on the program and conditions of the right wing Social Democrats. The political character of this merger and its relation to the struggle for a revolutionary socialist regroupment, is clearly revealed in the documents of the SP left wing, organized in the Committee for a Socialist Program. The left wing mustered one third of the Socialist Party votes against the merger. (The vote was 200 in favor to 100 against.) In a mimeographed letter, Nov. 3, David McReynolds, leader of the SP left wing, traced the struggle he had waged to promote unity with the SDF on “a more socialist statement than the 1955 ‘memorandum’ on merger.” McReynolds said he “made every effort in this direction,” but in the end “was finally convinced that merger with the SDF” on the basis of the 1955 memorandum “would not be socialist unity, and would be a block to socialist unity.” (Emphasis in original) McReynolds therewith resigned from the unity negotiations committee in order to carry on his programmatic fight against the merger. In his Nov. 3 letter McReynolds said: “To accept the shamefully inadequate ‘memoranda’ would be politically wrong. I am not a political purist. We must compromise at times. But there are some things you do not compromise. You do not – ever – compromise socialist support of democracy. But merger with the SDF, which has given silent (and at times active) support to the totalitarian liberals, means just such compromise. You do not – ever – compromise socialist opposition to militarism and imperialism. But merger with the SDF means full support for the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” (Our emphasis) Another aspect of the Memorandum of Understanding was later spelled out by Louis P. Goldberg, Chairman of the SDF, at the merger convention. “We are organizing a new political party,” Goldberg explained, “which is pledged by our unity agreement not to rush rashly into the electoral field.” He concretized this delicate understatement by the following reassuring comment: “The expression of fear in some corners that a new socialist party would interfere with labor’s political action is unfounded. Carrying out our document on political action, we will not nominate for public office candidates in opposition to those endorsed by the legitimate labor movement.” The National Executive Committee of the merged SP-SDF indicated its attitude towards participation in the discussion on re-groupment in a motion passed at its Jan. 20 meeting: “That no member, branch or local shall enter into any joint activity or project with any other political organization without the express permission or direction of the NEC or NAC, except as specifically provided in Section 6 of the Memorandum of Understanding in the report on political perspectives.” Section 6 of the “Memorandum” urges “members of the United Party” who are in “liberal-labor organizations” that generally support the Democratic Party, “to stress the importance of independent political action.” However, section 7 says, “it shall be the privilege of individual state and local organizations to allow their individual members to support candidates for public office who have been endorsed by liberal and labor groups.” Thus, while denying freedom of SP-SDF branches to participate in either discussions or united actions with other working class organizations, the NEC provides full leeway for labor bureaucrats and others to act without restriction in support of capitalist parties and politicians. In sum, the SP-SDF merger has the following political basis: acceptance of the foreign policy of the State Department socialists; support of the labor bureaucracy’s Democratic Party politics; support of the Second International program and organization including all “socialists in power” and, therefore, support of the imperialist policy pursued by these “socialists”; |
a ban on all discussion with any organization in the radical movement that does not get “cleared” by renouncing Leninism. We cannot, therefore, consider this unification as helpful to a revolutionary socialist regroupment. On the contrary, it is a calculated blow at such a regroupment. It replaces the necessary process of programmatic discussion with ultimatums to capitulate to State Department socialism. It obstructs the efforts of radical workers to free themselves from the hopeless morass of capitalist politics. It can offer no acceptable way out to the workers caught in the crisis of Stalinism. The Collapse of SP Left Wing All the more regrettable is the fact that David McReynolds and a number of other leaders of the SP left wing defaulted on their pledge to carry out, to the very end, a principled fight against this obstruction to revolutionary socialist unity. In his Nov. 3 letter McReynolds said: “I propose to fight the issue every step of the way. The moderation we exercised at the Party convention in June, when we were working out, with our fellow socialists, ways of building the Party – that moderation will certainly not be evident in January when we will be meeting with non-socialist and undemocratic elements.” He closed this letter with the emphatic promise: “We shall never accept the ‘memoranda’ as the basis for unity.” (Emphasis in original) Unfortunately, this promise was not kept. Instead, after the SP left wing had lost the referendum, in a letter dated Jan. 9, 1957, “urging every comrade remain in the Party and support unity,” McReynolds said, “It is politically meaningless for us to leave the Party. Where would we go?” He expressed the curious notion that “without question it [the merger] will be a blow to the left wing of the Party. But I believe it will strengthen the Party as a whole.” Accordingly he slipped into referring to “the value of unity.” In this letter McReynolds proposes to abandon altogether the basic fight against the merger: “Since it still seems quite possible to block unity at the convention itself I want to go into some detail as to why we not only should be united in remaining in the Party but should now support unity with the SDF and make no attempt to block it.” (Our emphasis) The first reason he gave to abandon the fight is the following: “If we ‘sabotage’ now then all the enthusiasm generated among right-wing socialist elements will be dashed to the ground. In the long run this will do us no good. On the other hand, the left wing socialist community wouldn’t see that any great principled stand had been taken, but would only assume we were being sectarian.” McReynolds apparently forgot that in his Nov. 3 letter he had said, “Comrades, do not feel you are being sectarian if you reject these merger proposals. You are simply being a good socialist.” (Emphasis in original) Another reason McReynolds gave in his Jan. 9 letter for switching from opposition to support of SSP-SDF unity was even more revealing than the first: “It is true that if we were in control of the Party we would doubtless formulate a better and more principled basis for uniting the socialist movement. However we are not in control of the Party. We are a minority. We are strong enough as a minority to block unity or to split the Party – but a minority that is that strong betrays the socialist movement if it gives way to emotional manifestoes. We are quite strong enough – PROVIDED WE ALL REMAIN IN THE PARTY – to bring victory out of defeat and to see to it that the present unity convention is one step toward a really effective, power-fully organized democratic socialist movement.” An About Face In this one brief paragraph McReynolds reverses everything he had been saying during the entire previous struggle – without attempting the slightest explanation for the switch. He refers to a “more principled” basis for unity, as if it were a question of mere degree rather than the unbridgeable gulf between the principled position of revolutionary socialism and the principles of “socialists” who give “full support for the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” He forgets that he had persistently characterized the merger proposal as a “block to socialist unity” and replaces that with the thought that if the minority used its strength to block this kind of unity it would be guilty of giving way to “emotional manifestoes.” He forgets his very good formulations on how socialists “never” compromise basic principles and replaces it with the proposition that unity with those who have abandoned these principles is the highest law of conduct for socialists. The collapse of the left wing leadership was so complete that they didn’t even come through on a promise to make a last-ditch fight at the merger convention on the issue of the party name. The name “Socialist Party” McReynolds said in his Jan. 9 letter, “is one of the few important assets the Party has left ... This matter is sufficiently important that I think it might very well be better – despite all that I have said about the value of unity – to break off further negotiations rather than give up the name which has so much value for us at this moment.” When the convention took place, however, the left wing leaders didn’t conduct a serious fight on this or any other question. In truth they displayed an even greater “moderation” when face to face with “non-socialist and undemocratic elements” than at the June convention of the SP when they felt they were discussing with comrades. The Role of Shachtman Another link in this chain of capitulation to the right wing Social Democrats is provided by the Independent Socialist League, headed by Max Shachtman. In the Jan. 9 letter proposing capitulation, McReynolds said: “I have also been relieved following recent talks with Max Shachtman since it seems the ISL (Independent Socialist League) looks upon unity with the SDF as a first step toward a re-built socialist movement under the banner of the Socialist Party and will therefore refrain from that sectarian crossfire I had feared. In fact I thought it rather ironic that when I last met with Shachtman to urge the ISL to suspend judgment on the merger since I thought it might not prove as disastrous as I had earlier expected, that before I could even set forth this view of things, Comrade Shachtman was saying how important it was that the ‘left-wing not leave the party in a huff, but remain and help make the best of the unity.” Shachtman has since explained the basis for his encouraging the SP left wing to abandon its programmatic struggle against their merger. |
He calls on all radical organizations to merge with the SP-SDF as the ideal vehicle for building a mass socialist movement in the US. He urges that all positions on the “Russian Question” be “frozen” in the united party. Since its program on the “Russian Question” would affect the basic character of the party and its attitude towards the foreign policy of American capitalism, it is interesting to inquire as to what Shachtman believes the official position of the united party should be on the Soviet Union. Shachtman is quite clear on what the official position shouldn’t be. We can have such a united party on “one condition” he says, “and we state it frankly as a condition.” Here is how Labor Action reports this condition, quoting Shachtman’s speech at a Jan. 18 forum in New York: “The movement must not take as its official position ‘the position that the present totalitarian regimes in Russia and the satellites represent a socialist or working-class state.’ Individuals or tendencies have the right to hold it inside, ‘but the movement itself cannot expect to represent a fruitful unity if it is committed to any such proposition.’ In this case it would be ‘doomed in advance to failure’ in the American labor movement.” A second and derivative condition is reported in the same article: “The working class must not feel ‘that this regrouping is a defender or apologist for the totalitarian regime in Russia, or is committed to defending it and helping it to victory, including military victory, in any conflict it wages’.” Everybody Freeze! Except ... We will not deal with the many distortions and provocative misrepresentations contained in Shachtman’s version of the position of radical organizations on the character and defense of the Soviet Union. It is sufficient to point out that he lumps together the diametrically opposed Stalinist and Trotskyist positions on the question. The point here is Shachtman’s position on regroupment. The question immediately arises: Having ruled out an official position calling Russia a degenerated workers state and defending it, despite bureaucratic deformations, from imperialist attack aimed at restoring the system of capitalism, what position does Shachtman believe the party should take officially? From his whole line of conduct we must conclude that Shachtman believes that everybody should “freeze” their positions on this crucial question – except the right wing Social Democrats! Nowhere in his discussion of merger with the SP-SDF does he utter a word of criticism of the official Social Democratic position on the Soviet Union, contained in the Memorandum of Understanding between the SP and the SDF as follows: “Such a crusade must not be based on any illusion that peace can be achieved by appeasement of the Communist imperialism that threatens the world’s peace and freedom ... We realize that until universal, enforceable disarmament can be achieved, the free world and its democratically established military agencies must be constantly on guard against the military drive of Communist dictators.” (Our emphasis) Isn’t this the position that McReynolds described as “the worst, most shameful policies of the State Dept. and John Foster Dulles.” But apparently Shachtman sees nothing wrong in the united party holding this official position. He sees nothing wrong with accepting the position of the Social Democratic enemies of the Russian Revolution and with hurling ultimatums at the anti-imperialist, anti-Stalinist defenders of the basic social conquests of the Russian Revolution. To show that they mean business, the followers of Shachtman gave full and uncritical support to an SP-SDF rally on the Hungarian revolution at which the principal speaker was the Social Democrat, Anna Kethly. In advertising this meeting the Socialist Call said: “Miss Kethly will ... call for a United Nations Emergency Force to be dispatched to Hungary.” Not a word of dissent was uttered by Shachtman or Labor Action against this brazen call for imperialist intervention. And when Miss Kethly actually made such an appeal to the United Nations on Jan. 28, again there wasn’t a murmur of protest from the Shachtmanites. Instead they characterized the Kethly meeting as “solidarity with a socialist revolution.” Doesn’t this single episode show that by unity Shachtman means unity with the State Department socialists on their program? Support of Democratic Party In his speech to the above-mentioned forum, “Shachtman explained that he did not want to deal here with any of the other important questions, including the so-called ‘American Question,’ that a regrouping would face, ‘in order to make it clear that so far as we are concerned, differences on such questions are not the cause of split in the socialist movement and should not be allowed to divide socialists’.” There is only one possible meaning to this statement: Shachtman calls on the radical workers to merge into the SP-SDF and agree in advance that they will go along with the policy of supporting the Democratic Party in the elections. It was precisely this issue which split the Socialist Party in 1936 when the right wing of the SP walked out of the party because the majority favored independent Socialist candidates and the struggle to form a Labor Party. Now Shachtman proposes to reverse matters and ask the class-conscious workers to return to the SP under the terms of the Old Guard. There are two interconnected premises for Shachtman’s position and we believe both must be rejected if a revolutionary socialist regroupment is to be achieved. Shachtman holds that Social Democracy is progressive in relation to the present stage of development of the American working class; we should, therefore abandon the conception that our differences with Social Democracy are irreconcilable and fuse into one party with them even if it means that their pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist-party politics would determine the nature of the party; and we must renounce all thoughts of splits from such a united party and pledge in advance that differences over such questions as support of imperialism or capitalist parties “should not be allowed to divide socialists.” We disagree with both propositions. Social Democracy is not progressive in any sense whatsoever. It is, as much as Stalinism, a blight on the workers’ movement. Social Democracy takes the American form of the trade union bureaucracy. This parasitic formation must be broken up and removed as an obstacle to the progress of the labor movement. We disagree with the idea that unity with the ideological representatives of the labor bureaucracy, the American Social Democracy, is the duty of revolutionists. |
Splits and Fusions Secondly, we cannot agree with a notion that flatly ignores the many-sided aspects of splits in the life of the workers’ movement. In our opinion splits are just as much a part of the regroupment process as fusions. In the struggle to create the mass revolutionary party of the working class splits have played a constructive as well as a destructive role. It depends on what splits are referred to. Those that are necessary, inevitable and historically justified help to achieve unity of revolutionary workers on a correct program. We think the split in the American Socialist party following the Russian Revolution was necessary and justified. It marked the emergence of the Communist movement in America, as well as internationally. Shachtman now deplores this split as the original sin which, in his opinion, accounts for the weakness of the American radical movement today. We can only say that following this logic, one must trace the split back to the struggle between Menshevism and Bolshevism in Russia and deplore the victory of the Russian Revolution of 1917 itself. For it was the Russian Revolution, that great divide in the history of the modern working class movement, which separated revolutionists from reformists the world over. As a matter of fact the entire aim of revolutionary socialist policy in the United States should be to split the American labor movement away from the Democratic Party and towards the organization of its own class party – even if a few die-hard bureaucrats want to remain entangled in capitalist politics. Such a split would be just as progressive as the split which gave birth to the CIO and enabled the “fusion” of mass production workers into industrial unions. That split, we are convinced, laid the groundwork for a higher unity of American labor, going far beyond the present limited AFL-CIO stage. We think that if the revolutionary and independent elements in the American Communist Party today were confronted by Foster with a split threat, it would be erroneous and fatal for them to give up their struggle for the sake of unity on a false program. A left wing of the American Communist Party which broke with Stalinism would rapidly accelerate the process of revolutionary socialist fusion. The problem before us is how to facilitate the regroupment of revolutionary socialist forces. This is not the same as the flight of ex-revolutionists into the Social Democracy or back to Stalinism. Shachtman’s proposition cannot serve the interests of a revolutionary socialist regroupment. It can only provide a cover for the attempt of the Social Democrats, who, no less than the Fosterite Stalinists, are working against such a regroupment. Shachtman wants to begin the necessary discussion among the radical organizations with an ultimatum as to how it must end. We, for our part, want to begin by placing our views before the radical working class public, subject them to the forum of criticism and debate, examine all other programmatic positions fairly and without prejudice, and in that way explore the basis for a fruitful and lasting unification of radical organizations on the necessary minimum points of programmatic agreement. It is only along this road that a firmly founded revolutionary socialist party can be created that will lead to the victory of the American working class in its coming struggle for Socialism. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 29 February 2020 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss and Bert Deck Moscow and the Chinese Revolution (Spring 1962) From International Socialist Review, Vol.23 No.2, Spring 1962, pp.40-45. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). THE first explicit support of the Russian position versus the Chinese position in the current Sino-Soviet dispute has appeared in the US over the signatures of the editors of the Monthly Review, Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy. On the other hand, those publications which usually reflect the views of the Communist Party, The Worker and Political Affairs, have yet to mention the existence of this conflict. Like Moscow, which factionally attacks the Chinese CP leaders by pretending that its main dispute is with – Albania, the American CP follows suit. It is, of course, impossible to begin a serious discussion of the Moscow-Peking debate if one persists in treating it as an “unfact.” The MR editors have abandoned such evasions and have frankly entered this discussion, broadly speaking, as defenders of socialism and the Sino-Soviet bloc of nations. While defending Moscow against Peking, they support both against the imperialist cold war. Thus they obviously hold that a responsible public discussion of this major division in the “socialist” world will not provide aid or comfort for imperialism. In their December 1961 issue, after a summarized description of the two positions, the editors write, “When it comes to their evaluation, we have no doubt whatever that the Russians are right and the Chinese wrong.” In the February 1962 issue the editors report that there was “more than the usual number of letters praising or criticizing” the editorial statement on this dispute and said: “Further discussion would definitely be in order, but we think it can proceed fruitfully only if we can get a candid expression of the Chinese position, not from official sources but from some relatively detached observer who has studied the official materials with care and believes that the Chinese are right. So far we have not been able to find anyone who fits this description and is also willing to commit his views to paper. We will be looking.” We certainly welcome the decision of the Monthly Review to open a discussion in its columns on this important question. We for our part have been urging, for some time, the need for at least a report on the Chinese CP viewpoint in the American radical press and the need for a discussion. Eleven years ago, in the December 25, 1950 Militant, George Breitman expressed the Trotskyist evaluation of the incipient struggle between the Chinese CP and the Kremlin as follows: “Capitalist propaganda persists in depicting the Mao Tse-tung regime as a Chinese puppet of Stalin, but it must fly in the face of the facts to do so. The Chinese CP came to power without help from the Kremlin or the Soviet army, just as the Yugoslavs did, and it is therefore no more disposed than they were to blindly obey Stalin’s orders. Their [Peking’s] alliance with the Kremlin – as partners – will last only so long as they believe they are benefiting from it ... If Stalin has his hands full maintaining ‘law and order’ in Eastern Europe, where Russian bayonets put his stooges in power, he will have a ten times harder job trying to regiment revolutionary Asia, which will decline to surrender to anyone the independence it is winning with its own blood and muscle. But Stalin will seek sooner or later to impose his dictation because the nature of Stalinism does not permit any power within its sphere of influence to indefinitely retain independence of the Kremlin. That is why it is superficial reasoning to view the victories of the anti-imperialist movements as elements contributing to the permanent strengthening of Stalinism.” MORE recently, two years ago on May 9, 1960, The Militant editorially said: “We have made clear that despite our thoroughgoing disagreement with the Chinese CP leaders on many questions, we believe they are absolutely right in their appraisal of the real policy of American imperialism. We think the Chinese have every right to be worried about a reactionary ‘summit’ deal behind closed doors at the expense of their country ... In the meantime, the American Communist Party continues to remain silent about the position of the Chinese CP. The Worker and Political Affairs have not even reported the Chinese viewpoint let alone commented on it ... It must also be noted that a similar silence has afflicted other radical publications like the National Guardian and the Monthly Review. Isn’t it high time that the debate be reported and frankly discussed in the American radical press?” At this time we want to confine ourselves to preliminary comments on the view presented by the Monthly Review in the spirit of beginning, at last, what promises to become a thorough and fruitful discussion. The MR editors have assessed the depth and intensity of the differences between the two regimes. “When division is publicly admitted,” they say, “it may therefore be taken as evidence that a crisis has long been building up and that no resolution is in sight.” The editors say that their “... description of the Chinese and Soviet positions ... should be enough to show that on a number of extremely important issues the gap between the views of the two powers is wide indeed. Moreover, these are not recondite ideological questions ... They concern the analysis of the actual international situation with all its complexities and dangers. Above all, they lead to divergent and often sharply conflicting conceptions of the right policy for the socialist camp to follow.” We share the view that the Moscow-Peking conflict is indubitably severe. We would add here, however, that the quantity of divergences and the qualitative depth of ideological differences signify a historical crisis within the workers states themselves, within the association of workers states in the Soviet orbit, within each of the Communist parties, and the world socialist movement at large. The MR editors attempt an explanation of the divergences. More accurately, they seek the fundamental basis for the Chinese views. But they do not propose to uncover the social, historical and economic roots of the Russian position since this position is believed to be realistic and flexible and therefore doesn’t require probing into its understruc-ture. |
Here is what is behind Peking’s position, according to the MR: “China’s dogmatic leftism today would seem to be rooted in both the domestic and international situations which confront the country. Domestically, China is in what may be called a ‘heroic’ period of revolutionary construction, the inevitable tensions of which have been greatly aggravated by what appears to have been ant almost unprecedented series of natural disasters affecting the country’s crucially important agricultural economy. Such circumstances, by fostering a mood of revolutionary intransigence and militancy, always predispose to dogmatic leftism. China’s unique international situation has not only worked in the same direction but also has imposed on the Chinese a special view of the world of the mid-twentieth century. The new China’s experience with imperialism has been almost exclusively in the form of a malignantly hostile United States ...” BEFORE considering some of the historical roots of this struggle we must note that the editors’ theory of an ultra-left domestic policy as the basis of an ultra-left foreign policy simply does not match up with the facts. Actually the Chinese leadership domestically has been moving away from adventures and ultra-leftism. In agriculture they have seriously retreated from the earlier “great leap” to communism and now are accommodating themselves more to the real situation on the countryside. Politically they have revived the “hundred flowers” campaign as an accommodation to the intellectuals. Whatever one may think of these more recent policies, concerning nothing less than the major economic and political problems, they can hardly be described as ultra-left. But back to the real roots of the conflict. The Stalinist Monolith “It should hardly be necessary to stress that the Soviet and Chinese positions are built on common Marxist foundations,” writes the Monthly Review. This is inaccurate. It is far closer to truth to say that the original organizational and programatic foundations of the Soviet and Chinese leaders was Stalinism. There is no record of open political disagreement between the present leaders of the Soviet Union and China with Stalin while the latter was alive. All subscribed publicly to the dogmas of “socialism in one country,” the “popular front,” “collective security” and even “peaceful coexistence,” – the political expressions of the Stalinist monolith. All submitted to the “cult of the individual,” the organizational expression of the monolith. The breakup of this Stalinist monolith since the second world war, provides the basic context for an evaluation of the Moscow-Peking dispute; it is the most important of its “roots,” so to speak. What, therefore, was the nature of the Stalinist monolith and how is it being undermined? The undemocratic aspect of the Communist parties arose as the product and instrument of the ruling, privileged, bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union, during the period of the ebb of the Russian and international revolution. This bureaucracy, after destroying the institutions and traditions of the Russian revolutionary workers democracy, engulfed the system of world Communist parties and the Communist International itself; the enormous authority of the Russian Revolution and the power of the Soviet state apparatus made this take-over possible. This process rendered impotent the independent revolutionary capacity of these Communist parties and replaced revolutionary leaders with servile functionaries; the end result of this was a series of tragic defeats for the working class, which permitted the growth of fascism and the outbreak of the second world war. ON THE other hand, the increasing barbarities of capitalism: fascism, colonial oppression, genocide, war, gave rise to revolutionary impulses which could not be contained within the Stalinist monolith, itself invaded by these impulses. While the Kremlin was capable of “pacifying” the proletariat of France, Italy and Greece, it could not restrain the masses of Yugoslavia and China; revolutionary breakthroughs occurred; the day of the unchallenged grip of the Soviet bureaucracy on Communist policy had passed; the interests of the working class were once again beginning to be expressed in the Communist movement. The specific theory of Stalinism, the ideological incarnation of the Soviet bureaucratic caste, was the invention of Stalin himself: socialism in one country. And the Monthly Review has presented the gist of this theory in its formulation of the Soviet position in the current dispute: “The best way to fight imperialism, contrary to the paper tiger view [reference to the alleged Peking position], is to negotiate, compromise, settle specific disputes as they arise – above all, avoid war and gain the necessary time for clear and convincing demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of the socialist over the capitalist system. As this superiority is driven home to the peoples of the world, the third camp will prove to be a mere way station on the road from imperialism to socialism and ultimately there will be mass desertions from the inner core of imperialism itself. In the meantime, a premature showdown could lead to a disaster for all concerned.” The specific and significant point of the theory of socialism in one country under Stalin and today under Khrushchev is not related to the need of a workers state to negotiate, trade, compromise and gain time as well as strive to gain overwhelming superiority. Here is the kernel of this theory: above all avoid the risk of socialist revolution against capitalism. It means not simply to avoid war and disastrous plunges into military adventures; no, it is the bureaucratic concept that the task of the Communist parties and allied movements is at all costs to avoid revolutionary showdowns. And the fact that the Chinese CP finally did not abide by this prescription is certainly one of the roots of the present conflict. The early years (1925-27) were marked by the growth of a vast democratic revolution led by the Chinese bourgeoisie, its party, the Kuomintang, and its leading figure – General Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese proletariat led by the Communist Party was moving on the road of Bolshevism modeled on the October Revolution of 1917. The Chinese CP was independent of the national bourgeoisie; |
it possessed its own daily press. An armed proletariat in Shanghai was moving towards a showdown with the aim of completing the democratic revolution. Cutting across this revolutionary development was the intervention of the Stalinist machine which imposed a “realistic” course upon the Chinese CP. According to Stalin, the next step toward socialism in China, a backward, colonial country unripe for a socialist revolution, was to be achieved through the collaboration of the Chinese proletariat and the bourgeoisie for an extended period. The consequences of this policy foisted by the Russian bureaucracy on the Chinese CP were tragic. The Chinese CP in the face of an advance on Shanghai by Chiang Kai-shek, was ordered by Stalin to hail Chiang as a conquering revolutionary leader. While Stalin was honoring Chiang as a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the Generalissimo was engaged in butchering the Chinese proletariat, just as the Trotskyist opposition had warned. The Central Committee of the Chinese CP in effect submitted to the monolithic control of Stalin, gave up its independence, its organization, its press; and above all, disarmed the working class. When Chiang entered Shanghai on April 12, 1927, tens of thousands of Communist workers perished. Following this betrayal, Stalin persisted in repeating this course in another round of submission to the bourgeoisie, this time shifting to the “left” Kuomintang, led by Wan Chin Wei, with the same consequences: the arrests and massacres of Communist Party members in the bloody coup of July 14, 1927 in Hankow. After these tragic defeats, Stalin veered from ultra-right opportunism to ultra-left adventurism by directing the Chinese CP to engage in continuous putchist uprisings. Finally, the abortive Canton uprising took place on December 11, 1927. It was crushed in fifty hours at the cost of 5,700 workers, among them, the best remaining revolutionary cadres. THE loss of the Chinese revolution in terms of casualties and demoralization is impossible to calculate. But despite these frightful consequences the Chinese revolution survived and eventually revived. Revolution Breaks Through Stalin made a deal with the Western imperialists at Yalta in 1945, stipulating that the Chinese CP would accept a government coalition with Chiang Kai-shek giving the Generalissimo veto power, and thus refrain from the “risk” of a socialist revolution; and, for this, Stalin would receive military agreements and the settling of post-war boundaries. But there was one stumbling block: the Chinese CP refused to give up its own armed forces, the Red Army, in the course of its coalition attempts with Chiang Kai-shek. This key decision in turn enabled and even compelled the Chinese CP to stand at the head of a socialist revolution. (The same held true in essence for the Yugoslav CP during and after the second world war.) This historic event in 1949-50 completely upset the Stalinist perspective; namely, that after World War II a stable peaceful coexistence of mutual assurances would prevail. The Kremlin banked on maintaining control of the CPs and revolutionary forces. This control would prevent revolutions and the capitalists in turn would promise not to attack the Soviet Union. Stalin during World War II had no confidence whatever in the possibility of a socialist revolution. He particularly ordered the Chinese CP to avoid any head-on clash with Chiang Kai-shek. Granted the premise of a non-revolutionary perspective, Stalin’s peaceful coexistence advice appeared “reasonable,” “realistic” and “mature.” But the Chinese thought otherwise. [1] Were the Russians right in opposing the Chinese socialist revolution? Or were the Chinese right? If the Chinese nationalist bourgeoisie headed by Chiang had remained in power would this have strengthened a perspective of genuine peace or heighten the prospect of an imperialist drive for World War III? Since, in our opinion, the victory of the Chinese socialist revolution has been an enormous deterrent to World War III, we think it has considerable bearing on the roots of the present controversy about peaceful coexistence. And by the same token one’s stand on the current Sino-Soviet dispute requires taking sides on the earlier dispute between the Chinese CP and Stalin over the question of revolution. The Chinese revolution was a refutation of the Stalinist theory of socialism in one country, as were all the socialist revolutionary transformations during the post-war period. That is why these victories resulted in a crisis of the Stalinist conservative, narrow, national, bureaucratic policies; that is also why the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union itself endures a breakdown of equilibrium, de-Stalinization and finally, that is why this is all accompanied by the fragmentation, cracks and fissures in all components of the monolithic structure. The current debates should properly be viewed against this theoretical and historical background. It is this background which explains the “unexpected” eruption of public disagreement. The Chinese lack of confidence in the Russians is not a momentary mood. It has been a long time coming. The beginning goes way back and the end is not yet in sight. The cracking of the Stalinist monolith, a result and a cause of the Sino-Soviet conflict, has let loose a storm of political currents and cross-currents within the international working-class vanguard movements. |
The cracking of the Stalinist monolith, a result and a cause of the Sino-Soviet conflict, has let loose a storm of political currents and cross-currents within the international working-class vanguard movements. New or previously suppressed points of view are getting a hearing; whole tendencies and even parties are shifting positions; new alliances are being forged. There is a very real struggle for ideas, methods and goals. This takes place as a contention of political tendencies leading eventually to the establishment of a new revolutionary leadership based on a new program. Such a world regroupment process has promoted a vigorous atmosphere of “bloom and contend,” review and revaluate, test and retest in the crucible of new revolutions. The international communist vanguard originated in the Russian Bolshevik cadre. The great authority won by the Bolsheviks in their victory of 1917 permitted them to become the nucleus of a world organization of a new type. THE subsequent degeneration of the Russian Communist Party under Stalin strangled the Communist parties and the Communist International as an effective revolutionary weapon. Stalinism, however, produced its own opposites within the Communist parties; first, in the form of Trotskyism and more recently, new revolutionary socialist forces. The Left Opposition, or Trotskyism, arose in the nineteen-twenties as a defender and continuator of the traditions of Leninism against the onslaught of Stalinist reaction. In the decades of working class defeats caused in great measure by Stalinist policy, the Trotskyist movement succeeded in “remembering” October; thereby maintaining the historical thread of Marxist theory as it was expressed through the action of Lenin’s party. In the Forties and Fifties under completely altered conditions the new revolutionary forces have emerged through breaks with Stalinism, Social Democracy and bourgeois nationalism. These forces displayed no outward signs of similarity or even direct relationship to the cadres of Trotskyism. They did not originate as self-conscious, ideological and theoretical oppositions to Stalinism, relating themselves to the classic revolutionary Left Opposition. The de facto anti-Stalinist, or non-Stalinist revolutionary formations began on the field of action, over differences of tactics and strategy. But the course of history points to a fusion of the movements of Leninist continuity with today’s newly aroused revolutionary forces. Although from different starting points, the Trotskyist program and the revolutionary forces breaking with Stalinism have an area of intersection. However, there is nothing in this process that is determined a priori: it is a central target of revolutionary will and revolutionary struggle. An Analogy In general, every forward leap by the workers movement has witnessed a breakup within the leadership of the established organizations. In the US in the Thirties, the mass upsurge by the working class split the AFL bureaucracy into two distinct wings. One group, led by John L. Lewis, accommodated themselves to the insurgents, even providing leadership to the movement that was eventually to form the CIO. Although analogies are always limited, the present dispute between Mao and Khrushchev can be usefully compared to that fight between Lewis and Green: both cases involve a division in the top apparatus of a workers movement. We support the Chinese in the same sense that the revolutionists of the Thirties supported Lewis. Support of Lewis was a way of manifesting identification with the semi-revolutionary wave he was riding. The great need of the moment was the organization of the industrial workers. Support to the CIO furthered that cause. While recognizing in Lewis’ break with Green a significant contribution to the forward march of American labor, the revolutionists, at the same time, were aware that Lewis’ action had outstripped his own consciousness: that he was not aware of the implications of what he had done, and most assuredly was not programatically prepared for the further requirements of the situation. In addition Lewis had not broken with his own privileged position. (In that regard he remained in the same category with Green.) Thus, support to Lewis was “conditional,” or “critical,” which permitted the revolutionists to support and identify with the forward step of the masses in such a way as to allow them (at least in program) to go further than Lewis eventually was prepared to go. In a word, the revolutionists of the Thirties were supporters of Lewis without becoming “Lewisites.” IN A comparable manner today, we support Mao without being Maoists. To be more concrete: on the main theoretical questions in dispute between the Russians and the Chinese, we think the Chinese are correct. In addition, the Chinese leaders base themselves on revolutionary social strata aroused by 650 million people entering the arena of history. On the other hand, the Chinese leaders have yet to probe the source of their disagreement with the Kremlin, to ask the question: how is it that the leaders of the Soviet CP could arrive at such a treacherous position? The Chinese dissolve this problem in an abstract “revisionism” which becomes, in their theoretical structure, the original source of all evil. Were the Chinese courageously to undertake to answer this question, were they to dig behind the Khrushchev interpretation of peaceful coexistence and discover the very real material interests of a privileged bureaucracy – in the Soviet Union as in China; were they, in a word, to discover the essential source of Stalinism and their own historic relationship to it, then it would be possible to state with confidence that Maoism is the modern version of Bolshevism. |
were they, in a word, to discover the essential source of Stalinism and their own historic relationship to it, then it would be possible to state with confidence that Maoism is the modern version of Bolshevism. Then it would be possible to assess more positively the Chinese CP claim to constitute the new international revolutionary leadership. Will the Maoists have the capacity to continue the excellent progress they have been making in their break with Stalinism? Will they be able to proceed from their trenchant polemics against specific Stalinist theories to an understanding of Stalinism, per se, including the latter’s role in the Chinese revolution itself? Only further experience can answer these questions. It is sufficient at this point to note that the success of the Chinese against the Russians in the current dispute is having beneficial effects: it further weakens the grip of the Khrushchev brand of Stalinism on important workers movements around the world in favor of revolutionary tendencies. The growth of the revolu-toinary tendencies by reflex action may in turn further the progressive development of the Maoist leadership. The Moscow-Peking conflict constitutes a beginning, by no means final, stage in the process of international re-groupment of the revolutionary movement. The victory of Peking at this stage would be, in our opinion, a significant step forward. Every serious political analysis implies a prediction of the future. Understanding the dispute in the manner they do, the MR editors foresee that the solution to the current conflict will occur in the following manner: “In general, it is only a change in the objective situation itself that undermines a dogmatic leftist position and leads to its abandonment. And this we believe will turn out to be true in the case of China, as it has in other cases in the past.” They, then, indicate the nature of the predicted change in the objective situation: “... China is now suffering from a severe case of dogmatic leftism. The disease will abate and eventually disappear, one would suppose, when China is admitted to its rightful place among the nations of the world, especially if this takes place against determined United States opposition; and when the internal situation in the country eases as the great efforts of socialist construction begin to yield their fruits.” This seems, at first, very much like begging the question. How China will be able to win “its rightful place among nations” is the subject of the disagreement. The fact of the matter is, however, the MR editors, as they themselves say, agree with Khrushchev on the question of world perspectives. They expect that Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence will be successful; that clever diplomacy will prevent the imperialists from launching World War III; and that, in the meantime, the Soviet bloc will increase in wealth and power, paralyzing all opposition by force of example. In such a manner China will gradually be moved out of her present isolated position into one of strength and “acceptance”; and the ideological divergences between Moscow and Peking will disappear as the Chinese recognize the folly of their infantile measles. AS THE Chinese assert, the real perspective is the opposite of the one expected by the Russians. The growth of the revolutionary forces emerging from the second world war has by no means reached its peak. The recent victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba is but one more piece of evidence of this fact. The masses, in the imperialist sector, grinding under heavy poverty in most cases, inspired by the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, do not display any mood of quiet patience awaiting the miracles supposedly contained in Summit Diplomacy. On the other hand, the masses in the non-capitalist sector, their desires awakened by their own revolutionary victories, see in the imperialist domination of two-thirds of the globe an excruciating, therefore impermissible brake on their own progress. The growth, since World War II, of Soviet-bloc industry is undeniable. But encouraging as this economic development is, it has been far outstripped by the swift rise of the revolutionary movement, which more immediately affects events. Looked at from this aspect, Khrushchev’s program is an appeal to the masses to restrain their revolutionary “impatience,” keeping their demands and the tempo of their struggles in accord with the relatively slower tempo of Soviet industrial growth. The emergence of the Chinese position within the Soviet bloc indicates a mass sentiment to reject the Kremlin’s go-slow prescription. Khrushchev will not succeed where Stalin failed. All signs point to an epoch of increasing social tensions, violent eruptions, that is, an epoch of explosive class struggle leading to the victory of socialism throughout the world. There will be a “resolution” of the Moscow-Peking conflict on this variant as well. But in this context the Chinese position, rather than appearing as aberrations of one-sided leftists will seem to be the valid theoretical expression of the urgent needs and desires of the most underprivileged sectors of the world’s population. The Kremlin position, of necessity by-passed in such a process, will appear for what it really is: the theoretical expression of, actually an apology for, the needs and desires of an economically privileged and conservatized sector of Soviet society. Footnote 1. Isaac Deutscher in the London Observer, January 28, 1962, refers to the well-known break between the Chinese CP leaders and Stalin over the question of the revolution. In connection with the current dispute he wrote: “Is the quarrel then mainly over the ‘wrong’ done to Stalin posthumously? But Mao had been, throughout his career, in tacit conflict with Stalin – he seized power against Stalin’s advice. After the Twentieth Congress he sought, with his ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom,’ to out-do Khrushchev in de-Stalinization.” Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 28.1.2006 |
MIA: History: ETOL: Document: Education for Socialist Bulletin: Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II 1. Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line —Socialist Workers Party [US] Education for Socialist Bulletins— Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II 1. Section Two: Struggles Against Fascism at the End of World War II The conclusion of the war saw a revival of fascist activity, along with a revival of labor militancy. Counting on an economic downturn to put wind in their sails, the fascists offered their services to big business as a combat force against a new labor upsurge. The most active of the fascist leaders was Gerald L. K. Smith. Smith began in Louisiana as an aide to Huey Long and an organizer of his “Share the Wealth” movement. After Long’s assassination, Smith lost a fight to take control of Long’s machine. Shortly thereafter, Smith emerged as a fascist demagogue. In 1942 he formed the Christian National Front and began to publish The Cross and the Flag. In 1945, he began an energetic effort to build a mass base through national tours. His meetings were met with mass protests in Detroit, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and other cities. These were often initiated by the SWP. The biggest anti-fascist actions occurred in Los Angeles which Smith tried to establish as a major base. “Report on the Los Angeles Antifascist Campaign,” by Murry Weiss details the tactics used by the SWP in encouraging and building a united front that built a mass meeting of 17,000 against Smith on June 21, 1945. Similar tactics brought a further success on October18 when 20,000 picketed a Smith meeting. This brought Smith’s large-scale efforts in Los Angeles to an end. An article from the August 31, 1945 issue of the Militant and the comments by Vincent A. Dunne on this action describe the setback Smith experienced in Minneapolis. While Smith’s star went into decline, other fascist forces began to emerge out of the government apparatus and the two-party system. The leader of this incipient fascist tendency was Senator -Joseph A. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Smith played an active role in supporting McCarthy in the next period. Today, Smith retains a tiny following, primarily in the South. 1. Report on the Los Angeles Antifascist Campaign (abridged) By Murry Weiss from SWP Discussion Bulletin, Vol. VII, No. 8, August 1945 The first stage of the antifascist campaign launched by the Los Angeles Local on June 21st has been concluded. Now it is necessary to sum up a body of extraordinarily valuable experience. This experience is all the more precious in view of the inevitable development of the struggle against fascism on a broader scale in the period that lies immediately ahead. American fascists, such as Gerald L, K. Smith, are already busy preparing for large-scale operations. They scurry up and down the country seeking concentration points. Their natural arena are the large population-swollen industrial centers such as Detroit and Los Angeles where monopoly capital is harried by present and future “labor troubles.” In these areas they try to build a mass base among the dislocated and discontented middle-class; the old-age pension movement, veterans groups, religious sects, etc. In our analysis of the Smith movement, we must avoid exaggerations. To overestimate Smith’s present strength or to exaggerate his ties with big business in Southern California is in some respects as dangerous as the softheaded evaluation of Smith as a lunatic and an “inconsequential rabble-rouser.” G.L.K. Smith, a typical product of the pioneer American fascist movements, came to Los Angeles to persuade big business in Southern California that he could be useful to them in settling accounts with the labor movement. For this purpose he had to show strength, dynamic abilities, a large movement. Has he succeeded in doing this? No doubt powerful elements among the rich farmers and capitalists toy with the idea of utilizing Smith. But it is obvious that Smith has not yet been given the go-ahead signal and the necessary finances to accomplish his purpose. Our analysis of Smith’s campaign and his tactics must proceed from this premise—he seeks to make a show of strength. He seeks to impress the big powers with his potentialities as an organizer of anti-union combat forces and with his skill in manipulating race antagonisms and provoking race riots. The ranks of labor in Los Angeles are swollen with new recruits from the deep South, both Negro and white. Large masses of reactionary middle-class elements are mobilized in and around Los Angeles by the very process of the war. The zoot suit riots, carefully studied by the fascists, gave an indication of how soldiers and sailors could be incited against racial minorities and how a pogrom atmosphere can be created in an American city. Smith’s activities constitute a mortal threat to the working-class. This was and remains our starting point. Smith’s movement is not the isolated German-American Bund, wearing storm-troopers’ uniforms and meeting in the Deutsches-Haus. He moves behind a heavy defensive covering of “Christians Unite” and “Against Fascism and Communism!” He works through the churches, the old age pension movement, and every other possible defensive camouflage; Thus when we formulated the policy of our antifascist campaign, our central thought was to force the organized working class into consciousness of who Smith was and the necessity of fighting him. In the first period this was the main need. |
In the first period this was the main need. The line of the campaign was to mobilize the organized forces of the working class for a struggle against Smith. We reasoned: Smith is here to build a mass movement; to win financial support from influential capitalists; to organize combat groups; to unite all reactionary forces under a single banner; to explode the tinder box of racial tension into riots and pogroms; to turn it all into an attack on the labor movement and on the unemployed who tomorrow will struggle for jobs and security. But Smith is only in the initial stage of his campaign. Therefore, we must not allow him to gain time and a foothold but we must smash back with great power and boldness, with overwhelming preponderance of force. This was the objective need. This was the message our party would bring to the workers organizations. When the Section Executive Committee first opened the discussion on our tactics in the struggle against Smith, the leaders of most sections of the labor movement were completely passive to the fascist threat. Others were following a feeble and cowardly policy. In the Stalinist movement and its periphery a great deal of pressure to “do something” against Smith was to be observed. The Jewish organizations were feeling the pressure of the alarmed and apprehensive masses of worker and middle-class Jews. The policy of those labor leaders who showed at least an awareness of Smith (the Stalinists and the Jewish leaders) contained two main elements. One was what has since been termed the “hush-hush” policy: “Smith is a lunatic crackpot; ignore him, leave him alone and he’ll kill himself.” When the rising tide of pressure from the militant workers, the Jewish people and other racial minority groups became sufficiently acute, the Stalinists and the Jewish leaders developed the second element of their policy: “Pressure on the existing law-enforcement agencies and auditorium owners.” A large scale telephone and letter-writing campaign was organized. Auditorium owners were petitioned to refuse Smith access to their halls. At one point an “anti-lunatic-fringe” committee was formed with a few prominent Stalinist trade unionists at the head. This Committee died still-born and is interesting only as a symptom of the policy that was being followed. With each successful meeting of Smith, hammer blows were struck at the policy of “hush-hush.” Cowardly silence and petitions to auditorium owners proved their ineffectiveness. More and more workers were being drawn into the movement for antifascist action. We learned later of pressure being applied by various militant CIO unionists. It is on this background that the Section Executive Committee considered the campaign and worked out policy. At the meeting of the SEC on June 21st, the discussion at first revolved around the question: Shall we picket Smith’s Philharmonic meeting of June 25th? We had a proposal from the Schachtmanites for a united front picket demonstration on the 25th. The proposal of the Schachtmanites served one purpose. It forced us to seriously consider the whole question of the fight against Smith—something we had not done previously. As the debate on this question developed, it became clear to all the comrades that a much broader question was involved: the need for an energetic long-term campaign against Smith was agreed upon; the main tactical orientation of propelling the labor movement into action was also agreed on. The letter from the WP [Workers Party—the organization Shachtman formed after he split from the SWP in 1940] was addressed to the Socialist Party, Socialist Labor Party, Industrial Workers of the World, and the Socialist Workers Party. Their proposal stemmed from the main line they followed throughout the campaign. Draper expressed it clearly when he told us, “We expect, nothing from the labor movement at this time in the struggle against the fascists. It is up to the socialists to act.” All the SEC members, including the comrades who favored a picket line, appraised the policy of the Shachtmanites as sterile and adventuristic. If it is true that Smith is a fascist bent on destroying the labor movement, then obviously what is needed is a resolute and persistent campaign to organize the united front of all the powerful workers’ organizations. This is the force that will crush fascism! How can a serious revolutionary policy fail to orient from the basic consideration of a united front tactic towards the Stalinist organizations? Why did the Shachtmanites appeal to the SLP for a united front and to the CPA (Communist Political Association)? Why did they fail completely to see the need for a united front campaign in the labor movement? It will be seen in the future development of the events how the Shachtmanites miscalculated the entire situation (“we expect nothing from the labor movement at this time”), based themselves primarily on a heckling attack on us, provided comfort to the fascists, and were overwhelmed by the, real course of events. Comrades Weiss and Tanner were absent from the June 21st SEC meeting because of illness. They proposed in a memorandum to the Committee “the Los Angeles Local should immediately open an anti-fascist campaign” and outlined a proposed plan of attack. The Committee adopted the proposal for the campaign as a whole; dividing on the question of the tactic for June 25th Smith meeting, a majority in favor of the tactic proposed in the Weiss-Tanner document. We Launch the Campaign The comrades of the Section Executive Committee were fully aware of the pressure the Shachtmanites would attempt to exert on the party when we adopted our policy. If we had considered the question from the point of view of factional pluses and minuses, of “getting the best” of the Shachtmanites in a petty sense, we would have gone out and picketed. This would have facilitated our work of getting next to a few workers the Shachtmanites had recruited and were carefully hiding from us. The Shachtmanites put on a campaign of pressure. At two Sunday night lectures on Stalinism conducted by our party, their leading speakers took the floor and presented their policy; called for party members to participate with them in the picket line. At our anti-fascist mass meeting at which we presented our program for the struggle against Smith, three Shachtmanite speakers dominated the discussion period. |
The congenital Abernite, Max Sterling, presented himself to a group of our youth as a “raw worker” undecided between us and the Shachtmanites, but inclining towards them because of their militant position on the antifascist struggle. In a word, they threw everything they had into a campaign to shake the party. We anticipated this and took it into the bargain. We had confidence that the correctness of our line would be confirmed. Our new members and our workers cadre would learn from the first-hand experience with Shachtmanism, with the petty-bourgeois adventurers in action. We can state with absolute certainty that as regards this aspect of the question, that is, the Shachtmanite “offensive”, it netted them exactly zero in influence or gains in our ranks. On the other side of the ledger, we succeeded in inoculating the relatively new party members against the old Shachtmanite virus and in developing contact with a few workers who had accidentally joined the WP. We opened the campaign with a whole series of record moves. We sent telegrams to all labor bodies, racial minority groups, the Communist Political Association, etc. Naturally we had no illusions that this would bring results in and of itself, but it provided the basis for the effective agitational campaign we developed during the following weeks. We struck out along three main lines. Within the framework of the general united front tactic we developed a special united front maneuver towards the Stalinists. We regarded the Stalinist movement as the key to the situation. The Stalinists control the apparatus of the CIO; the Stalinists have a large Jewish following; there was considerable sentiment in the Stalinist ranks for “action”; and finally, the Stalinist ranks were in the midst of the crisis of their turn [the expulsion of Browder] manifesting a greater susceptibility to our ideas than we have witnessed in many years. We decided to place as much power as we could behind the united front campaign directed towards the Stalinists. The evidence shows that we were very successful in driving our appeal for the united front deep into the ranks of the Stalinist movement. Our open letter was distributed widely at Stalinist mass meetings, at the Hollywood Citizens Committee meeting, at the CIO Council and in the garment center. It was mailed to our contact list as information. Most important of all, it was a weapon for our comrades in the shops and unions. The open letter became the occasion for an approach to Stalinist shopmates. Even a number of leading Stalinist workers, members of the Section Committee of the CPA, were contacted in this way and made favorable comments. In one case, our comrade presented the open letter to a Stalinist worker in the shop, a die-hard anti-Trotskyist, who declared he was convinced we were right on this point. He then showed the open letter to two other Stalinist workers in the shop, one of whom asserted that the Trotskyists were “certainly sincere in their struggle against fascism.” Among the militants in the CIO and in leading Negro circles our united front tactic towards the Stalinists made a good impression. When we observe how our campaign, our tactics and slogans are being carried into the factories, we can mark it down as a new stage of our development. Here, in the shops, we have the greatest testing ground for our slogans, and here is where we are strongest. The second line of action was the presentation of resolutions in the unions. We started modestly, but quickly realized the extent of possibilities and tried to step up the introduction of resolutions and the content of the resolutions accordingly. At each union meeting we observed that the temper of the workers was relatively hot on this question. The ease with which our resolutions passed prompted us to work on the idea of proposing that one union body, for example, the Auto Council, shall take the initiative in calling for the formation of a Trade Union Committee to combat Smith. We envisaged this as the next step in making the united front a reality. We are convinced that this would have been entirely possible and a trade union committee would have taken shape “from below,” so to speak, i.e., from the action of various local unions in meeting together. In the meantime, however, the accumulated pressure from a number of different directions, ours not least of all, had forced the Stalinists into a more serious move. The fascists planned to hold a mass meeting at the shrine Auditorium on July 20th. It was clear that all of the previous efforts of the official leaders to stop Smith had fizzled. The pressure of the workers had also forced the AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods tops into stirring. The united front took shape “from above.” Our tactics in the resolutions campaign were accordingly adjusted to this new situation, and we shifted over to resolutions endorsing the united front and calling for support to the united front mass meeting, a counterdemonstration to the Smith Shrine meeting, at the Olympic Auditorium on July 20th. Although the full effectiveness of our resolutions campaign cannot be measured by the list of unions in which we passed resolutions, the score is nevertheless impressive. In all cases the unions forwarded the resolutions to other unions with a “snowballing” effect. Through the direct initiative of the party, we passed resolutions characterizing Smith, condemning him and calling for militant united labor action against him, in the following unions: Marine Fireman’s Union; the Consolidated Steel Local of the USWA; the Joint Board of the ILGWU; the United Auto Council, UAW-CIO; Local 9 of the Shipyard Workers Union-CIO (the largest CIO union on the West Coast); an IAM Local at Lockheed Aircraft; and the San Pedro Longshoreman’s Union. In a number of other unions resolutions were slated to go through, but further developments made them unnecessary. The key character of the union bodies listed will show why we can realistically state that our resolutions campaign played an important role in mobilizing sentiment for action, putting pressure on the bureaucrats and in developing the antifascist united front of the Los Angeles labor movement. The third main line of our campaign was work among the racial and national minorities organizations. |
We very quickly utilized our excellent relations with the Negro press to publicize the party’s campaign and its united front slogans. Three of the local Negro newspapers published our press releases. In our discussions with the editors of the Negro press and various Negro worker leaders, our policy was warmly received and approved. The Sunday before the Olympic Auditorium demonstration the party mobilized forces to go into the Negro neighborhood and the Negro churches. Our comrade spoke before 1200 Negro youth in a large church. Our contact with Jewish organizations has been fruitful in at least one instance. Mr. Gatch, the editor of the California Jewish Voice , has taken a militant position on the struggle against Smith. Before the news of the United Front Olympic Auditorium demonstration was announced, he proposed in a lead article that 10,000 antifascists picket the Shrine meeting. Smith has printed photostatic copies of this article as evidence of the violent Jewish plot against him and his “Christians Unite” campaign. Our relations with this editor and a number of other Jewish organizations around him promise to develop into a bloc within the united front. Recently it has come to light that fascist vigilante elements are organizing, in the agricultural valleys, rifle clubs with anti-Semitic slogans. Gatch has indicated that he is planning to demand from the authorities decisive action against this ominous move, and if immediate action is not forthcoming, he will call for the formation of Jewish youth “Health” clubs. There are other small signs that such sentiment is developing among the Jewish, Mexican, and Negro population. We will of course be in the forefront in raising the slogan of Defense Guards. In every case we will try to deepen the effect of the slogan by inking it to such concrete events or threats as the valley rifle clubs. If the Jewish Voice calls for the formation of Jewish Youth clubs for defense, we will advocate joint Jewish, Mexican, Negro, youth, and workers’ defense groups. Two Smith Meetings The Smith meetings at the Philharmonic auditorium on June 25th, and at the Ham’n’Eggers Hall on June 28th were organized on an ostensibly closed basis, admittance by invitation only. Both were overflow meetings of thousands of people. The Shachtmanites called for mass picketing at both meetings. They issued leaflets and conducted a publicity campaign. In our opinion, separate and apart from the question of whether the SWP should have called a picket demonstration, the Shachtmanites’ picket demonstrations were puny and ineffective. At the Philharmonic Auditorium, they mobilized from the street a hundred and fifty people. Very few of these came down in response to the call, but were obviously antifascist passersby who joined in the picket line for a short time. Can this demonstration, which was called to “stop the fascists,” be considered effective? Can it be compared with the Madison Square Garden demonstration or Los Angeles antifascist demonstrations of 1938? When the party called the workers to demonstrate against the fascists at the Deutsches Haus in Los Angeles in 1938, we had 2,000 workers outside to a few hundred frightened fascists inside. We had unions and factories represented officially in the demonstration, speaking over our sound truck loudspeaker. We held siege on the fascist meeting so that they didn’t dare leave the meeting till long after midnight. Many of them were then severely beaten by Mexican workers from the Dura Steel factory, who had been called out to demonstrate by the party. In New York comrades know what a mass outpouring of working-class strength there was in response to our call. If there remains a shadow of doubt over the estimate of the Shachtmanite tactic, this is eliminated when we examine the results of their picket line three days later! Here the Smith meeting was conducted in an off street with very few passersby. The real drawing power of the Shachtmanites and a test of the mood of the workers, their willingness to respond to a call from a small organization, could be observed more accurately. Instead of maintaining their 100 to 150 pickets, the second picket line dropped to from twenty-five to fifty according to the most generous estimates! At both meetings Smith made great capital out of the feeble showing of the Shachtmanites. “We are thousands and they are 25 or 50 at the most, and they talk of breaking up our meeting. If we went out and said ‘boo’ they’d run. Even the left-wing CIO is not represented out there.” In general, he employed the occasion to raise the morale of his meetings, to picture his movement as unconquerable and the opposition as disorganized and feeble. The Shachmanites, however, proclaimed these demonstrations as “victories”. How a “Picket Smith’s Meetings” movement which records a sharp decline from its first to its second action, can be depicted as a victory is very hard to grasp. Overflow fascist meetings are successfully held. They aren’t to the slightest extent shaken from enthusiasm and confidence but, on the contrary, draw strength from observing that instead of a mass demonstration of workers’ strength, a small handful of “radicals” parade before their meeting. This can be proclaimed an anti-fascist victory only by irresponsible braggarts who are deaf, dumb, and blind to the teachings of Bolshevik tactics. Shortly after their second picket demonstration, the Shachtmanites again proposed to meet with us to discuss joint activity in the struggle against Smith. Our Section Executive Committee decided to authorize the organizer to meet with them. In accordance with our traditional policy we were ready to act jointly with any group or individual in the labor movement. We were ready to bloc with them on any question of action that could be commonly agreed upon. We didn’t think there were many such actions but we were ready to listen to any proposals. We met with the Shachtmanites, and they presented a united front proposal in a number of variations. A. That the SWP and the WP and perhaps the SP shall set up a joint Labor Committee for the fight against fascism. |
This “Labor Committee” they did not envisage as a trade union body. It was at this meeting that Draper, their representative, stated, “We expect nothing from the labor movement at this time. The Socialists will have to act alone.” Of course we rejected this, explaining that our orientation was towards forming a united front of unions and other large working-class organizations. B. A united front mass meeting of both parties. We explained that this was unrealistic since it simply meant a proposal that we provide them with a platform and we preferred to speak from our own platform in party meetings and could see no benefit from a joint mass meeting. C. A united membership meeting to discuss the antifascist struggle. Again we explained that they had been provided with ample opportunity to remain in the party and have full rights in discussion as an opposition faction. Since they treacherously split with the SWP, it was unreasonable for them to demand the rights of members within our organization. D. United front picket lines against any future meeting Smith may hold. We gave them the same answer; that we were orienting to the formation of such a united front with the working-class organizations that really represented the mass of workers in the city and thereby the power of the workers in the city. As regards future demonstrations of Smith, we would appraise the question of purely party demonstrations on the basis of the relationship of forces at a given time. E. They proposed blocs to pass resolutions in the unions. Here we agreed to consider such blocs on the basis of any concrete situation that offered possibilities along this line. They could cite only one, Local 9, Shipyard Workers. We could think of no other. In this union we had formed a bloc with a Negro militant, the vice-president of the state CIO, a former Stalinist, who had agreed to present our resolution. Nevertheless, we agreed to refer the question to our fraction with a recommendation that our fraction consult with their fraction; mainly because we were concerned with restraining them from any blundering interference with the arrangements we had made. This is precisely what occurred. Our fraction representative met with theirs. They arrogantly insisted on proposing their own resolution with their own speaker. We finally persuaded them to refrain from doing so until a far more effective arrangement could be put through. This was the extent of our bloc with the Shachtmanites in Local 9. The United Front is Formed Smith announced plans for his final rally for July 20th at the Shrine Auditorium at a small secret meeting in Clifton’s Cafeteria. We had observers present at this meeting and were the first to spread the alarm throughout the labor movement and Jewish organizations. We called up representative individuals and appraised them of the plans of Smith. Immediately the movement for antifascist action was spurred forward. As we reported before, one Jewish newspaper called for a mass picket demonstration. A Jewish workers cultural organization pledged its 300 members in support of a picket line at the Shrine meeting. The pressure of our campaign was developing considerably in the CIO. The Stalinist rank and file and periphery were dissatisfied with the official policy. The first news we heard of the development of a united front and a counterdemonstration for July 20th came from Slim Connally, a Stalinist CIO leader, who told one of our comrades that the CIO was calling a counterdemonstration at the Olympic Auditorium on the same night as Smith’s Shrine meeting. He told our comrade, a Negro trade unionist, to spread the word among the Negro people. Our comrade immediately came down to the Central Branch meeting of the party and announced the news. At the same time we heard that a meeting of all antifascist organizations was to take place at the Royal Palms Hotel on Tuesday, July 17, to lay the plans for the final buildup for the Olympic Auditorium demonstration. The Tuesday meeting proved to be an extremely representative gathering of the trade unions, racial minority organizations, religious and Hollywood groups. A sprinkling of bourgeois politicians decorated the occasion with the typical Stalinist attempt to distort a united front into a peoples’ front masquerade. Official representatives of the CIO, AFL, and Railroad Brotherhoods were present. A good number of local unions, mostly CIO, were also represented. A mystery of sorts surrounds the question of precisely which organization took the initiative in calling this united front. Attorney General Kenney and Assemblyman ALBERT Decker were assigned the roles of official chairman and convener. Our first information led us to believe that the CIO had called for the Olympic meeting and the Royal Palms united front gathering. This accounts for the fact that the Militant characterized the Olympic meeting as a CIO demonstration rather than a united front demonstration at which the CIO AFL and Railroad Brotherhoods participated together with racial organizations and other “community” groups. It is possible that the Stalinists started with the CIO as sponsor and then obscured its role when they found such widespread support from other organizations and individuals. In our opinion, organization control of the Olympic Auditorium meeting and the initiative in calling the Royal Palms meeting lies with the Stalinists The question of which organization was officially responsible recedes into the background once it is clear that the Stalinists were the most powerful force which controlled the apparatus of both meetings What then is our analysis of this set up? Is it a genuine united front? There can be no question that it was a real united front, but as is always the case with institutions that arise out of the reality of the struggle, as distinguished from textbook definitions, this concrete united front has its peculiarities, determined by the entire situation. The ground swell of workers antifascist sentiment for action was sufficient to jar the official apparatus of labor and of the Stalinist party into action. This workers’ sentiment, when combined with the state of excitement and anxiety of the Jewish organizations, proved sufficient to bring together in one Council an extremely wide representation of the labor movement and the racial minority groups. |
This workers’ sentiment, when combined with the state of excitement and anxiety of the Jewish organizations, proved sufficient to bring together in one Council an extremely wide representation of the labor movement and the racial minority groups. However, the movement of the workers from below has not yet reached the point where it could express itself in a united front of action which would be representative of the labor organizations from top to bottom. What was striking at the Tuesday Royal Palms meeting was the inordinate importance and weight held by political shysters, Hollywood stars, accidental figures, and the summits of the labor movement There were too many religious quacks and too few factory workers. This signifies an early stage in the united front struggle against fascism; The Stalinists are working might and main in this early stage to derail the movement; to switch it on to the path of peoples’ frontism, to stifle the initiative of working-class ranks. This is the characteristic element of their policy at the Royal Palms and Olympic meetings. The Party in Action How did the party participate in this movement? We immediately declared our full support to the idea of a counterdemonstration against the fascists Our leaflet calling for the workers to pack the Olympic Auditorium was the first announcement of the demonstration on the streets. The campaign that was organized during that one week in some respects surpassed the election campaign. The SEC declared a state of full mobilization, and that proved to be no idle phrase. It was understood by the overwhelming majority of the party membership to mean an extraordinary demand on their time and energy, and they acted accordingly. The week was notable for our utilization of a long unused medium of agitation, the open air meeting, which has now become a regular feature of our campaign. We decided to launch a new series of radio broadcasts, and attempted to arrange the schedule in time to announce it to the workers gathered at the Olympic Auditorium but we were blocked in this by the refusal of the broadcasting companies to sell us the time. The first part of the week was concentrated on getting out the leaflet, beginning its mass distributions, preparing a mailing to 4 000 subscribers and contacts and in preparation for the Tuesday meeting All our fractions were instructed to work wherever possible to represent their unions at the Tuesday meeting In most cases the shortness of time prevented the democratic election of delegates and thereby cut down our own representation. Union officials would, as a rule, appoint one of their group to attend. Yet we had four trade union delegates at the united front meeting. We had three delegates from the party, and about thirty comrades participated as individual observers. There were approximately 400 present at the Tuesday meeting. The night before at the SEC we had elaborated a three-point policy to be following by the party caucus. (1) Continue the united front after the Friday meeting as an organ of struggle against fascism; (2) For a preponderance of representatives of the labor movement on the speaker’s rostrum. Instead of Hollywood celebrities, let’s have the leaders of the labor movement, Green, Murray, and Lewis, fly out here and speak at the meeting; (3) We proposed the Olympic Auditorium demonstration should have a brief program and should then be transformed into a giant parade to march on the Shrine. The Olympic Auditorium is one mile from the Shrine. Our proposal was to march the parade past the Shrine in a peaceful display of antifascist strength and to demobilize a few blocks past the Shrine. On Tuesday we had two speakers get the floor at the United Front meeting. Following a speaker from an Italian organization, who stated that if workers had organized in time and fought back, fascism would never have triumphed in Italy and Germany, Comrade Cappy got the floor and presented the proposal for adjourning the Olympic meeting early and parading to the Shrine. Then Comrade Tanner was recognized. She spoke for fifteen minutes, outlining the proposals of the party. The party proposal for a march became the pivotal point for all further discussion. Her speech was received with considerable applause as well as some subdued heckling from the Stalinists. The People’s World reported the next day that “speaker after speaker” came out against Myra Weiss, leader of the local Trotskyites who had proposed a parade past the Shrine after a brief meeting at the Olympic. In the course of a debate at the Wednesday party membership meeting Comrade Cappy developed the idea that our proposal for a march was adventuristic and represented a succumbing to the pressure of the Shachtmanites. The reporter for the SEC, Comrade Weiss, held that it was precisely this proposal which had marked off the left-wing of the United Front; that the proposal was entirely realistic; that it was feasible to call for the organization of an antifascist parade when the forces we were addressing this proposal to represented all the official organizations of the labor movement; that taking into account the real strength of the fascists, such a parade would have the effect of a powerful sledgehammer attack. It would. weaken Smith immensely. As for the comparison with. the Shachtmanites, it was held that our difference with them was over the question of proceeding with a tiny force in an ineffective display of weakness against the fascists; whereas we were appealing to the strong workers’ organizations to act against the fascists. Although it was not disputed that many tens of thousands of workers were still unaware of the character of the Smith movement, there were other tens of thousands, still in the minority, who were ready to take militant action once they saw a realistic possibility of doing so. An official decision of the labor movement to act, parade past the Shrine, would call forth a tremendous burst of enthusiasm and action from tens of thousands of militant workers in this area. Furthermore to underscore that we were not proposing a march led by us alone, we had stressed in our formulation of the proposal that if the majority of the united front opposed such a parade, we would be bound by that decision. The Friday Meeting Across the platform of the meeting was paraded the usual Stalinist handpicked assortment .of phony politicians, religious leaders, Hollywood stars, etc. However, the heads of the AFL and CIO Los Angeles Council spoke. |
The greatest ovation was received by Philip Connally, the head of the CIO Council. The most spirited applause occurred when the speakers struck a militant note. When Connally said: “We do not believe in free speech for the fascists,” the enthusiasm of the audience reached its height. What was most characteristic of the whole program and the meeting—and it went to about 11:30—was the fact that not one speaker told the workers what they should do in the struggle against Smith. Attorney General Kenney painted the picture of the war boom industries threatening to collapse, the danger of unemployment, the sharpening of a social crisis as a result of it; and cited this as the reason for Smith’s activity in this area. He said: “The way to fight Smith and other fascists is to keep industry going at capacity with full employment.” All he failed to do was to tell the audience how. The Stalinists pushed to the fore the question of Rankin’s forthcoming investigation of Hollywood. It became apparent that they are utilizing this united front, both at the Olympic meeting and at future meetings, to shield themselves from the red scare attack that the reactionaries are trying to whip up in Hollywood. The Olympic meeting was the product of a real movement from below. The Stalinists are not capable of calling such meetings at will. When Philip Murray came to Los Angeles in 1943, the Stalinists, who were then trying to impress Murray, tried to gather a large meeting together at the Olympic with Hollywood stars featured and an enormous publicity campaign. However, the meeting was poorly attended with a very low level of enthusiasm. It is hard to say what the composition of the Friday meeting was. The Stalinists and their periphery were there in full force. There was a strong middle-class professional grouping. Without doubt there were many thousands of industrial workers present and quite a large number of Negroes. Some comrades believe that the largest percentage of workers were turned away in the overflow crowd; those who couldn’t arrive early enough due to working hours. We distributed our leaflet in over 8,000 copies. The four proposals are the pivotal points around which we propose to agitate in the shops and the unions during the coming period. The slogans for antifascist shop committees we regard as extremely potent in possibilities. There, the initiative will more and more fall into our hands. In the last analysis, the united front that has emerged represents all the weaknesses of the existing state of the labor movement; the union tops disconnected from the workers in the shops, the Stalinist political and trade union apparatus, the heavy middle-class element. As the struggle sharpens, the party will bring the slogans of the left-wing of the united front into every factory where we have contact. At a certain point the formation of antifascist factory committees will provide the medium for the organization of vital combat forces. One of the possibilities of the formation of workers’ defense guards is linked up with the factory committees, although it is not excluded that the workers’ defense guards will have an initially neighborhood, or even racial minority origin. The third point of our proposal is obviously the most immediate. It is our opinion that if we follow the right tactic with sufficient energy, we can meet the next wave of fascist activity with labor demonstrations and mass picketing. It is not a question of can we “get by” with some small picket lines of the “radical” parties. It is a question of how to mobilize masses of workers for struggle, without ignoring the reality of their existing organizations and leadership. Every party venture, every party tactic must be calculated to further this end. The fourth point (the labor party) has become particularly timely after the results of the British elections and is now prominently lifted to the place of an independent and immediate campaign of agitation for the party as a whole. All the comrades at the meeting reported that our leaflet was read carefully by those they could observe around them. Not one leaflet was found thrown away; this despite the fact that tremendous amounts of literature were being distributed at the entrances. Before the meeting our distributors succeeded in contacting a few new Shachtmanite recruits, who have since been followed up and look to be very promising. The distribution squad was caught outside with the thousands of workers who couldn’t get in, and engaged in many fruitful discussions in the street. After the police dispersed the crowds, we filled the available cars with contacts and brought them to the headquarters. When the others returned after the meeting, it was as if we had a mass meeting in our own hail. Although it was after midnight, the new workers contacted were anxious to hear a word from the party speakers. Our observer at the Shrine meeting reported how Smith ascribed the poor attendance at his rally (5,000) to “the Communists and the Jews who had packed the streetcars en route to the Shrine and Olympic Auditoriums.” Comrades Tanner and Weiss announced our determination to continue the open air meetings on the East Side and our plans to develop a free speech fight if the police interfered again as they had done earlier. Since then we have held three successful street meetings on the same corner without any further difficulties. Summary and Perspectives The campaign is in a moment of lull. Smith has left town for speaking engagements in the East, promising to return soon. His threat to make Los Angeles a national headquarters was not carried out. It is not even a West Coast headquarters. For the moment he is working under the surface once again. How long will this last? Will he start a new campaign of meetings? Will someone else of the same caliber raise a new threat? These questions cannot be answered in detail. We base ourselves on the inevitable development of further fascist activities. |
We base ourselves on the inevitable development of further fascist activities. The reported rifle clubs in the valleys can become the point of departure for a new offensive in the antifascist campaign. We are investigating the activities of local supporters of Smith. Generally speaking, there is no lack of vigilante and fascist activities in Southern California. The party then prepares for a new big push in its campaign. What better preparation can there be than the assimilation of the lessons of the first stage of the campaign? The contrast between our policy and the Shachtmanites had a clear and finished character. The two lines of policy were submitted to the test in a short time. It is useful and instructive to draw up a balance sheet. The Shachtmanites proceeded by a superficial analogy to the Madison Square Garden demonstration of 1938. They “expected nothing from the labor movement at this time,” and they thought that a mere signal from anyone was sufficient to bring a mass of anti-fascist workers into the streets. If one is serious about summoning masses to action, it must be conceded that they miscalculated on both counts. The antifascist masses would not in these circumstances move against the Smith type of fascist movement without first exhausting the possibility of utilizing the defensive covering and power of their own mass organizations. In this they display a far better grasp of the difference between the Smith fascists and the German-American Bund than the Shachtmanites do. The militant workers did not answer the call to picket because they felt the need to move with and through the unions. Moreover they estimated that it was possible to get action from their organizations and proceeded to apply pressure. That is why we found that we were not alone in our efforts to push for the united front and for antifascist action in the unions. Everywhere other militants were following the same line. Our tactic was fully confirmed by the course of events. The objective implications of Smith’s activity were so ominous in the setting of the present economic and political situation, that the trade union officials, the Stalinists, the Negro and Jewish leaders could not fail to be alarmed. Our task was to hammer home the meaning of the fascist threat and to organize the pressure of the workers to force the organizations of labor onto the road of struggle. It is necessary to understand clearly that the Shachtmanites did not simply add to the tactics we carried out, by organizing a picket line. They followed a totally different course. They could not see the reality or effectiveness of a struggle for the united front in the unions, and they had no conception whatsoever of a united front tactic with the Stalinists. They complain: “You claimed you had no time for preparing a joint demonstration with us, but you were ready in the available time to act jointly with the Stalinists.” Of course! In uniting with the WP we could calculate mainly on our own forces to act. For this we lacked time and the necessary relationship of forces. If we could unite with the Stalinists instead of the WP this would signify an enormous change in the relationship of forces and the time factor would alter accordingly. The Shachtmanites cannot understand that this is the reason why we fight for the united front with the Stalinists. It is not because we hate the WP worse than we hate the Stalinists, or because of our natural bureaucratic affinity for the Stalinists. It is because in one direction a mass of workers are concentrated; in the other, little more than a handful of renegades from Marxism. This is not the place for an estimate of the antifascist campaigns of 1938-39. Certainly the demonstrations in New York and Los Angeles were of great significance. However, in my opinion the. model of antifascist activity for the party is to be found in Minneapolis. The relative weight of their antifascist tactics as against the other ventures of the party is much greater precisely because they operated through the mass movement of the workers. It is this aspect of the Minneapolis experience that should be assimilated by the party now. The question remains: Could anything have been lost by joining in a picket demonstration with the Shachtmanites at the Philharmonic on June 25th? Yes! A great deal would have been lost. Adding a few hundred to such a picket line would not have raised its effectiveness qualitatively. What was needed was a demonstration of the overwhelming preponderance labor possessed in the contest. Even the Olympic Auditorium demonstration accomplished this. By mobilizing 17,000 thousand in a counter-demonstration to the fascist 5,000, a demoralizing blow was struck at them. But could anything have been lost? In following such a tactic we would have become divorced from the mainstream of militant workers who were pressing hard on the lever to lift their organizations into action. By concentrating on helping them press this lever, we solidified our connection with them. Many workers were irritated and contemptuous of the policy of a “show of weakness.” Had we followed that course we would be arguing to this day with the Stalinist workers about the question of whether the Trotskyists are “hotheads” and “ineffective.” “Look how small their demonstration was. Why do they jump the gun?” As it is, we decisively reject responsibility for the WP antics. We point to our record of struggle for the united front and we propose action to the workers’ organizations. The perspective of the antifascist campaign is very broad and converges with other campaigns. This distinguishes it from the more narrow party campaigns with their succinct objectives and delimited time. We compensate for this by introducing into the broad campaign the element of organization objective whenever possible. |
We compensate for this by introducing into the broad campaign the element of organization objective whenever possible. When there is a lull we exploit it for analysis and preparation, rather than for artificial campaign-mongering. Right now campaign activity is confined to open air meetings. At the same time we are searching for an opening that will allow us to lift the struggle to a higher level. There is a possibility for organizing a meeting with a number of Jewish. groups who hold militant positions on the tasks of the united front. In a bloc with them we could present our proposals for militant action at the next united front conference, which will occur on August 26th. If we mobilize the forces of the party and its sympathizers in the trade unions we can have a large group at the united front meeting. The same tactic can be developed toward Negro and Mexican organizations, who are keenly aware of the threat of fascism with its physical violence and terror. In the solidification of such a bloc lies the possibility of, in the next immediate period, calling united front demonstrations and picket lines. In the next stage of the campaign, through the radio, through demonstrations, through the deepening of our united front tactics, we shall draw even closer to our banner the sympathetic periphery of Militant readers and contacts. We will recruit many of them. The party will grow stronger. We want the comrades nationally to know that when the Los Angeles Local raised the slogan of “No headquarters for Smith in Los Angeles,” we did so in deadly earnest. We are committed to this slogan to the marrow of our bones. For the Socialist Workers Party: the struggle against fascism is to the death. August 7, 1945 Return to the Fighting Fascism Index Page | Return to the ETOL Document Page Return to the ETOL Home Page |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss Three Radical Parties and the 1960 Elections (Summer 1960) From International Socialist Review, Vol.21 No.3, Summer 1960, pp.67-69, 85. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). NEVER has the need been greater than now, in the 1960 elections, for socialists to conduct a campaign for their own program and in their own name against the bipartisan program and machines of US capitalism, the Democrats and Republicans. Yet, of the three main socialist organizations in the country – the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, the Communist Party, and the Socialist Workers Party – only the SWP is vigorously fighting in the electoral field. The last few months have been rough on the illusion that the Democratic and Republican parties can somehow be used as instruments of struggle for civil rights, for civil liberties and against nuclear war. The SP-SDF and the CP have been, each in its own special way, both the victims and the perpetrators of policies based on this illusion among radical workers and youth. But how does the policy of supporting “good” capitalist politicians stand up when we examine the conduct of the Democratic and Republican parties and all their major spokesmen during the events of the last few months? In April and May we witnessed a worldwide wave of mass demonstrations, strikes and revolutionary uprisings aimed at a whole string of despotic regimes, firmly linked to US imperialism as “free world” allies. The movement swept through South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and Japan. The Cuban revolution in the same period deepened and reverberated throughout Latin America, despite the all-out campaign of slander, economic pressure and military threats from Washington. And in the North and South of the United States a new generation of youth, with the Negro students of the South leading the way, made its dramatic entrance onto the stage of social and political struggle against racism, witch hunting and preparations for war. In these events the bipartisan cold-war bloc in the US Congress acted as one with the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department in lining up solidly with reaction and counter-revolution against the revolutionary masses. Not a single leader of the Democratic or Republican parties favored an economic boycott against South Africa to compel the white-supremacist regime to stop the massacre of workers and youth fighting for their elementary human rights. Not a single one of them favored the just cause of the South Korean students against the US-backed dictatorship of Syngman Rhee; instead they joined in making pious statements “deploring,” in effect, the fact that our gallant “free world” ally had been caught red-handed stuffing ballot boxes, murdering political opponents, strangling all freedom of speech and press and filling the jails with trade unionists and students. The bipartisan cold-war bloc joined to a man in the chorus of lies against the Cuban revolution. On this question, which directly touches the vital interests of Wall Street’s colonial empire in Latin America, the capitalist politicians do not permit themselves even the slightest leeway of “criticism”: they are all as one in trying to whip up a frenzy of hatred against a valiant people who have dared to take their fate into their own hands. And where is the Democratic or Republican contender for the presidency who has walked a picket line with the Negro students fighting for equal rights? Nor did one of them at least have the guts to differ publicly with the foul racist attack of Harry Truman against the Negro student lunch counter sit-ins. Look at the way the two capitalist parties acted in the cold-war crisis brought about by the collapse of the Summit Conference in Paris. The Paris blowup put a spotlight on the aggressive military and espionage policies of US imperialism. The cynical mendacity of Washington in demanding nothing less than the “right” to invade Soviet territory with impunity shocked the entire world. Facts emerged in clear view: It isn’t the Soviet Union that has built a ring of military, naval and aircraft bases for launching a nuclear bomb attack around the borders of the United States. It happens to be exactly the other way around. The Soviet Union doesn’t have troops stationed at the US borders in Mexico and Canada. The troops and the nuclear-armed aircraft of the US are instead poised at the borders of the Soviet Union. These facts have begun to dawn on millions of people in the US. But when the provocations of Eisenhower and the State Department around the U-2 incident led to the collapse of the Summit Conference, was there a single voice in the Democratic “opposition” party that dared to utter the truth and call for a basic change in US foreign policy? Not one. The Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination lined up with their Republican colleagues in a common oath never to be divided by the “aggressive” Russians. Then came the most despicable fraud of all: the Republicans and the Democrats agreed to “debate” the U-2 incident during the presidential election. What is to be debated, however, is not basic foreign policy. That would be giving aid and comfort to the Enemy. Such debates are conducted in secret, in the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department. What the American people will be allowed to hear is a censored squabble over whether “bungling,” “mis-timing” and inter-departmental slip-ups didn’t hurt the effectiveness of the cold-war, bipartisan foreign policy. For all the adjectives he uses, Stevenson, the foremost “critic” of Eisenhower’s handling of the Summit Conference, isn’t saying a thing more than: I can run this cold war better than Ike; I can lie quicker and more skillfully than he can – so I ought to be the Democratic candidate for President. This is all that the “peace forces” in the Democratic party have done. Yet the Communist party is enthralled once more with Stevenson. A headline in the May 29 Worker reads: “Stevenson’s Blast on Ike Gains Wide Support.” And on page four of the Midwest Edition: “Stevenson Urges Change in US Foreign Policy.” Read Stevenson’s speech, however, and you discover that he proposes nothing of the sort. |
He proposes only to carry out US foreign policy more effectively than Eisenhower. Is this something to cheer about? Or should we not understand and explain that if their common foreign policy were to be carried out more effectively it would bring the human race that much closer to destruction? It is, of course, completely possible for two wings of American imperialism to differ on what is the best foreign policy for capitalism. Under such conditions socialists, in our opinion, never become partisans of one capitalist policy versus another. They advance their own foreign policy for the country, utilizing the debate for that purpose. But in this instance there hasn’t even been a real breach in the bipartisan line-up behind Wall Street’s cold-war foreign policy. Nor has the Democratic party dared as yet to seize the issue of peace for an all-out demagogic campaign – as it has done so often in the past. The CP nevertheless is sinking its forces deeper into the Democratic party mire – today in the “Boost Stevenson” committees. And tomorrow? Will Kennedy or Symington be too much for them to swallow? Past experience with the CP in relations to cold-war politicians like Harriman and Wagner has shown that once embarked on the opportunist path in the Democratic party, nothing is too much for them. The Communist party leaders justify their policy with the argument that it helps promote the cause of “peaceful coexistence.” According to this conception of peaceful coexistence, first introduced by Stalin and “perfected” by Khrushchev, the class struggle and the socialist revolution have become antiquated as means for fighting imperialist war and bringing about a lasting peace. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism, which proved that the imperialist drive towards war was not a matter of evil choice but stemmed from the inexorable laws of capitalism to expand, subjugate the colonial people, and crush all attempts of the working class to free itself from exploitation, was also declared “outmoded” by Stalin and Khrushchev. Instead of the Leninist concept of struggle for peace the Stalinists introduced the theory and practice of seeking salvation from war by appealing to the “peace-loving” elements in the warmaking capitalist class. Thus the Communist parties are transformed from revolutionary workers organizations fighting for socialism into agencies for finding “peace-loving” capitalist politicians and then helping them to ascend to supremacy within the capitalist parties. This very policy has led to such devastating defeats and demoralization in the past few decades that It may appear to some that there is no point in debating it again. But it is far from pointless. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the human race. A revolutionary class struggle policy is the only way to link the advanced sections of the working class to the great social revolutionary movements in the world today. And only these movements have prevented capitalism from pushing the world into the abyss of war. The militant students of Japan are striking more powerful blows for peace than a hundred Paris conferences – even if they were held – could dream of accomplishing. There are many independent radicals who agree with Khrushchev’s “peaceful coexistence” policy. Yet it is instructive that among these there is a growing number who refuse to go with the CP in its policy of supporting capitalist politicians. We differ with these socialists about many questions but we believe that their position is of vital importance to the future of the socialist movement. We think that their support of independent socialist electoral action, including support of the SWP candidates, despite differences they have with some of the points in the party’s program, will lead to a re-examination by them of the source of the CP’s ruinous policy. Such a re-examination would disclose, we believe, that there is a profound difference between peaceful coexistence as the policy of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky’s leadership, and the Stalinist concept of peaceful coexistence. In the first case, the Bolsheviks simply recognized that negotiations, trade agreements, concrete diplomatic and military arrangements, etc., between a workers state and capitalist countries was not only permissible but necessary. Trotsky was one of the main teachers of the socialist movement on this question, conducting many a battle against infantile “leftist” misconceptions on this score. But negotiations and concrete pacts are one thing and the political subordination of the working class parties to the political parties of their class enemies – for the sake of diplomatic deals – is something quite different. That is not peaceful coexistence – it is peaceful suicide. The special illusion dispensed by the SP-SDF has fared no better than those of the CP. The Social Democrats accept the premise of the whole cold-war lie: that the US is crusading for freedom against totalitarian tyranny. The function of socialists, according to the SP-SDF, is to be critical (constructively, of course) of how Washington conducts this “crusade for freedom” and to work in the two capitalist parties for more “progressive” and “liberal” methods in fighting the Soviet Union. It is, however, this very premise of the cold war that is now beginning to be questioned by the American people and particularly by the new generation of youth. The stream of lies and brazen provocations emanating from Washington during the recent crisis has shaken large sections of the population from complacent acceptance of the cold-war mythology. Doubt and distrust is heard in many quarters. Young people are asking: If they lie so automatically about spy planes, and then justify lying as the highest form of patriotism, maybe they are also lying when they claim that the US is fighting for freedom, truth and justice among men? Maybe there is something to the charge that they are really fighting to police the world for the almighty American dollar. Isn’t it monstrous, then, for people who claim to be socialists, to continue to subscribe to the Big Lie and cover it with the good name of socialism at this time? That is just what the recent convention of the SP-SDF has done. It refused even to demand that the US government disarm. |
It refused even to demand that the US government disarm. Instead it adopted what the New York Times described as a “liberal platform” on this issue. It decided furthermore not to put up candidates in the 1960 Presidential elections. The reasons for this were given by Norman Thomas in the spring issue of the Socialist Call: “The increasing complexity and difficulties of getting on the ballot in fifty states”; “the increasing costs of campaigning”; “the increased opposition of the AFL-CIO to any candidates who might draw votes from the candidates it endorses.” The first two reasons are certainly weighty considerations – as the SWP can testify. But the difficulties are not insurmountable in all the states – not if socialists believe what they say and take seriously the task of saying it not merely to themselves but to the working people and youth of the United States. The third reason is of a completely different order. The opposition of the labor bureaucrats to independent socialist campaigns is not a valid reason for abandoning the electoral field. It is rather one of the chief reasons for socialists to enter the elections. The official union leaders have foisted a political policy on labor that has left it wide open to the onslaught of reactionary, union-crippling legislation and reduced the organized working class to political impotence. They have imprisoned the unions in the party of the racist Dixiecrats; the party of the union-busting, open shop, corporate interests; the party that authored the notorious Kennedy-Landrum-Griffin Act; the party whose chief assumed the responsibility for dropping the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the party that launched the cold war, massacred millions of Koreans in Truman’s authorized “police action”; the party that organized and inspired the witch hunt, perpetrated the crude frame-up and the cruel murder of the Rosenbergs, and sent Morton Sobell to prison for thirty years. Should socialists cringe before the displeasure of labor officials whose political ties are not with the working class and the Negro people but with these capitalist enemies of labor? The SP-SDF thinks so, and the Communist party is completely at one with them in this respect. But we doubt that the rank and file of either the CP or the SP-SDF will carry out this policy with anything but revulsion; and many will break with it in the course of the campaign – even before they enter the voting booth. The SWP has entered the campaign with its candidates, Farrell Dobbs for President and Myra Tanner Weiss for Vice President, with the aim of arousing sentiment for a break with the capitalist political policy of the labor officials. The SWP candidates will call for the formation of a labor party, democratically based on the unions and the mass organizations of the Negro people. They will spread the socialist platform on all the great issues to millions of people. The hour-long television debate Dobbs had with a McCarthyite in Los Angeles, in which the standard slanders against socialism were refuted one after another before an audience of hundreds of thousands, is worth all the effort it took to launch the campaign. Many youngsters listening to that program got their first real view of socialism from a veteran union organizer and socialist leader. The 1960 election campaign has exceptional significance for us because for the first time in many years a new generation of radical youth is stirring to life and gaining its first political experience. It would be a historic crime to allow these precious replacements to be dispatched into the political graveyard of “work in the Democratic party.” If the SWP campaign did nothing more than to save this promising cadre of radical youth from such a fate it would be performing a service of incalculable value. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 29.1.2006 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss The Vindication Of Trotskyism Khrushchev’s Report on Stalin’s Crimes (Summer 1956) From International Socialist Review, Vol.27 No.4, Summer 1956, pp.79-83. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). The following article is based on a speech given in New York City, June 15 THE Soviet Union is today in a stronger position in relation to the capitalist world than at any point since the revolution of October 1917. It is sufficient to mention that 600 million people of China after expelling the imperialists and overthrowing the capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, are now allied to the Soviet Union. Economically, the USSR has attained with unprecedented speed the status of the second industrial power in the world. The authority and prestige of the Soviet Union is at an all-time high among the colonial and semi-colonial peoples who are fighting for their independence. It would seem that the regime in power in the USSR should be enjoying its greatest stability and popularity. And yet, there is unmistakable evidence that the very progress the Soviet Union has made, the improvement of its position in relation to world capitalism, and the enlargement of its orbit of influence, has brought about the eruption of the deepest contradictions in Soviet society. What are these contradictions? How will they be resolved? What place does the present turmoil in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have in the struggle for world socialism? These are the questions before us. The most recent clue to the nature of the crisis unfolding in the land of the October Revolution is the revelations issuing from the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union last February and in particular the report on Stalin made by Khrushchev to the closed session of the Congress. Let us therefore consider the most important revelations contained in Khrushchev’s speech: In the first group are those pertaining to Stalin’s regime of mass murder and terror. On this point Khrushchev admitted: The Moscow Trials of the thirties were frame-ups. The charge that the Trotskyists were spies, wreckers and terrorists was fabricated. The confessions that formed the basis of the Moscow Trials were obtained by means of psychological and physical torture summed up by Stalin in the formula: “Beat, beat, and again beat!” The assassination of Kirov, which was the starting point of the Moscow Trials, appears to have been carried out by Stalin’s secret police. The whole generation of Bolsheviks associated with Lenin in the leadership of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 was murdered, many of them after being tortured into confessing falsely that they were spies and terrorists. Frame-ups, false confessions and mass murder were practiced on tens of thousands of members of the Communist Party and hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants. Revolutionary legality and workers’ democracy were destroyed and replaced by police rule under the direct supervision of Stalin. The second group of Krushchev’s admissions relate to the question of nationalities. As you know, the Soviet Union is a federation of numerous Republics. The October 1917 revolution gave freedom and autonomy to the national minorities, who had lived under the oppression of Great Russian chauvinism in what was called “the Czarist prison of the peoples.” Under the Stalin regime, Khrushchev revealed a number of small nations were subjected to mass deportations to faraway places in the course of which millions perished. The third set of revelations deals with Stalin’s crimes and blunders as a war leader: Here Krushchev recounts how Stalin ignored all evidence of political reality and refused to believe Hitler would attack the Soviet Union. Thus, Khrushchev points out, the Soviet Union was unprepared economically and militarily for the fascist onslaught in 1941. Moreover, thousands of the best officers of the Red Army, from the company level up to the general staff had been liquidated in the purges and this badly disorganized the army. Stalin, according to Khrushchev, was demoralized and helpless in the first stage of the war. Later he exerted his authority to commit military blunders that in one instance alone cited by Khrushchev cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. In short, Khrushchev shows that contrary to his own words at the Nineteenth Congress, in which he assigns the credit for the victory of Russia in the war to “Stalin’s genius,” the truth was that Stalin’s regime brought the USSR to the edge of disaster during the war and cost the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians. The fourth group of Khrushchev’s counts denouncing Stalin pertain to the “cult of the individual.” Khrushchev goes into considerable detail on this point. He describes how Stalin replaced the government, the party, the Central Committee and the courts and established a one-man system of rule. He describes how Stalin demanded of one and all, not merely obedience to his command, but the utmost servility. Those who failed to shower Stalin with declarations of unbounded praise for his Godlike genius were immediately suspect and subsequently fell under Stalin’s terror. In connection with the cult of the individual Khrushchev relates how Stalin personally edited histories and biographies to falsely depict his role as the all-wise, infallible, genius-leader. The fifth group of revelations concern the relations of the Stalin regime to other workers’ states, notably Yugoslavia. It is likely that a fuller text of the speech will reveal a lot more regarding China. But the evidence contained in Khrushchev’s speech, plus what is already well known, establishes fully that Stalin adopted the same attitude toward the new workers’ states outside the Soviet Union as he did toward the national minorities within the USSR. The sixth and final point of Khrushchev’s indictment of Stalin deals with Soviet agriculture. Khrushchev shows that contrary to the myth that Stalin was a deep student of the agrarian question and the leader of the great social transformations in Russian agriculture since the revolution, he was in reality abysmally ignorant of the problem. |
According to Khrushchev, Stalin’s only contributions to the solution of agrarian problems consisted of sabotaging all serious efforts to alleviate severe crises and proposing fantastically unreasonable taxation. (At one point Stalin proposed to tax the peasants an amount greater than their total income for the given period.) Unrevealed Atrocities There are many things that Khrushchev did not reveal in his report. The atrocities against the leaders of Jewish culture were not mentioned. Neither was Stalin’s international murder-machine. Nor was anything said on how this machine was used in Spain, how it was used to liquidate Trotsky’s secretaries, and how it was used to assassinate Leon Trotsky himself. We can expect that more revelations will come and more details will be given on what was already admitted. The truth, as is well known, makes its way slowly, for long periods of time – but once it gains momentum it moves with great speed. Now it is irrefutably established that the Trotskyist movement told the world working class the truth about the crimes of Stalinism. Each and every crime revealed by Khrushchev was exposed by the Trotskyists many years ago. Any fair-minded person can verify this by consulting the record of our movement – merely by looking through the files of The Militant since 1928. * * * The Twentieth Congress disclosed one gigantic fact: The Russian workers are beginning the historic work of overthrowing the bureaucratic caste and restoring the democratic foundations of the revolution. This is the basis for a Marxist understanding of the feverish movement on the surface and at the summits of Soviet society. The US State Department propagandists are attempting to depict the Khrushchev revelations as a proof of the “inherent evil of communism.” * * * In the first place this pitiful effort rests on accepting the Stalinist falsehood that socialism has been victoriously achieved in one country – the Soviet Union, On that premise, it is, of course, not difficult to prove that socialism is not what the founders of the socialist movement said it would be. However, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and the whole Bolshevik party, including Stalin up to 1924, never dreamed of a reactionary utopian concept like achieving socialism within the boundaries of one country. The Russian Revolution established a society transitional to socialism. Socialism itself will be achieved only on the premise of the victorious revolution over capitalism in its main centers. The socialist society will be founded on the highest technological achievements of capitalism, as a world-wide productive system liberated from the fetters of national boundaries and capitalist private property. State Department Propaganda But let’s take the State Department propagandists on their own premise for a moment. If the crimes of the Stalin cult are the expression of the “evils of communism,” what is the exposure of these crimes ? Why are these crimes being repudiated? The New York Times, US News and World Report, and other authoritative spokesmen for Big Business, agree that the only plausible explanation for the repudiation of the Stalin cult – the only factor that can explain why the present rulers would take the grave risk of destroying the very keystone of the whole Stalinist structure, is the movement of the Soviet people from below. But they don’t dare say that this movement is pro-capitalist in its thought or direction! Any hopes they had, that an uprising against Stalinism in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union would favor the return of capitalism were smashed by the June 17, 1953 insurrection of the East German working class. This working-class insurrection, highly organized and magnificently disciplined, and embracing the entire East German industrial working class was anti-capitalist and socialist through and through. As a matter of fact, only the Stalinist bureaucrats, tried to pin the label of a pro-West, imperialist-inspired movement on this revolutionary uprising. The capitalists knew better, as all the evidence shows. They were therefore unable to intervene. Evidently, therefore, the so-called “evils of Communism” are being countered by an insurgent movement of the working people who have no thought of returning to capitalism but are bent on removing the barriers in the path to the free society of world socialism. And then, if the bureaucratic degeneration that gripped the first workers state in history are to be depicted as the “evils of communism” what term will the State Department propaganda flunkeys use to describe the two world wars, the world depression, the ten-year hell of Hitlerism, the 20-year rule of Mussolini and the dictatorship of the fascist butcher Franco? Are these not the expression of the “inherent evils of capitalism”? Correctly understood, Stalinism itself is an expression of the evils of capitalism besetting an isolated workers’ state. While the October Revolution established the foundations of a new social order, the weight of the Czarist past and the pressure of capitalist encirclement of a backward country imposed a cruel burden of bureaucratic parasitism and terror on the Russian people. * * * Khrushchev opened his speech with a dissertation on the views of Marx, Engels and Lenin on the “cult of the individual.” But although he uses the term “Marxist-Leninist” in practically every other paragraph of his speech, Khrushchev’s method has nothing in common with Marxist thought on this question. He reduces the question to one of modesty versus vanity. Marx was modest, he tells the audience. So was Engels; Lenin was very modest. But not Stalin. Stalin ceased to be modest and raised himself above the party and what is worse the Central Committee. Then he began to murder people who disagreed with him, and then still others for no reason at all. He began to commit all kinds of hideous crimes – all because he forgot that a Marxist-Leninist is modest. Empty Explanations Khrushchev says: “It is clear that in the situation of Socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country.” Then why the mass terror? |
Empty Explanations Khrushchev says: “It is clear that in the situation of Socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country.” Then why the mass terror? Khrushchev answers the question of “Why the Stalin cult?” with an empty tautology. The Stalin cult arose because Stalin raised himself above the Party and the Central Committee. It’s the same as explaining the crimes of Stalin by his criminal conduct. If a socialist society has been established, this signifies that mankind has raised its productive powers to the point where the class division of society has been eliminated. The elimination of the class struggle eliminates the need of a state with its special body of armed men to impose by force the rule of the dominant class. If the Soviet Union has indeed entered the domain of socialism, then, how explain the fact that instead of witnessing the withering away of the functions of the state, it experienced, during the last three decades, the enormous growth of an oppressive state apparatus that maintained its rule by perpetrating the most heinous crimes against those subjected to its rule. Surely, a Marxist-Leninist must see in such phenomena the expression of extremely acute, social contradictions. But, no, Khrushchev views the phenomenon of the growth of a repressive state which practiced mass murder for 22 years according to his reckoning, as a result of an erroneous theory, that somehow got into Stalin’s head, namely, the theory that precisely with the advent of socialism class strife sharpens. How did this theory get into Stalin’s head despite the achievement of a socialist society? Apparently it is associated with Stalin’s tendency to lack modesty and to raise himself above the Central Committee. Purely arbitrary and half-baked idealist constructions! In Khrushchev’s explanations there is not a trace of the Marxist method of materialist dialectic in which the role of the individual in history is regarded as a function of the struggle of classes and social strata within classes. Trotsky’s Method The method of the cult of the individual is not abandoned in this type of explanation – it is only turned inside out. Instead of a god – we are presented with a devil. Contrast to this method the method of Trotsky, who 20 years ago, in his basic work The Revolution Betrayed, explained the Stalin cult as follows: “The increasingly insistent deification of Stalin is, with all its elements of caricature, a necessary element of the regime. The bureaucracy has need of an inviolable super-arbiter, a first consul if not an emperor, and it raises upon its shoulders him who best responds to its claim for lordship. That ‘strength of character’ of the leader which so enraptures the literary dilletantes of the West, is in reality the sum total of the collective pressure of a caste which will stop at nothing in defense of its position. Each one of them at his post is thinking: L’etat – c’est moi. [I am the State.] In Stalin each one easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.” The “personification of the bureaucracy” – that is the clue to understanding the role of Stalin. The bureaucracy that rose to power after the Russian Revolution is an historically illicit force. It came to power on the wave of reaction – in a country exhausted by years of imperialist war, revolution and civil war. The vanguard of the proletariat was bled white. The great ocean of petty peasant enterprise predominated over industry. The initial defeats of the European revolution further sapped the strength and revolutionary vitality of the Russian workers. With every defeat of a workers revolution abroad the bureaucratic tendencies in the Soviet Union were strengthened and with the strengthening of the bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union it was able to crush the revolutionary wing of the party of Lenin. And then utterly crush the party itself. Bureaucratic Usurpation The bureaucracy expressed its hunger for privilege amidst universal poverty in its adherence to Stalin. Stalin had the best qualifications for the job. His record as an old Bolshevik provided the necessary disguise for the process of bureaucratic usurpation. That’s why Khrushchev must say over and over again in his speech that Stalin was politically right as against Trotskyism. He means by that to justify the triumph of the bureaucratic caste over the Bolshevik party of Lenin and Trotsky. Fundamentally that is what the great struggle was about. It was a struggle between a bureaucratic reaction which lifted the Stalinist oligarchy to power and the proletarian Left Opposition led by Trotsky that fought to defend the Bolshevik party, the Soviets and the trade unions from strangulation by the bureaucracy. It was the re-enactment on a vast historical scale, of the same kind of struggle that has taken place in many unions, which started under fighting leadership, practiced wide internal democracy, conducted a policy of militant class struggle, reached out the hand of solidarity to workers in every industry – but subsequently, under different social conditions, with the receding of the class struggle, became bureaucratized and headed by what Daniel DeLeon described as the “labor lieutenants of capitalism in the ranks of the working class.” Khrushchev Refuted Khrushchev says: “We must affirm that the party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyists, rightists and bourgeois nationalists and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. The ideological fight was carried on successfully ... Here Stalin played a positive role.” The facts refute Khrushchev as completely on this question as on the later frame-ups in the Moscow Trials. Trotskyism was not defeated by ideological means. The record shows that bureaucratic usurpers, utilizing the pressure of a deep social reaction to the revolution, silenced their opponents from the beginning by methods of frame-ups and terror. |
The record shows that bureaucratic usurpers, utilizing the pressure of a deep social reaction to the revolution, silenced their opponents from the beginning by methods of frame-ups and terror. If Stalin defeated Trotsky’s Bolshevik opposition by “ideological means” what were thousands of Trotskyists doing in jail from 1927 on? The Stalinist faction did not fight for Leninism. On the contrary, as documentary evidence shows, Lenin opened a fight in the last years of his life against the Stalinist faction as the expression of the ominous bureaucratic tendency. Lenin fought the rise of Stalin and Stalinism from his deathbed and Trotsky continued the fight after Lenin’s death. Khrushchev says that Stalin was right in the fight against Trotskyism because without that fight Russia would have failed to industrialize or collectivize agriculture. One is almost compelled to stand in awe before the sweep and audacity of this lie. Actually, it was the Trotskyist opposition that as early as 1923 proposed that the Soviet Union embark on a central industrial plan and that a struggle be opened to collectivize agriculture as a weapon against the growing kulak (capitalist) element in the countryside. This proposal was hooted down derisively by the Stalinist faction. Trotsky was called a fantastic super-industrialist, a dreamer and a charlatan. Stalin, the great expert on agriculture, said what the Russian peasant needed was not a plan but a good rain. For his proposal to fight the growing power of the rich peasant kulak, Trotsky was accused of “underestimation of the peasantry.” In a bloc with the right wing of the party, led by Bukharin, the Stalin faction conducted reactionary propaganda among the kulak elements to incite them against Trotskyism. They didn’t even refrain from using anti-Semitism in this campaign. Thus, while leaning on the social pressure of the capitalist elements, the bureaucracy throttled the opposition and expelled it from the party, drove the workers who supported the Left Opposition out of the factories and opened a reign of terror. Left Opposition Confirmed Within months after the expulsion of Trotsky, the position of the Left Opposition was confirmed to the hilt. The kulak threat, which the Stalinists claimed did not even exist threatened to engulf the Soviet regime. The Stalinist faction then made a 180-degree turn. They took over Trotsky’s program, and applied it. Industrialization? The first five-year plan was launched and it quickly confirmed the Left Opposition’s estimates of the possibilities of planned economy. However, the bureaucracy gave its own distorted version to these measures – relying not on the creative power of the masses but on bureaucratic decree. These historical questions are of urgent importance to the revolutionary movement. Not a single question confronting the radical workers today can be understood without tracing the struggle waged by Trotskyism from 1923 down to the present day. And the struggle of Trotskyism was only a continuation of the line of struggle of Marx, Engels and Lenin as it was tested and enriched by the October revolution. Take the question of peaceful coexistence and the peaceful road to socialism – these so-called new theories of the Twentieth Congress, revising Lenin’s conception of our epoch as “the epoch of imperialist war, proletarian revolution and colonial uprisings.” Khrushchev and Company have not announced new theories, as the Stalinist leader in the US, Eugene Dennis, would have us believe. Peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism is the basic theory of Stalinism. That question was fought out in the great dispute over the theory of “socialism in one country” versus the Leninist-Trotskyist conception of permanent revolution. The peaceful road to socialism? A bloc with the liberal capitalist? A multi-class coalition government? That was the program of the reformist right wing of the Second International which was vigorously opposed by Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Liebknecht. In the Russian workers’ movement these were the questions that demarcated Bolshevism and Menshevism since 1903. Bolshevism and Menshevism It was the essence of Menshevism to seek to ally the working class with the liberal bourgeoisie. Such an alliance results in the defeat of the proletariat, with the liberals turning up in the camp of reaction. The essence of Bolshevism, defended by Lenin and Trotsky from 1905 through 1917 and to the end of their lives, was to organize the working class independently, against the parties of capitalism. The arguments of the CP leaders about why we must work in the Democratic party are the very arguments, the sophistries of the lesser evil, that Lenin waged a life-long struggle against. It is all the more important to go back to the basic teachings of Lenin on these principled questions because his name and authority are invoked by the Stalinist falsifiers – to support the very theories and arguments Lenin demolished. The Basic Question The question of class collaboration versus class struggle – this is at bottom the question dividing Stalinism and Trotskyism in the United States, in the Soviet Union and throughout the world. The Daily Worker editors berate themselves for having blindly and subserviently parroted all the lies of Stalin. Why don’t they ask themselves: How did it happen that a revolutionary party, which by its very nature must be headed by critical-minded independent leaders, tested in the class struggle, became headed by spineless bureaucrats who defended every crime, no matter how monstrous, that issued from the Kremlin? The answer isn’t hard to find. The CP in the US, like all Communist Parties, was destroyed as an independent revolutionary party, following the expulsion of the Trotskyists in 1928. |
The CP in the US, like all Communist Parties, was destroyed as an independent revolutionary party, following the expulsion of the Trotskyists in 1928. The Stalinist bureaucracy used its power and prestige to pervert the Comintern into its factional instrument. All communist leaders who opposed this were bureaucratically driven out of their respective parties. Those who were willing to become the creatures of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR lost their capacity to be revolutionists at home. They lost their class bearings. They became capable, as a matter of course, of any deed of treachery. The position of the Soviet Union in relation to the capitalist world has, as we stated in the beginning, become considerably stronger since World War II. At the same time the power of the Stalinist regime has been undermined. For those who identified the destiny of the Soviet Union with Stalinism, this comes as a completely unexpected and bewildering phenomenon. The Trotskyists, however, foresaw and were completely prepared for this development. They alone analyzed the basic contradiction in Soviet society as the contradiction between the new property forms of nationalized and planned economy established as a result of the October revolution and the domination of the workers’ state by a bureaucratic oligarchy. This contradiction, Trotskyism taught, manifested itself in the struggle between the Soviet working class and the dictatorship of the bureaucratic caste. The fate of the struggle between the workers and the bureaucracy was tied to the fate of the world-wide struggle of classes. Stalinism, the politics of the bureaucracy, was born and prospered in an epoch of defeats of proletarian revolution – it was the refraction of capitalist pressure and reaction within the Soviet Union and the world workers’ movement. A major factor in promoting defeats, Stalinism became strengthened by them. The Thunder of Revolution But despite the obstacle of Stalinism the anti-capitalist forces in the world and the Soviet Union have become enormously strengthened. The Soviet working class, now 50-million strong and augmented by the industrial working class of Eastern Europe, expresses this profound shift in the world relationship of forces by a revolutionary resurgence. The Twentieth Congress heard the echo of this revolutionary thunder in the halls of the bureaucracy. Everything they did there and everything they have done since is in the nature of panicky preparations for the onrushing revolutionary storm. The world revolution and the world working class movement have entered a new stage marked by the appearance of the Soviet masses in the political arena. This stage can only culminate in the downfall of the Soviet bureaucratic caste, the victory of Russian bolshevism and the triumph of the world socialist revolution. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 28.1.2006 |
Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murry Weiss The Fracturing of the Monolith (Spring 1961) From International Socialist Review, Vol.22 No.2, Spring 1961, pp.44-47, 54. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). Despite the claims of cold-war propaganda the anti-capitalist revolutions have created for the Kremlin “a world they never wanted” THE Moscow-Peking dispute over “peaceful coexistence” is a fresh indication that the Kremlin’s monolithic control exercised in Stalin’s heyday over the Communist parties throughout the world is disintegrating. Nothing but good can come from this for the cause of revolutionary socialism, as Moscow’s control has been wielded essentially for the preservation of the status quo. That is the real meaning of the Stalinist conception of “peaceful coexistence,” which Khrushchev seeks to perpetuate and which the Chinese CP leaders – though they don’t depart from the basic Stalinist policy – challenge in its current application. Stalin imposed his reactionary foreign policy on the Communist parties thirty-five years ago as an extension of the bureaucratic totalitarian rule he had imposed on the Soviet Union. Once Stalinism secured its grip on the Soviet workers state, destroyed the democracy of the Bolshevik party, the Soviets and the trade unions, it was only a matter of time before his police regime extended over the Communist parties everywhere else. The Communist International was scuttled as a revolutionary force. Supinely subservient to Stalin’s bureaucratic machine, the Communist parties substituted class-collaboration for class struggle and reformism for revolution. The international working class has paid heavily for the domination of the Stalinist monolith over major sections of the working-class movement. Many revolutionary opportunities were lost, and many actual revolutionary struggles were betrayed. Fascism came to power as a result of the Stalinist course, and the second world war was rendered inevitable. The fascist onslaught in that war nearly destroyed the Soviet Union. The Stalinist policies of class collaboration achieved their crassest expression during World War II. The Communist parties desisted from all class-struggle activities in those “democratic” imperialist countries allied with the Soviet Union and from national-independence activities in the colonial possessions of the “democratic” imperialists. On the other hand, Stalin’s chauvinist propaganda – so alien to the spirit of Leninist internationalism – lumped the German people together with their Nazi overlords. This repelled the German workers and helped prevent them from making common cause with the Soviet Union. The Grand Alliance The opportunist policy of the Kremlin was based on the “Grand Alliance” of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. Stalin undertook to help stabilize the capitalist system throughout the world under this arrangement. All Communist parties were strictly to refrain from any threats to the capitalist order. In return, the victorious imperialist powers were not to threaten the Soviet system in Russia nor to interfere with Moscow’s political control of Eastern Europe. In this way, the world was to be divided among the Big Three on a status quo basis. This was the essential content of the agreements concluded at the Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam international conferences between 1943 and 1945. To the best of his ability Stalin kept his promises. Several examples will bear this out. Thus, in Greece, a revolutionary struggle against the Nazi occupation was in progress during 1943 and 1944. It was conducted by the ELAS, primarily a workers and peasants partisan movement, led by the Communist party. ELAS victories over the Nazis, raised the perspective of a workers and farmers government in Greece. But British imperialism didn’t cherish the prospect of winning the war against the Germans, only to lose Greece (a virtual British colony prior to the war) to the workers. The revolutionary Greek workers looked to the Soviet Union for guidance. They identified Stalin’s regime with the Russian Revolution and hoped, by extending this revolution to their own country, to open new, liberating vistas. But in accordance with Stalin’s pledges to his imperialist partners, the Greek Communist party leaders were instructed to allow the British to re-occupy Athens and to place their puppet once more on the Greek throne. Stalin’s service to British imperialism won him a compliment from Churchill. “Stalin always carries out his agreements,” Churchill said. The French partisans also had state power within their grasp as they fought the Nazi occupation. Many capitalists who had collaborated with the Germans (it was among the capitalists that the Nazi occupiers found their principal support) fled the country in fear of retribution at the hands of the workers. Others went into hiding until the arrival of the US troops. It was common for the newspapers in those days to describe France as a “power vacuum” and to express fears as to how the “vacuum” would be filled. But Stalin kept his promise that communism would not take over. After the Nazis evacuated Paris, the French CP told the workers, who had been the main force in the partisan movement, to give up their arms. The CP leaders joined in bolstering a new government headed by De Gaulle. One more example should be cited – that of the policy pursued by the Communist party of this country during World War II. The right-wing labor officials, as might be expected, lined up behind the American capitalist class during the war. |
The right-wing labor officials, as might be expected, lined up behind the American capitalist class during the war. They imposed a “no strike” policy on the unions. And the Communist party collaborated to the hilt with the right-wing bureaucrats. They even outdid the latter in trying to enforce the no-strike pledge. In addition the CP leaders told the Negro people that now was not the time to fight for civil rights – “Don’t you know there is a war on?” they truculently asked. They also endorsed the government’s attacks on civil liberties. But the capitalists showed Stalin no gratitude in the postwar period. They launched the cold-war against the Soviet Union and began a merciless witch-hunt against the Communist party in the US The right-wing labor bureaucrats – the Stalinists’ erstwhile partners in curbing the unions ranks – of course promptly enlisted in the cold war and in the witch hunt. The foregoing examples disclose what the Kremlin’s “peaceful coexistence” policy looks like in practice. But Stalin’s hopes for an indefinite preservation of the status quo – one which would allow the privilege-seeking Soviet bureaucracy to rule unhampered at home – was rudely shattered by the course of history. Not only did American imperialism break the status-quo arrangements by launching the cold war, but in a number of key areas of the globe the revolution broke through despite Kremlin policy and made impossible any lasting world stabilization by agreement between the Kremlin and imperialism. Stalin lived up to his Teheran-Yalta-Potsdam commitments as long as he could. He even attempted for a time to maintain his deal with the imperialists in Eastern Europe. Capitalism was to be preserved there through a coalition of the Communist parties with the bourgeois parties, although these countries were recognized to be clearly within a Soviet zone of influence. To preserve capitalism meant that the working-class movement had to be curbed. And the Red Army commanders actually threatened the workers with reprisals should they undertake to change the property relations. But the East European capitalists had no stomach for the Red Army occupation even on those terms. They fled to the West with whatever wealth they could salvage hoping to come back one day in the wake of imperialist armies. The West, through the Marshall Plan, attempted to retrieve the concessions they had given Stalin, thus breaking their end of the “peaceful coexistence” bargain. It was only then that the Kremlin responded by abolishing capitalism in Eastern Europe and by establishing planned economies. A Distorted Revolution This social transformation was carried out by military and bureaucratic methods, preventing the working class from accomplishing the change in its own name and with its own revolutionary objectives. The development of the Eastern European countries was further distorted when the plans were so drawn up and executed as to serve principally the needs of economic reconstruction in the Soviet Union. In plain words, the Kremlin fleeced Eastern Europe. Nevertheless the economic aid which the industrialized sections of East Europe are now able to provide for the struggling underdeveloped countries was made possible by the new property relations. Moreover, the new mode of production – despite the Stalinist tyranny that had been imposed alongside of it – won firm adherence from the East European working class. The new social relations gave rise to the demand for socialist democracy, and this demand led, in 1956, to revolutionary upheavals against bureaucratic despotism in Poland and Hungary. In the creation of workers councils in these two countries during the revolutionary events, informed observers saw the revival of the institutions of workers’ democracy – the Soviets – which in October 1917 replaced the institutions of capitalist rule in Russia. Thus by transcending his policy of “peaceful coexistence” in Eastern Europe, Stalin unwittingly laid the basis for new revolutions which though aimed immediately against his brand of dictatorship, promised to carry the anti-capitalist struggle onto higher and firmer ground. But even before the explosions in Hungary and Poland, the Yugoslav Communist Party had brought the conflict between the Kremlin and revolution to general public attention. The Yugoslav CP had led the working class and peasantry in their struggle against the Nazi occupation. The Yugoslav king was in exile in London, waiting for the British to return him to his throne. To accomplish this, the British armed and financed a highly publicized “partisan” force under the reactionary General Michaelovitch. This outfit spent most of its energy fighting not the Germans but the Proletarian Brigades organized by Tito and his associates. Stalin, in accordance with his agreements with the British, ordered the Yugoslav Communists to disband the Proletarian Brigades into an amorphous partisan movement and to establish harmonious relations with Michaelovitch, the British agent. He also ordered the Yugoslavs to confine their objectives to defeating the Nazis militarily. The Yugoslav Communist party had been under Moscow control up to that time, but under the given circumstances the leaders found it impossible to carry out Stalin’s orders. The struggle against the Nazis could not be waged without rousing the proletarian and peasant mass against all their exploiters – the native capitalists and landlords (most of whom collaborated with the Nazis) as well as the fascist occupiers. The Titoists subsequently learned that Stalin’s sabotage of their struggle consisted not only in trying to foist a ruinous policy on them – which fortunately they disregarded. Stalin also refused to send them arms and medicines and actually sent this vitally needed material aid to Michaelovitch. And while the Tito-led partisans fought the Nazis at the front, Michaelovitch shot at them from the rear – with Russian as well as British-made bullets. To win their national-liberationist struggle the Yugoslavs had to carry through a socialist revolution. By 1948, the Yugoslav CP had established a workers state and launched a planned economy. Unlike other CPs in Eastern Europe, it did not owe power to Soviet military occupation. |
Unlike other CPs in Eastern Europe, it did not owe power to Soviet military occupation. Stalin feared the potential independence that possesion of a popular base in the country gave Tito and his associates and began maneuvering to get rid of them so as to absorb Yugoslavia on the same terms as the other East European countries. When the Yugoslav leaders resisted, this led to near military collision between the two countries, and the Titoites were once more compelled to mobilize the working masses in defiance of the Kremlin. Tito’s later deals with imperialism in no way diminishes the principled significance of the earlier struggles. The Kremlin had clashed with the Yugoslavs when the latter were moving left. The Yugoslavs had successfully defied the Kremlin and thus established the first great schism in in the Stalinist monolith. East Germany The next big open break appeared in June 1953, a few months after Stalin’s death. Two million East German workers organized a general strike for economic improvements and democratic rights. The presence of 300,000 Kremlin troops did not deter them. The German Communist party was temporarily shattered by this uprising. Sections of the bureaucracy turned toward the strike movement; other sections stood aside waiting for its force to spend itself so that they could inflict punitive action on the workers. The Stalinist military and police terror had temporarily lost its effect. The East German workers did not win that round of the struggle, but the repercussions of their revolt spread throughout the world. All of Eastern Europe was shaken. And in the Soviet Arctic Circle, the political prisoners in the Vorkuta concentration camps waged a political strike upon hearing the news from East Germany. Khrushchev Reveals New and insistent demands were made on Stalin’s heirs by the Soviet workers and students. The pressure of fifty million Soviet workers on the ruling bureaucracy was unmistakably evident at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist party in February, 1956. It forced Khrushchev to make his “secret-session” speech denouncing Stalin. Khrushchev sought to shift the blame for bureaucratic tyranny from the shoulders of the parasitic caste of privilege-seekers, in whose interests Stalin had ruled, to those of the individual dead leader. He wanted to prevent the Russian workers from organizing against the bureaucracy and to raise their hopes that conditions would steadily improve now that Stalin was out of the way. The result of Khrushchev’s admissions about Stalin’s true role was to create new cracks in the world Stalinist monolith and to deepen the fissures already opened by the extension of the revolution. It was in the wake of the Twentieth Congress that the Polish and Hungarian uprising broke out. In both countries sections of the Communist parties supplied much of the leadership to the insurgent workers and students. As monolithic structures, these parties disintegrated in the red-hot fires of revolt – with their worker and intellectual adherents lining up against the bureaucrats. In Hungary, the Soviet bureaucracy was able to defeat the workers and youth only through the naked armed force of the Russian troops. In Poland, Khrushchev allowed Gomulka, one of Stalin’s purge victims, to take the helm of the country but prescribed strict limits within which reforms might be carried out. The threat of Russian military intervention kept the Polish revolutionaries from pressing their demands for a regime of workers councils. Since October 1956, when Gomulka came to power, his government has taken back many of the freedoms and economic concessions won in the revolutionary days. However, the Gomulka regime still retains a measure of independence from the Kremlin, testifying to the continuing tendency of world Stalinism to produce cleavages within itself. There was hardly a single Communist party anywhere in the world that was not shaken to its roots by Khrushchev’s revelations at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist party and by the Hungarian and Polish upheavals. American, Italian and Chinese party leaders openly criticized the Soviet leadership for not going far enough in attacking the Stalin cult or for its handling of the Hungarian uprising. In the Soviet CP itself, the Twentieth Congress and its aftermath touched off two major power struggles within the bureaucracy from which Khrushchev emerged victorious both times. By the end of 1957, the unity of world Stalinism as well as the unity within the separate Communist parties had been more or less restored. But many genuinely revolutionary forces who had heretofore been held captive in the Stalinist movement were liberated from it as a result of the crisis that shook the monolith in 1956. In this way new gains for the revolution were made possible. For example, in Japan last year, the leadership of the magnificent demonstrations against US imperialism was in the hands of left-wing formations which had broken off from the CP sometime after the Hungarian events. (One of these groups had fused with the Trotskyists.) Significantly, too, the schisms in international Stalinism had weakened the influence of the Japanese CP and thereby lessened the effect of the party leaders’ attempts to place a brake on the demonstrations. Thus as a direct result of its international crisis, Stalinism was being outflanked on the left. An even more outstanding example of this outflanking is the victory of the socialist revolution in Cuba, which by-passed the Communist party entirely. Unhampered by Stalinist ideology, the cadres led by Fidel Castro learned from experience that their revolution could not be confined within a bourgeois-democratic framework, that the realization of their objectives required the creation of a workers state and a planned economy. The Cuban revolution in turn widened the already existing fissures in the Stalinist movement, permitting fresh, revitalized forces to regroup and push toward new revolutionary victories. Moscow-Peking Meanwhile, the unity of the world Stalinist movement, recemented in 1957, has again been disrupted by the current Moscow-Peking dispute over summitry. |
Moscow-Peking Meanwhile, the unity of the world Stalinist movement, recemented in 1957, has again been disrupted by the current Moscow-Peking dispute over summitry. This dispute began in the summer of 1958, but manifested itself as a difference of doctrinal pronouncements in September 1959. The Chinese CP leaders insisted then that any peace-like moves of the US government were in reality designed to screen imperialist war preparations. The Soviet CP leaders, on the other hand, praised President Eisenhower for joining with Khrushchev in establishing the so-called “Geneva spirit” and declared that his intentions were of the best. After the U-2 incident last year disrupted the “Geneva spirit” the Soviet CP leaders have aimed at restoring it at a new summit conference with Kennedy. The Chinese leaders, on the other hand, have denounced the Democratic administration in the same terms as its predecessor. Moscow has emphasized the need to revise Lenin’s teachings that imperialism breeds war, whereas Peking has reaffirmed them. Moscow also proclaims the possibility of peaceful evolution to socialism in “democratic” capitalist countries, whereas Peking upholds the classic Marxist-Leninist standpoint that the capitalist class will seek to block, by violent means if necessary, the change to socialism anywhere in the world. Although the Soviet CP leadership and the Chinese CP leadership forego naming one another in their denunciations of “dogmatism” and “revisionism,” and although they have joined in common resolutions, their dispute is known to be bitter and deep-seated. And if Moscow now elevates “peaceful coexistence” to the status of a new Marxist “scientific” principle and Peking publicly subscribes to this doctrinal pronouncement, the struggle between them will nevertheless continue, muffled but irrepressible. Its roots are too deep to be covered by new terminology. Indeed, though waged between two groups of Stalinist-type bureaucrats, what underlies the conflict is once more the clash between revolution and the reactionary nature of Stalinism. For the Maoists, in leading China’s revolutionary upheaval – second in importance only to the Russian Revolution of 1917 – had their own set of “experiences” with the Kremlin. Stalin had a consistent policy of opposition to the socialist revolution in China dating back to 1925. Moscow at that time forced the Chinese Communist party leadership to support Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, a policy which resulted in a counterrevolutionary bloodbath of workers and peasants, as Chiang established his brutal dictatorship. Again, at Potsdam, Stalin agreed that China should be a neutral country under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. In 1945, the Soviet government recognized Chiang’s regime as the lawful government of China although he had already opened civil war against the Chinese Communist party. As the civil war unfolded, the revolutionary workers and peasants of China rose to free themselves from ancient feudal enslavement as well as from the exploitation of foreign and domestic capitalists. Chiang, acting for the imperialists and the landlords, sought to crush the revolution by means of a liberal supply of US arms. All to no avail. The revolution proved to be more powerful than American imperialism, than the Kuomintang – and than the policies of Stalin. The Chinese CP leaders, though they sought at first to abide by Stalin’s deals, had to violate them or face defeat in the civil war. After their conquest of state power in 1949, Mao and his associates still tried to keep the revolution within bourgeois-democratic channels, in accordance with the established Stalinist policies for underdeveloped countries. But in 1950, American imperialism counterattacked. It intervened in the Korean civil war, hoping to use Korea as a base against China. US troops massacred millions of Koreans and Chinese in the effort to halt the tide of revolution in Asia. This, however, accelerated the revolution in China forcing the Chinese CP to expropriate all foreign capitalist holdings and to turn in the direction of a planned economy. Although the hot war in Asia came to an end. the Chinese CP leaders have remained locked in struggle with American imperialism to this day. Washington refuses to extend diplomatic recognition to Peking and uses the Chinese territory of Taiwan – ninety miles from the mainland – as a staging area for further attacks on the Chinese revolution. The Kremlin, in the last few years, has evidently sought to conclude “peaceful coexistence” deals with American imperialism without giving the Chinese the slightest guarantee that such agreements would provide for the end of US non-recognition of China. Nor does the Kremlin seem to have been seriously pressing for the evacuation of American forces from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese CP leaders, as a result, don’t trust Khrushchev to protect China’s interests in his negotiations with imperialism and have put his policy of seeking summit conferences with imperialism in question. In this way, the problems of the defense of the Chinese revolution, whose victory Stalin’s policies never provided for in the first place, have created a new fissure in the Stalinist monolith. Every Communist party in the world is bound in time to be affected by the Moscow-Peking division. For nearly four decades, the working class struggle for socialism has been perverted by Stalinism. It seemed to many people that the Soviet bureaucracy, through its manipulation of the Communist parties, possessed an unassailable monolithic structure capable of indefinitely maintaining its control over the revolutionary sections of the proletariat. The post-war period has seen the overturn of capitalism in Yugoslavia, Eastern Europe, China and, most recently, Cuba. As a result, the Stalinist monolith has been fractured in many places – although it is certainly not yet shattered. The fate of the world revolution is tied to the further disintegration of Stalinism and its eventual pulverization. Ever since 1924, the Trotskyists, equipped only with the ideological weapons of Marx and Lenin have fought against the Stalinist bureaucracy. |
Today the power of revolution is delivering hammer blows against it. This will help immeasurably in assembling forces within a genuine world revolutionary socialist party whose ascendancy in the working-class movement is essential to the victory of world socialism. Top of page Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 29.1.2006 |
Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Murray Weiss CP-Frankensteen Forces Propose Aid to FBI Hounding of Unions (22 November 1941) From The Militant, Vol. V No. 48, 29 November 1941, p. 2. Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL). LOS ANGELES, Nov. 22. – The Stalinists have found a new way to aid the Gestapo-FBI to hound militant union men. Last week at the North American Aircraft local of the United Automobile Workers, CIO, in Los Angeles, they attempted to push through a resolution calling for the establishment of a union “Fact Finding Committee” of ten to ferret out all information concerning activities of workers which “hamper the progress of national defense.” The information thus gathered could then be distorted by the FBI and other anti-labor forces to persecute the Union and its members. Regular union activity could be lumped indiscriminately under the heading of activities obstructive to “national defence,” and linked with “subversive activities.” It will be recalled that the Stalinists who led the North American strike last June were themselves victims of the FBI and the Army officials who took over the plant. Some of the secondary Stalinist leaders in the North American local are still being victimized, by being denied their jobs, for their participation in that strike. They have been charged with being “subversive.” Militants Opposed An extremely heated discussion took place on the resolution. Militant workers of all political opinions launched a vigorous attack against the Stalinist-Frankensteen machine. They pointed to the obvious danger of this committee being used to persecute and get rid of militant union men. They insisted that it was treachery to the interests of the labor movement to call the labor-hating, union-busting FBI into the affairs of the union. Highly significant was the action of a group of young Stalinists who split openly with the Stalinist fraction on this issue. They fought side by side with the militants in defeating this vicious resolution. The Stalinist-Frankensteen machine in control of the local was forced to retreat. This obviously reactionary plan for an FBI “Fact Finding Committee” within the union aroused such a storm of protest that the chairman quickly suppressed all discussion and adjourned the meeting. The resolution was referred to a committee of three for “study.” Progressive unionists in all industries must be on guard against this campaign which represents the latest treachery of the Communist Party. Under the guise of innocuous-sounding “fact finding committees” the Stalinists are seeking to assist the FBI in its efforts to strait-jacket the labor movement. Top of page Murry Weiss Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page Last updated: 22 March 2019 |
D. D. Kosambi Exasperating Essays On The Trial of Sokrates In the year 399 B.C, an Athenian dikastery, consisting of a panel of 500 citizens, sentenced to death an aged compatriot named Sokrates. Two accounts of the case have come down to us, both by pupils and admirers of the accused: Plato and Xenophon. A comparison shows that the first at least is coloured by the literary ability of the reporter. It is reasonably clear from both that Sokrates did not defend himself on legalitarian grounds, but on those of what might be called the rights of man as regards freedom of speech. The legal aspect of the case can be seen fully discussed in any book that deals with causes celebres; the trial, in fact, is usually the first of any historically arranged series of famous trials. And jurists, Lord Birkenhead among them, come rather shamefacedly to be sure- to the conclusion that as the law existed in that age, the verdict was justified. What gives the trial its interest is not the constitutional problem but the personality of the philosopher himself, which has grown enormously with the passing of centuries. Plato considered him the wisest, justest, and best of all men that he had ever known (concluding sentence of Phaedon); but there was no public regret at his death in Athens, or elsewhere in Greece. The arch-driveller Plutarch did not see fit to include him for biographical purposes among the great men of antiquity (not that this proves very much, as Epaminondas is also omitted). But the trial has an aspect of martyrdom, inasmuch as the prisoner at the bar deliberately baited the jury and took a high tone with his judges; he preferred the alternative of a death sentence to that of stopping to teach and discuss; moreover, the law as administered gave him a certain amount of time in which escape into exile was possible, and actually arranged by his friends, but refused indignantly by himself. He waited thirty days in prison with chains on his legs, and calmly drank off his cup of poison at the end. The nature of the charge was that Sokrates was a perverter of youth. This looks startling, but is true in that those who listened to him were more apt to be young men than old, and that their respect for established institutions was almost certain to be dissolved by his methods. It is of interest to Marxists that his method was the dialectic one, questioning and cross questioning, showing up the contradictions in a plausible and even accepted statement till, by a succession of negations, some sort of a valid conclusion was reached. By this, he is given the position of the very founder of moral philosophy, as he raised questions on every sort of ethical problem that could affect any person. Nothing of his has survived except what appears through Plato's Dialogues; on the other hand, Plato, Boswell- like, has allowed his own views, if he had any, to appear only through the mouth of his Guru. But there is no doubt that Sokrates's questionings dispersed the mist of vague belief that surrounded the mind of the citizens-at-large in Athens, as it surrounds those of citizens-at-large anywhere today. Arguments on the trial have too often been based on the susceptibility.of democracy to weaknesses of the crowd-mind. Most historians take up one position or the other in this matter, for or against democracy. Even our own Jawaharlal draws the conclusion, "Evidently governments do not like people who are always trying to find out things; they do not like the search for truth" (Glimpses of World History vol. I, p. 68). This view would seem quite natural considering the political circumstances of the date of writing and the government of the day in India. But I propose to examine the matter a little closer, as regards the trial in question. Athens can hardly be called a democracy in the modern sense of the word, as the vast mass of the population had little in the way of political power. The slaves, women, and foreign traders or foreign craftsmen (the metics) had no rights to speak of, though the last class did receive a much fairer deal by law than elsewhere-which accounts for a great deal of Athenian, progress in industry and trade. The citizen population was roughly graded by income, though old tribal divisions persisted and were revised as necessary. Taxes were also graded, and office was usually restricted to the wealthiest, who had to pay very heavily for it by bearing the costs of entertaining the whole (free) populace at certain annual festivities. Legal power vested in the citizens as a body; they alone had the right to bear arms; every citizen had to serve by turn also as a paid juror, the vote of the jury being binding in both civil and criminal cases upon the magistrate. The whole constitution after Kleisthenes implies a high degree of culture in the male citizen population, and understanding of the laws, particularly as there were no lawyers even for court business. This contention is borne out by the brilliant literature of the period, best of all by the dramas of the age which were meant for the entertainment of the general public, but have remained a model of the art for all times. The philosopher was aged seventy at the time of his trial, and had led an exemplary public life except for his unfortunate habit of "perverting youth". He began life as sculptor, but left the field, to Pheidias and others of that rank, to betake himself to an incessant examination of the foundations of every possible contemporary belief. This did not improve his material circumstances, as he despised the sophists (to whose class he nevertheless belonged) who charged a fee for teaching the arts of examination and defence of any cause, so necessary in view of the forensic duties of every Athenian citizen; it decidedly soured the temper of his spouse Xantippe, who has had no sympathy at all from history for managing the household on a minute and irregular income. |
it decidedly soured the temper of his spouse Xantippe, who has had no sympathy at all from history for managing the household on a minute and irregular income. Sokrates fought with vigour and distinction on the battlefield of Delium. At the naval battle of Arginusac eight commanders allowed the joy of victory to blind them to the necessity of rescuing more than a thousand citizens drowning upon some of the shattered hulks of the Athenian navy; after their return, they were impeached by mass-trial, contrary to law which called for individual trial; only one of the responsible men present dared to hold out for law against public sentiment: Sokrates. One might think that this made him a marked man to the Athenian rabble; but when, a little later, Kritias had established the aristocratic dictatorship of the Thirty at Athens, Sokrates again refused his compliance to an illegal and unjust order. Let us add that throughout his life, he had been a friend of "the very best people". At this stage, his trial apparently becomes quite incomprehensible. One fact is ignored by both jurists and philosophers. The whole generation before the death of Sokrates had been taken up in a disastrous war: the Peloponnesian war. This was an out-and-out imperialistic clash, begun under the leadership of the moderate imperialist Perikles, the great statesman of Athens. The contradiction it was meant to resolve was the rise of a new mercantile class in opposition to the landed aristocracy; and that of limited power for an individual at home with unlimited power abroad. Athenian private enterprise, beginning as industrial pseudo- capital, had penetrated the Aegean hinterland very rapidly, and citizens not only owned mines in outlying places, but controlled trade routes, managed private armies, owned small forts, and interfered as much as necessary in the local governments of the less developed regions such as Macedonia. The islands near Athens had formed a maritime league for defence against Persia; Athens exploited the other members of the league as shamelessly as possible, and inevitably ran into a war with Sparta, hegemon of the land-league. Both sides forgot their original purpose, and called in the help of the Persians. This twenty-seven year war of attrition finished the obstreperous common citizenry of Athens, and finished Athens as a powerful state. In and just after this period there were two violent attempts at a dictatorship of the aristocracy: the Four Hundred and the Thirty, with a bloody restoration of the democracy each time. And the notable circumstance here is that the oligarchs forgot that they were enemies of the Spartans, and called in Spartan aid to suppress their own democratic citizenry. This was granted very willingly, as the Spartans were thoroughgoing oligarchs on their own account, who naturally hated democracy in any form. One imperialism fighting another, but helping dictatorship to establish itself in a rival state is not a new phenomenon. Now Sokrates is supposed to have been willing to teach anyone or enter into a discussion with him, regardless of rank or wealth. Yet, if we look into the dialogues of Plato, our only sources of information, we find a curious emphasis on just one class of people: the extreme aristocrats who misdirected the steadier imperialism of Perikles, and who later tried again and again for a coup d'etat. Kritias was the leader of the Thirty, and he is not only mentioned several times, besides having a fragmentary dialogue in his own name, but left the impression upon the Athenian citizens that Sokrates had taught him his actions. Another in the same category, so far as public rumour went, is Alkibiades, the handsome and noble (Kalos k' agathos) son of the aristocrat Kimon. This youngster, from all records, .was the closest friend of Sokrates. The Symposium of Plato bears testimony to this, and for some unknown reason, is considered by many litterateurs as a high water mark of civilization ( cf. Clive Bell: Civilization). Alkibiades reduced every question to a personal one, and was a ruinous friend and a deadly enemy to both the Athenians and the Spartans by turn. The Athenians exiled him for his treachery; the Spartans eventually sentenced him to death without a trial. In personal character, he can only be described as a bounder, in spite of the admiration he excited in Greek bosoms. His undoubted military ability was never used in a good cause or in a reliable manner. There is, by the way, a Platonic dialogue named Alkibiades. To mention just one other name, familiar to readers of the Dialogues, we take Nikias, the successor to Perikles. He was responsible for the most disastrous venture in the whole course of the Peloponnesian war: the Sicilian expedition. He lost his own life in it, being put to death by the Spartans when taken, with 7000 men. The flower of the Athenian armed forces, their best general (Demosthenes) and almost the whole of the regular navy were wiped out in an expedition of the type against which Perikles had earlier left a clear warning. Had this enterprise succeeded as originally planned, it would "have led to a dictatorship or at least an oligarchy at Athens itself, Alkibiadf's had a hand in this to", as he had gone over to the Spartan side at the time, and was responsible ultimately for directing operations in a manner that proved fatal to Athens. Both Alkibiades and Nikias were in political control of Athens when the Athenians (416 B.C.) took the island of Melos, giving an argument that stands to this day as a statement of pure, naked imperialism (Thucydides, Book V, 85-116). The proposal after the conquest was that all men of military age be put to death, and the women and children sold into slavery! But Nikias and his fellow aristocrats were, in spite of the war, friendly with the Spartans, pro-Spartan at times, and hated the men of the people like Kleon, or Hyperbolus the lamp-seller's son, who rose to power in Athens on the strength uf their persuasiveness, without the backing of birth, tradition, prestige, or landed inheritance. |
I do not say that the Sokratic teaching was alone responsible for the actions of these men, but I do maintain that the rugged individualism to which the Sokratic dialectic could be such tremendous encouragement was undoubtedly to the advantage of the ruling classes, or of the would-be dictators, as against the citizens in a group. If the Republic of Plato, supposedly a narrative from the mouth of Sokrates himself, be any guide, the Sokratic ideal of a state was not the Athenian democracy. The training given there would have been nearer to that of the Spartans, and useful primarily for war. That a people trained for war without common ownership of the means of production will ultimately be tempted to fight for conquest and dominion is never thought of. It has been remarked that Sokrates himself would never have been tolerated for more than a week in his own Republic. It is also recorded that the common man tended to be suspicious of the Sokratic dialectic on its own grounds; it probably made him out a fool. Let me point out that the chief disciple of Sokrates, Plato, was allowed to continue teaching afterwards at Athens, and lived to a ripe old age himself; yet, in his youth, he had been directly involved in the temporarily successful attempt of Kritias and the Thirty at setting up a dictatorship, only to withdraw at an early stage when the differences between the ideal and the practice of an aristocratic rule became manifest. It is clear, then, that the verdict against Sokrates was not brought about by the vulgar multitude, but by responsible people of his own day. The structure of society had not been essentially altered, except that the forces that demanded an imperialist expansion had been severely crippled by a long war and two rebellions. His condemnation did not cause a furore even among the aristocrats, for they had nothing more to gain from him except long after he was dead, when his case was useful as an argument against democracy. But there is a very important moral that I have kept till the last: Sokrates behaved as he did because, in his own words, he was guided by an inner voice; a divine, or daemonic message was conveyed to him in times of stress, and he never allowed fear of the consequences to divert him from obedience. It is unfortunate that a person of his intelligence, ability, uprightness, and courage was told nothing by the Gandhian inner voice about the condition of the masses at large; about changing the means of production; about allowing workers (slaves) to participate in that sort of liberty which had already brought such an access of vigour to the Greeks as to enable them to hold out against the much more powerful Persian empire. The inner voice could have told him nothing about the far distant future: that liberalism in 19th century England would flourish because of Grote's close study of Athens in his days; that a study of the classics would be an important political asset for both democrats and reactionaries. But I do think that the inner voice should have made it clear to him that a certain class of people would twist his teaching to their own profit as against the well-being of the body politic. And when the attempts of this class failed, the class itself was content to look on while the sadly damaged state gave him a choice between keeping quiet or being executed. Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, July 1939, pp. 1-6. I As regards Sokrates and his background, the reader will find much better information in: (1) A. D. Winspear and T. Silverberg: Who Was Socrates (New York, 1943), (2) Benjamin Farrington: Greek Science (2 vol.) Pelican Books. (3) A. D. Winspear: The Genesis of Plato's Thought (New York, 1940). “Exasperating Essays” Index | Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library |
D. D. Kosambi Exasperating Essays The Kanpur Road He sat there in his doorway like some great idol. A sad, benign smile-a smile of pleasure, not necessity-on that strong brown face heightened the impression. But his stiff white beard, parted and curled away from the middle, wide shoulders that bore their years lightly, the shining medals strung across a mighty chest, all showed a fighter. "Sardar", for I saw that such was his rank, "do you know the Kanpur Road?" "Aye, baba (my son). I have a scar for every mile of the way." "You fought in the Mutiny?" "A little". "No, I know better. Tell me about it. Please!" "Nay, there is nothing to tell. We held the enemy while the main body retreated. Yes, even as you say, it was there I earned this star. How? There was little to do. The heart ached more than the arm after it was done. A rebel cut down the brigadier as he and I were reconnoitring one night. I fought and killed that rebel with this same worn sword. I carried the brigadier to his own men. It was not very hard. What has the heart to do with it? It was my own brother that I killed. It could not have been otherwise. Had I not eaten British salt? Had I not given my word to defend them against whatsoever enemy? Were they not, at least then, out- numbered, without hope? Then could I, a Sikh, have done otherwise? But I buried my brother first with his sword in his hand. And I would not dress the wound that he gave me on the cheek. So, it festered. Now the left side of my face cannot smile, nor show any emotion at all. The star I wear, not to show others my glory, but to remind myself of my grief. But I digress..." He never did show me the Kanpur Road. But he did tell a great deal about himself to the wide-eyed youngster before him. He had campaigned in Abyssinia with Napier, entered Kabul and Kandahar with Roberts, fought in almost every outpost of the desert, mountains, swamp, and wilderness that mark India's savage frontier. His choice was ever the desperate enterprise, the forlorn hope, the lonely task. When, at the end of each campaign, the inevitable medal came to be pinned upon his chest, his thoughts always went back to his first decoration, the award for fratricidal loyalty. Then the great, livid scar began to hurt again, his face tightened up more than ever into a frozen bronze mask. The coldness with which his extraordinary commissions were carried out, the lack of warmth with which he received the medals, the chill stare with which he met all praise, caused acute discomfort to his officers which made them transfer him from division to division. Thus it was that his sword opened the first secure path for the grimy civilisation of Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield in many an unhappy comer of the world. When, finally, the time came for retirement, he accepted from the Government, as a reward for the loyalty that he had ever shown to the salt that he had eaten, a gift of land near Kanpur; far away from his native Punjab, but as near as possible to his brother's unmarked grave. As I listened to him, I forgot the parched earth, the dull haze that seemed the smoke of an all-consuming fire. I forgot the pain of hunger, the terror in my green young soul at the unknown future that was in store for me even if I managed to reach the city of Kanpur. The dispirited peasantry, drifting aimlessly in the background between the repellent poles of a countryside squeezed out by famine and the newly opened factories at Kanpur glutted with cheap labour, no longer numbed me with the fright that came from the sharp consciousness that I, too, was one of them. After all, I thought, I can always find the road to Kanpur, but where could I meet another such as Sardar Govind Singh, as honourable a man as ever obeyed his code? He was worthy to have gazed upon those pure-souled heros and demi-gods of our mythological antiquity who fought their superhuman battles with mysterious weapons to turn back the forces of darkness from the rule of this world. He was worthy to have stood with King Pauravas on that fateful day when the tricky manoeuvres of Yavana invaders prevailed against simple bravery. Our village school teacher, now dead of starvation and cholera, had told me the story. The invaders did not fight man to man; one could not come to grips with them. A sudden Hank attack by their cavalry wiped out the Indian chariots, upset the elephants. Before order could be restored, there appeared on the plain a fearful engine of destruction, the Macedonian phalanx: sixteen thousand men locked into a precise, compact formation by their enormous twenty-one-foot spears. The shattering impact of their charge swept away the rabble. Yet dauntless king Pauravas held out with a loyal handful on a lonely knoll by the riverside till it became clear that all was indeed lost. The bravery of his defence, the matchless dignity of his surrender, wrung words of admiration from the youthful conqueror; Alexander converted a noble foe into a loyal friend by restoring his lands and adding to them. |
Alexander converted a noble foe into a loyal friend by restoring his lands and adding to them. Even, so, thought I, had Govind Singh come by tokens of appreciation and a gift of land from our modern conquerors. But it was not he who showed me the road to Kanpur. I repassed this scene of a childhood memory in 1938 and thought it symbolic that the Sardar never did guide me to my destination. The way I had travelled through the intervening years would never have been his way. My struggles, too, had been in many lands, but chiefly in classrooms, laboratories, factories. I did volunteer for the Republican army in Spain) only to reach Franco's prison without being able to fire a single effective round on the actual field of battle. I had neither medals nor land. My scars had been seared into my mind by the turmoil of social upheavals. The first of these scars was earned on Boston Common the night they electrocuted Sacco and Vanzetti. In fact, what had brought me again to Kanpur was a gigantic strike, and I knew that it was not our leadership, nor the heroic efforts of the workers that had been the decisive factor in our victory. We won primarily because the capital and capitalists ranged against us were foreign, not Indian. [My reward, which came soon afterwards when leading a strike against our own millowners at Ahmedabad, turned out to be jail and tuberculosis.] The peasants of that region recalled the grim Sardar only as a master more oppressive than the usual run of landlords. They brushed aside my queries as to the declining years and manner of death of such a person. Something of my reputation must have spread out from Kanpur, because I was asked again and again, "You have helped the mill-hands obtain I higher wages; but what of a better deal for the farm labourer? Your speeches foretold the day when the mazdur would take over his factory; when will the kisan own the land he cultivates?" And the light of hope that shone from within upon toil-worn faces made it clear that Govind Singh had not only killed a brother, but had dealt mortal wounds to his own historic period, cutting at long centuries of stagnant agricultural production. The regions he had helped to open up were now held not by armies of occupation but by the far deadlier grip of banks and factories. To me, his memory was like a beacon pointing out a deserted road, the road of abstract loyalty and unthinking courage. We had to follow another path, in order to free both worker and peasant from slavery to human masters, to the machine, and to the soil. Govind Singh had never eaten British salt; only Indian salt taxed by the British. The lands that Alexander bestowed upon King Pauravas were Indian lands that could never have been garrisoned by the conqueror's mutinous soldiers. [My place was not with the heroes, but with the rabble, with the men who had been pressed into the ranks by force of arms, or force of hunger, with nothing to fight or work for and little to gain; whose function in the epics was to be slaughtered by the heroes; whose role, according to the historians, was to provide a mere background for the deeds of great men. The heroes of a money-making society rose from the people, at the expense of 'the people; I could rise only with the common people.] Fergusson & Willingdon College Magazine, Poona, 1939, pp.10-12 The initial two-thirds of this story was written as an English At theme at Harvard in 1924. “Exasperating Essays” Index | Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library |
D. D. Kosambi Exasperating Essays INTRODUCTION Occasional letters show that these essays (and the short story) still continue to attract some readers. Re-publication has been undertaken at their request in the hope that the demand is not restricted to those who voiced it. At any rate, the journals of the first publication are not readily accessible. Emendation, restricted to a minimum, was necessary because proofs were generally not shown to the author by the periodicals concerned. Substantial additions are given in square brackets. A note at the end contains a reference to the original publication and, where necessary, supplementary remarks to illustrate the main theme. Had the analysis not stood the test of time, had an occasional passage, which first read like an unlikely forecast of things to come, not been justified by the event, there would have been no point in dragging these writings out of their obscurity. The essential is the method followed, which is the method of dialectical materialism, called Marxism after the genius who first developed its theory and used it systematically as a tool. Dialectical materialism holds that matter is primeval, and the properties of matter are inexhaustible. Mind is an aspect of matter, being a function of the brain. Ideas, therefore, are not primary phenomena, but rather the reflection of material processes and changes upon human consciousness which is itself a material process. Therefore, ideas are formed ultimately out of human experience. Matter is not inert, but in a constant state of interaction and change; it is a complex of processes rather than an aggregate of things. In every stage, there resides an inherent quality of challenge, an "inner contradiction", which leads eventually to a negation (not necessarily unique) of that stage or condition. The negation, quite naturally, is again negated, but this does not mean a simple return to the original condition, rather to a totally different level. There is thus a fundamental unity of opposites. Mere change of quantity must eventually lead to a change of quality; quite often, this is an abrupt change after the quantity reaches some critical ("nodal") value. Finally, life is a mode of existence of certain forms of matter, particularly those containing organic compounds such as proteins. Its characteristic mode of existence is that, to preserve its special quality as living matter, it has to interact with a suitable environment in a specific manner, at a certain minimum rate. Then, for non-isolated complete organisms, there is normally an increase in numbers (change of quantity) to a critical level. Non-living matter, on the contrary, retains its characteristics best, the less it interacts with the environment. On the level of human society, the environment is furnished to a considerable extent by the society itself. The rate and the quantity of interaction with natural surroundings depend upon the instruments of production, and the technique employed: food-gathering, the pastoral life, agriculture, machine production. The distribution of the product among the various members of society is a matter for the relations of production, such as class division, ownership rights etc, whereof the forms are not determined simply by the economic level, nor immediately by the tools, but depend also upon the previous social history of the particular group of men. However, the tools are basic; feudalism or a bourgeoisie is not possible for stone- age people any more than is an atomic pile, or the differential calculus. The progress of mankind, and its history, thus depends upon the means of production, i.e. the actual tools and the productive relationships. Society is held together by the bonds of production. It is not the purpose here to prove these elementary principles all over again, but rather to show how they can be and have been fruitfully applied to a certain class of important problems. To remain a living discipline, Marxism must continue to work successfully with newer discoveries in science (including archaeology) and must yield new valid results in history. Its importance lies not only in the interpretation of the past, but as a guide to future action. By its correct use, men can make their own history consciously rather than suffer it to be made as helpless spectators or merely to study it after the event. Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19tb century prejudices Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19tb century should make it obsolete and wrong any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin which have passed into the body of science. Those who sneer at its 19th century obsolescence cannot logically quote Mill, Burke and Herbert Spencer with approval, nor pin their faith to the considerably older and decidedly more obscure Bhagawad Gita. The defence generally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gila. From the opposite direction, the Indian Official Marxist (hereafter called OM) have not failed to manifest their displeasure with, an interloper's views. These form a decidedly mixed category indescribable because of rapidly shifting views and even more rapid political permutations and combinations. The OM included at various times several factions of the CPI, the Congress Socia1ists, the Royists and numerous left splinter. Their standard objection has been that such writings are "controversial". If consistently pressed this would also exclude the main work of Marx, Engels, Lenin, the best of Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. The only successful way of dealing with adverse views presented in all good faith is a careful, detailed, and factual answer. The OM Marxism has too often consisted of theological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics. Marxism cannot, even on the grounds of political expediency or party solidarity, be reduced to a rigid formalism like mathematics. Nor can it be treated as a standard technique such as work on an automatic lathe. The material, when it is present in human society, has endless variations; the observer is himself part of the observed population, with which he interacts strongly and reciprocally. This means that the successful application of the theory needs the development of analytical power, the ability to pick out the essential factors in a given situation. This cannot be learned from books alone. The one way to learn it is by constant contact with the major sections of the people. For an intellectual, this means at least a few months spent in manual labour, to earn his livelihood as a member of the working class; not as a superior being, nor as a reformist, nor as a sentimental "progressive" visitor to the slums. The experience gained from living with worker and peasant, as one of them, has then to be consistently refreshed and regularly evaluated in the light of one's reading. For those who are prepared to do this, these essays might provide some encouragement, and food for thought. It is a great pleasure to thank the editors of the original publications. My thanks are also due to Mrs. V. V. Bhagwat and Mr. R. P. Nene for the trouble they have taken over this edition. Deccan Queen, October 2, 1957 D. D. KOSAMBI “Exasperating Essays” Index | Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library |
D. D. Kosambi Exasperating Essays The Bourgeoisie Comes of Age in India The long-awaited publication of Jawaharlal Nehru's book on India [Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, (Calcutta, 1946)], past and present, has in many ways justified the great hopes raised by the author's distinguished record in the struggle for India's freedom, and by his active share in the struggle against war. His career is too well known for further comment here; those who do not know it would be well advised to read his Autobiography as well as this book. No person knows India better than Pandit Jawaharlal. He is able to express himself brilliantly both in Hindi and Urdu, as friends and admirers among Hindus as well as Muslims will admit. Most important of all, he has an intimate acquaintance with the British ruling class because of his education in England. The book in question is, therefore, a damning indictment of British rule in India; but more than that, its ambitious scope includes the history of India culturally as well as politically in a single perspective. The performance is all the more remarkable when it is considered that the work was essentially completed in jail, under the most distressing circumstances, with full consciousness on the part of the author that a struggle against Hitlerism was being waged without his help, though he himself had always been an unswerving opponent of fascism and all that fascism represents. The very fact that so able a personality should be jailed without trial while a considerable number of British agent were foisted upon India to fight the war from the safety of office chairs had an unfortunate result for the Indian population; for while the British officials and a larger number of Indian business men filled their pockets with vast quantities of paper currency, the people at large had the benefit of inflation, famine, epidemics and shortages. To explain just what this means in terms understandable to an American is beyond the reach of any sensitive person who had the misfortune to be an eye-witness of the happenings in India during the war years. The book cannot be too strongly recommended to the general reader. The present writer wishes to make it clear that he himself is a humble admirer of the author. This is to prevent misunderstanding, for the bulk of this communication is necessarily devoted to pointing out a certain number of flaws. For the ancient history of India, little need be said because such sources as we possess are extremely meagre and their interpretation puzzles even those who have devoted a lifetime to their study; on this score we need not hold the author responsible. In some ways it is unfortunate that he has not had the leisure to study Indian sources more critically and that he has relied so heavily upon comparatively popular accounts by British authors. This, however, may be condoned on the ground that Indian political prisoners hardly have reference libraries at their disposal. One feature that may strike the reader as rather surprising is a curious attitude towards the much abused term "race"; denunciation of racialism and of imperialism occurs on p. 386f, but on p. 387 we read: "psychology counts and racial memories are long." Just what racial memory means is not clear, particularly in the case of a country that had forgotten the splendid Mauryan and Gupta periods, including the very script of those times; that ascribes almost every cave of any date to the mythical Pandavas; and is capable of pointing out as prince Pratap Sinha, the statue of Outram (a butcher of the 1857 revolt) on the Esplanade at Calcutta. It was noticeable on the contrary that class memories are extremely short, or at any rate strikingly different from what Nehru imagines to be race memories. For example, the British Commissioner of Police in Bombay whose name was execrated for his incompetent or deliberately provocative handling of popular discontent at the end of January, 1946 (ending in a real blood-bath in the working class areas of Bombay) was nevertheless a guest May, along with the Congress ministers, at the ri weddings of the year in Bombay. On p. 431 we read: "old races develop that attitude [of quietism] to life:' Just what this means is also not clear, for ethnologically there is no evidence that any race is older than any other. In fact if the sentence can be taken as applying to the Indian races, it is quite impossible to explain why quietism has been on the wane since 1940 at least, and has given place to the constant ferment of political activity in this country . Far more serious to the present reviewer is the absence of the question "why." No attempt at history can be regarded as mature which does not, within the framework of the author's ideology, make some attempt at analysis. For the ancient period we find considerable difficulty in explaining certain facts for the simple reason that the facts themselves are not always clear; but for the modern period it seems to me that the author's present approach cannot stand unchallenged. I may go further and venture the statement that this vague use of the term "race," the absence of the question as to why certain changes take place at certain times, are intimately bound up with another remark- able feature of the book, the absence of a class analysis. The author could have asked himself one question with the greatest of advantage, namely, cui bono; what is the class that called for or benefited by a certain change at a certain period of history? |
what is the class that called for or benefited by a certain change at a certain period of history? This might have clarified one issue noted by the author, that the British have fought desperately and till now effectively against granting India the same kind of social and political rights of which the English themselves are so proud in England. It is quite obvious that the class of Englishmen who fought for the suppression of local governments and civil liberties in India have also fought desperately against the lower classes in England; but when the pressure of the working class in England became too great, the bourgeois front was breached in some one place and a local amelioration was won. Then the losing section of the bourgeoisie necessarily fought for the imposition of restriction against all other owners of means of production and ultimately put a good face on the whole matter, provided that they, the rulers, had granted certain reforms at their own sweet free will. There was comparatively little class opposition from India as the British had taken every care to preserve as much feudal and religious prerogative as possible. It may be further suggested that the absence of developed modern capital in the Muslim community as well as the great relative poverty of the Muslims in India might explain (as Nehru does not) both the case against the Muslim League (p. 466) and Muslim backwardness (p. 468) as well as the reactionary attitude of the Muslim upper classes in India. Nehru has himself pointed out (p. 437) that Indian business men demand exactly the same kind of protection in Ceylon which they rightly resent having given to British business interests in India. He is undoubtedly aware of the fact that Indians in South Africa, backed whole-heartedly by the Indian trading community there, are fighting hard for equality; but for equality with the whites and not equality with the Negroes also. The absence of class analysis vitiates the peculiar presentation of provincial differences and growth of industry (p. 392-398). We read that the people of Gujarat, Kathiawar and Kutch were traders, manufacturers, merchants and seafarers from ancient times. Now it is undeniable that the great majority of people in just those districts are definitely not traders, although people from the localities mentioned occupy so prominent a place in the capitalistic section of India today. The reason is that early contact with Mohammedan traders enabled this small fraction to develop early contact with the British and thereby introduced them to a new system of production: that is, production based on machinery and modern capital. The best example of this perhaps is the tiny Parsi community which, in its original situation in Gujarat, was one of the most shamefully oppressed of refugee minorities and is today one of the most advanced, cultured and powerful of communities in India; solely because of their adoption of modern industrial and finance capitalism. On the other hand the case is totally different with the Marwaris of Rajputana (p. 394-96) who did control finance and money-lending in the old days but had no political rights whatsoever. If Nehru will take the trouble to look up the records he will see how often such moneylenders backed the British in the days of British expansion in India. Of course that may not lead him to realise a basic contemporary phenomenon: the change of pseudo-capital thus accumulated into modern productive money. The changeover is now actually so rapid that even the most backward and degenerate of Indians, the feudal princelings, are becoming shareholders on a large scale. The days are gone when shares were issued at a face value of Rs.30/- to be quoted today (1946) at well over Rs.3,000/- or when a stock was issued at Rs.100/-, of which Rs.99/- was given back as a capital repayment, to give a dividend of over Rs.150/- today, being quoted at Rs.2,300/ -. Those stocks had a much longer start in the race for modernisation of industry, but the total volume of such capital was negligible and has now been tremendously increased by the conversion of primitive accumulation as well as by the uncontrolled inflation and profiteering of the war period. Not only has Nehru neglected to take note of this accumulation, but he has also been unable to grasp just what this quantitative change has done qualitatively to the character of the- Indian middle class, a class which may now be said to be firmly, in the saddle. A few drops from the banquet (generally from the excess profits) have been scattered as a libation in the direction of education, scientific research, and charity; a considerable slackening of the ancient rigidity of manners, and unfortunately of morals also, is duly noticeable. Yet this is nothing compared to the principal characteristic of this class, the ravening greed which is now so obvious in the black market, in enormous bribes spent in making still more enormous profits, in speculation in shares and an increasingly callous disregard for the misery and even the lives of their fellow Indians). The progressive deterioration in the living conditions of our peasant workers (over 50 per cent of the population), of our factory labour and even the lower-paid office workers and intellectuals affords a striking contrast with the wealth that flows into the pockets of the upper middle class, though the gain may be camouflaged by the ostentatious simplicity of white khaddar (homespun) and the eternal Gandhi cap. The new constitution for India, in the gaining of which Nehru and his friends have spent so many of the finest years of their lives in jail, will come only as a recognition of the power of this newly expanded Indian middle class. Actually the negotiations of the British Cabinet Mission are nothing if not recognition of the position of the new bourgeoisie in India. The old trusteeship theory no longer yields monopoly profits either by investment or by export; the British bourgeoisie which must export and invest has admitted the necessity of coming to terms with their Indian counterpart which needs capital goods. It is surely not without significance that the modern industrialists and financiers contribute to Congress (by which I mean the Indian National Congress Party in this note) funds, while the leadership of the Muslim League is on noticeable good terms with the Mohammedan owners of money in India; |
it may be suggested that one reason for the conflict between these two middle class political organizations is not only the fact that the Muslim minority forms one-third of the population of the country with less than one-tenth of its wealth, but further that the wealth in Muslim hands is based predominantly on barter pseudo-capital or semi-feudal agrarian production, both of which look for protection to the British. In the light of all this, which Nehru does not acknowledge explicitly, it is interesting to note his comments on the Indian Communist Party (p. 524 and 629). Nehru does not realize that the Indian Communist Party (never ideologically powerful had in 1941 been suppressed to the point of ineffectiveness and that their increasing force in Indian politics today, though still virtually negligible as against that of the bourgeoisie, is due solely to their having really gone down to the peasant workers and the very small industrial proletariat-two sections of the Indian population among which the Congress and the Muslim League both have much less influence today than they did before 1943. In speaking of the Congress Planning Committee (p. 482-84) it is curious to note that the findings of the committee had apparently no influence whatsoever on the provincial Congress governments then functioning. Nehru might have studied with profit the differences between the Congress programme and the actual performance of the Congress ministries. There is no evidence at all that the Congress as constituted today is in the remotest danger of drifting (like its planning committee) towards socialism. With the Muslim League leadership, of course, it is difficult to observe anything except pure opportunism and reaction. Without going deeper into the statistics or capital investments, it may be stated-and verified by a reference to the newspaper advertisements of the period-that the years 1937-39, when the Congress ministries ruled, show in their particular provinces a considerable number of new enterprises being started. The investor certainly demonstrated his confidence in the Congress, whether or not the British and the Congress Planning Commission gave any attention to that aspect of the matter. Of course this cannot compare with the almost explosive increase in capital today. In dealing with the stirring events of August, 1942 (p. 579f.), Nehru has given the parliamentary side of the question in a straightforward manner. The external observer, however, may be struck by one noteworthy point which has not even been visualized in the book. When the All India Congress Committee met at Bombay, the members knew that arrest was imminent and most of them had prepared for the event by setting their family affairs and personal finances in excellent order against all contingencies that might arise for the next year or two. What strikes this writer as remarkable is that not one of these worthy and able delegates, though aware that the British adversary was about to strike, ever thought of a plan of action for the Congress and for the nation as a whole. The general idea was "the Mahatama will give us a plan", yet no especial impression was made by the Mahatma's speech just before the arrests-though that address to the assembled delegates on the eve of an anticipated popular explosion is not only not revolutionary in character, nor a plan of action of any sort, but seems, when taken objectively, to be on the same level as a comfortable after-dinner speech. Why is it that knowledge of popular dissatisfaction went hand in hand with the absence of a real plan of action? Does it mean, for example, that the characteristic thought then current among the Indian bourgeoisie had in effect permeated the Congress leadership? One may note that on a class basis the action was quite brilliant, no matter how futile it may have seemed on a national revolutionary scale. The panic of the British government and jailing of all leaders absolved the Congress from any responsibility for the happenings of the ensuing year; at the same time the glamour of jail and concentration camp served to wipe out the so-so record of the Congress ministries in office, thereby restoring the full popularity of the organization among the masses. If the British won the war it was quite clear that the Congress had not favoured Japan; if on the other hand the Japanese succeeded in conquering India (and they had only to attack immediately in force for the whole of the so-called defense system to crumble) they could certainly not accuse the Congress of having helped the British. Finally, the hatred for the mass repression fell upon the thick heads of the bureaucracy, while having the discontent brought to a head and smashed wide open would certainly not injure the Indian bourgeoisie. In this connection we may again recall Lenin's words that "only when the lower classes do not want the old and when the upper class cannot continue in the old way then only can the revolution be victorious. Its truth may be expressed in other words: Revolution is impossible without a national crisis affecting both the exploited and the exploiters." You look in vain in Nehru's book for any recognition of the undeniable fact that, in 1942, while the toiling masses had begun to taste the utmost depths of misery and degradation, the Indian bourgeoisie was flourishing as never before. War contracts, high prices, the ability to do extensive black-marketing, had given the financiers and industrialists what they wanted; furthermore even the lower, middle classes who had normally been the spearhead of discontent in India had begun to experience an amelioration because of the great number of new clerical and office jobs created by the war and the expanding war economy. Taking cognizance of this and of the further truth that the British in India had consistently allowed investors to make an increasing amount of profit in this country, one may be able to account for the lack of a plan in 1942 and for the successive deadlocks that followed in spite of mass pressure in the direction of revolution. History has thrust upon Nehru the mantle of leadership of a very powerful organization which still commands a greater mass support than any other in India, and which has shown by its unremitting and painful struggle that it is determined to capture political control of the entire subcontinent. But will Nehru's orientation towards Marxism change when the interests of the class which now backs Congress so heavily diverge from the interests of the poorer classes; or will his lack of a class analysis lead only to disillusionment? |
It would be silly to proclaim that Mahatma Gandhi, than whom no more sincere person exists, is a tool of the capitalists in India. But there is no other class in India today, except the new bourgeoisie, so strong, so powerfully organized, and so clever as to exploit for its own purposes whatever is profitable in the Mahatma's teachings and to reduce all dangerous enunciations to negative philosophical points. This bourgeoisie needs Nehru's leadership, just as India has needed the class itself. As I read the omens, the parting of the ways is clearly visible; what is not clear is the path Nehru himself will choose in that moment of agony. Science and Society (New York), vol. X 1946, pp. 392-398. The OM thesis at this time was that the British would never transfer power to the Indian National Congress. The OM solution was that the Hindus and the Muslims, somehow equated to the Congress and the Muslim League, should unite to throw out the foreign imperialists. The question of the class structure behind the two parties was never openly raised, perhaps because the writings of W. Cantwell Smith led the OM to believe that the Muslim League was, in some mysterious way, at heart anti-British and on the road to socialism. One sure test of effective anti-imperialism, namely how many of the leaders were jailed or executed by the rulers of empire, was not applied. The intransigence and the open alliance with the British, so profitable to the leading personalities in the League, and the insistence upon the "two nations" theory were dutifully ignored. No emphasis has been laid upon the total disruption of advanced peasant movements in the Punjab and in Bengal by the 1947 separation of Pakistan. For that matter, the OM had dismissed the Satara peasant uprising (patri sarkar) of 1942-43 as pure banditry. “Exasperating Essays” Index | Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library |
D. D. Kosambi Exasperating Essays Imperialism and Peace Science and Freedom In 1949, I saw that American scientists and intellectuals were greatly worried about the question of scientific freedom, meaning thereby freedom for the scientist to do what he liked while being paid by big business, war departments, or universities whose funds tended to come more and more from one or the other source. These gentlemen, living in a society where he who pays the piper insists upon calling the tune, did not seem to realize that science was no longer 'independent' as in the days when modern manufacturing production was still expanding at the lower stage of technical development, and the scientist who made the most essential discoveries was looked upon as a harmless individual toying with bits of wire, chemicals, perhaps collecting odd specimens in out of the many places. The scientist now is part of a far more closely integrated, tightly exploited, social system; he lives much more comfortably than Faraday, but at the same time under the necessity of producing regular output of patentable or advertising value, while avoiding all dangerous social or philosophical ideas. As a result, the worthies I mention were quite worried about the lack of scientific freedom in a planned society, but only indirectly and perhaps subconsciously as to what was actually happening to their own freedom in an age and time of extensive witch-hunting, where being called a communist was far more dangerous than being caught red handed in a fraud or robbery. These considerations, however, are mentioned only because they lead one astray from the main facts. There is an intimate connection between science and freedom, the individual freedom of the scientist being only a small corollary. freedom is the recognition of necessity; science is the cognition of necessity. The first is the classical Marxist definition of freedom, to which I have added my own definition of science. Let us look closer into the implications. As an illustration, consider the simple idea of flying. I am told that our ancestors in India had mastered some mysterious secrets of yoga whereby they could fly hundreds of miles in an instant. I don't believe it; these are flights of the fancy rather than of the body. Attempts to imitate the birds had very limited success, but gliders were more successful. Then came the posing of the elements of the problem, namely sources of power, methods of propulsion, laws of aerodynamics- all scientific and experimental truths. Mankind was not free to fly till the flying machine was invented. Today, anyone can fly without yoga- provided he has the means to enter an airplane. This, as society and its property relations are constituted, implies that either he owns the plane, or someone who does allows him admission; ultimately, the question is whether or not our flying human has money, i.e. the necessary control over means of production. In the abstract, nothing prevents him from sprouting a pair of wings and flying off like a bird; nor from becoming a yogi and soaring into the atmosphere by mere exercise of will-power. Such freedoms nevertheless, are illusory; necessity compels man to find other, more feasible technical methods. Take a commoner case, of eyesight. Five hundred years ago, extreme short sight or extreme farsight would have been regarded as varieties of blindness; they were written off as afllictions from heaven, or concomitants of old age. Glasses have to be invented for the restoration to normal sight of such people. This means today the science of optics, some know- ledge of eye-structure, of glass, including its chemistry, lens- grinding technique, factories, and workshops. There are still many people who suffer from eye-defects that could easily be corrected by glasses; they are legally free to wear glasses. Only lack of funds prevents them. In India the number of pairs of glasses really necessary but not available would run into the millions. We observe, then, that to recognize the necessity implies scientific experiment; in addition, there is a technical level which cannot be divorced from the experimental. Finally, there is a social structure that is not only intimately connected with the technical level, but also conditions the freedom of the individual by introducing a social necessity that in the abstract seems unnecessary but exists nevertheless. Some of my statements about science are not likely to be disputed; that Science knows only one test, that of validity, of material proof. Science is nothing if it does not work in practice. Science is direct investigation of properties of matter, hence materialistic. Scientific results are independent of the individual who carries out the experiment, in the sense that the same action gives identical results. Finally, as the search for causes and their effects, science is cumulative: science is the history of science. Every scientific discovery of any importance is absorbed into the body of human scientific knowledge, to be used thereafter. Schoolboys can repeat Galileo's experiments, and first year college students learn more mathematics than Newton knew; the young students must go through much the same mental processes, stripped of inessentials and repeated according to modern points of view, when they study. But they do not have to read Galileo's dialogues, nor the Principia. Here science differs essentially from the arts, for in painting, the modem painter need not study the prehistoric bisons in the cave of Altamira, nor the poet read Kalidasa. |
Here science differs essentially from the arts, for in painting, the modem painter need not study the prehistoric bisons in the cave of Altamira, nor the poet read Kalidasa. On the other hand, we can appreciate works of art and literature of all ages, for they are not subsumed in their successors in the manner of scientific discovery. Aesthetically, they have a survival value, a lack of obsolescence that the scientific work lacks. However, not all aesthetic effects have this survival value; the rapidly changing fashions that most ruling classes think necessary in their garments become as quickly ridiculous. The other statements may also be briefly illustrated. Two painters painting the same scene will produce substantially different pictures; two people clicking the shutter of the same camera pointed at the same object will not. The fruits of ritual depend upon the rank of the celebrant, and only the king, medicine-man, shaman, or brahmin have the power or the right to draw down certain benefits for mankind; science tells us that these supposed benefits are imaginary, and fertility of the soil is better obtained by special agrotechniques, chemical fertilizers, and so on, than by fertility rites. Moreover, the chemicals and techniques work in the same way independently of who applies them. Now I give these examples deliberately, because both art and ritual performed at one time the functions that have been displaced by scientific observation. Primitive ritual was a substitute for what we now call scientific theory though primitive technique was correct. In India the menstrual taboo is still observed, though dying out in the cities, where the hurly-burly of industrial life deprived it of all meaning. Our workmen worship their tools on one day in the year, a custom not without charm which can be traced back to the oldest known times; but lathes, turbines, electric motors and railway trains have made it clear that there is none of the workman's personal mana that resides in the tool. I note in the market that the humble vegetable vendor makes the first sale of the day with a humble salutation to the balances, and to the goddess Bhavani; the sharemarket speculator may spend considerable sums on astrologers, but doesn't neglect the market quotations, and relies upon study of trends and comers in shares, stocks, bonds, and such modern financial jugglery which is absent in his and the astrologer's scriptures. The millions that bathe even now at the time of a solar eclipse can point with pride to the fact that their prayers have been successful, that the sun has always been freed from the maw of the demon who swallows him; but astronomical theory which predicts the eclipse to the minute has crept into our traditional pancanga almanacs, through the Western ephemerides, so that people cannot really believe in what has come to be an obsolete practice. In science, practice and theory cannot be divorced. This does not mean that scientists have never held a wrong theory, but only that they keep on making better and better approximations to the truth, knowing that there is no final truth simply because the properties of matter are infinite and inexhaustible. In ritual, no one dares make an experiment; the older the precept the more sure its grip. Religion develops from ritual when primitive society acquires a class structure, a tighter organisation of its originally varied components into a larger whole. This need not be elaborated here. What most of us do not realize is that science is also a social development; that the scientific method is not eternal and that science came into being only when the new class structure of society made it necessary. Of course, science really comes into its own with the machine age, which camlot develop without science and which in turn contributes highly useful technical aid to scientific discovery. But the fundamental inner connection is that machine production, like science, is cumulative. The machine accumulates human labour time towards the fulfilment of a specific human purpose. Yet modern science, as we know it, came into being before the machine age, and for the same purpose, namely to serve the new social needs. Moddem science is the creation of the bourgeoisie. One of the major contributions of science is that it separates theory from technique, specifically from productive technique. If you look at our village workmen, you find them still producing excellent work with quite inferior tools simply because the workman masters the individual tool, makes it an extension of his person. Only he can handle the particular bit of metal efficiently enough to obtain good results. But his production is not standardized. If he makes two complicated devices of the same type, the parts will not be interchangeable, though both may have the same design and function. In the modern factory, on the other hand, the lathe or the loom is independent of the person handling it, just as the scientific experiment is independent of the experimenter, provided in each case the worker has the minimum efficiency necessary to keep the mechanism from damage. A village weaver is whole ages and social layers apart from the village potter; a worker on the assembly line can easily shift from one type of factory to another. In the case of the handicrafts-man, theory is not divorced from the tool, his knowledge is acquired as well as expressed through his fingers. The result is that the transmission of such knowledge is slow, craft workers tend to form into closed guilds (in India small sub-castes), and a long apprenticeship is necessary for the production of more workmen, their numbers and production being severely limited. This was the situation in Renaissance Europe, for example, when considerable accumulation of money with the merchant princes (and its overflow) made it necessary to find new methods of making money grow. The older usury was limited in scope: more than a certain profit could not be extracted from the debtors tied to the older mode of production. Confiscating the mortgaged tools of a craftsman may lead to starvation for him and his family but the tools are unproductive bits of metal and wood to the usurers. There is needed a new class which can produce goods efficiently without long training, and whose surplus labour can be appropriated by an employer. This turns the mere usurer into a capitalist, the craftsman into a proletarian. But to manage such enterprises, there is needed some theory of material processes that works in practice, and serves the managing class which does not handle the tools of production. |
This is precisely the role of science. If you look into Galileo's researches, for example, you will find them concerned with such practical things as why pumps don't suck up water above a certain height -which leads to hydrostatics, and also to better pumps. Accurate time-keeping is made possible by his observations upon the pendulum; but it is factory production, where many men have to be brought together simultaneously for coordinated labour, that needs acccurate time-keeping; not cottage industries. Galileo cast or recast horoscopes, rather badly. His astronomy was revolutionary because he turned a telescope upon the heavens, to interpret what he saw in a perfectly natural manner. The man in the moon disappeared, to be replaced by mountains. But what made his astronomy dangerous was the fact that it shook a system of the universe taken for granted by the ruling class and by the church that served it; by implication, the rest of the social system was also laid open to challenge, something that no man is free to do without risk. Science is not mere accumulation of experimental data. No experiment is great unless it settles some disputed theory; no theory is a striking advance unless it explains puzzling experimental data, or forecasts the results of unperformed expefiments. But one has only to look at the way the scientific centre of Europe has shifted to see the intimate connection between science and production, between the coming to power of a new bourgeoisie and the local age of discovery. Leeuwenhoek was a janitor in Delft who ground his own lenses and made the first good microscopes, which he turned upon drops of water and the smallest insects. It was the Royal Society of London that sent its secretary to visit him, and published his papers, just as they published Redi's communications against the doctrine of spontaneous generation, which helped solve the very practical problem of food storage. But the idea of giving credit to him who publishes first is comparatively new. Even Newton did not like to give away his discoveries light-heartedly, and the further back we go the stronger we find the tendency to keep a precious secret concealed as a monopoly. It is the social mode of production that changes the fashion, though private ownership of the means still insists upon patents, cartels, monopolies at level of technique and manufacture. Now is it an accident that the very century during which two revolutions placed the bourgeoisie in power in England produced Newton? How is it that the French revolution, which cleared off the rubbish of feudalism in France saw the greatest of French anti European scientists: Lagrange, Laplace, Ampere, Berthelot? They rose with the bourgeoisie and survived Napoleon. Gauss, the great name in German science, appears on the scene at about the time the German bourgeoisie becomes the real power in its own country; and he is not alone. If we wrote all these off as accidents, we should be in the ridiculous position of denying the possibility of a scientific basis for the origins of science, by taking the history of science as a series of fortunate coincidences, though science is its own history and has always progressed by seeking the reason behind suspicious coincidences. I might go further and say that Greek science was (in spite of all the admiration lavished upon it, and in spite of its logical method having served as inspiration to the Renaissance) not science in the modern sense at all, but pseudo-science, much as Greek and Roman capital can at best be called pseudo- capital in spite of modern imperialist tendencies and actions. The aim of Greek science was to reduce all phenomena to reasoning from the techniques that had originated the very discoveries. That too was a social necessity, for in classical society the work was done by slaves, whose existence was taken as a law of nature, a necessity which reflected itself in the scientific outlook of the time. This should dispose of the idea that science is the creation of gifted individuals, thinking for 'purely' scientific purposes along problems which came to them out of some realm of the mind. There are gifted individuals in every age and society. but the manner in which they exercise their gifts depends upon the environment, just as much as the language in which they choose to do their thinking. It is as impossible for the mind to exist without thought as for the body to exist without motion. There are still people in India who speculate upon the relative merits of Sankara's and Ramanuja's philosophy, though they do not thereby presume to acquire the prominence of those two founders. If I repeat Newton's experiment with the prism, I shall get the same results, but certainly not the same credit as a scientist or founder of optics. The weight, the significance of a scientific discovery depends solely upon its importance to society. This is why the college student, knowing more mathematics than all of Newton's contemporaries, is still not a prodigy. A discovery that has been assimilated is reduced to the level of useful technique. A discovery made before it is socially necessary gains no weight and social necessity is often dependent for its recognition upon the class in power. Leonardo da Vinci, whose 500th anniversary is now being celebrated, is the most famous example of this. He still served feudal masters, who were not interested, for example, in the manufacture of pins ( from which Leonaido expected to make a fortune) , and who used his mechanical talents for stage effects. A hundred years later, his fame as an artist would have been far less than an inventor. That social development, both in technique and in needs of production, evoked scientific discovery long before the days of organized research is clear from the independent and simultaneous discoveries made so often in the history of science. For example, the liquefaction of gases, so long considered an impossibility, was done by two different people in France at once. The Raman effect, whose theory is still imperfect, was discovered simultaneously in the USSR and India. The credit rightly belongs to Raman, who realized at once that while the rest of the world had been looking for an atomic effect, this was a molecular phenomenon. The experiments he devised proved it, and gave us a valuable technique of analysis which does not change the substance. But occasionally, as with Priestley, the conflict between the scientist and the class that dominates society becomes too great for the individual and for his discoveries to gain proper recognition. |
This is not a characteristic merely of the bourgeois period. During the middle ages, we find Europeans turning to meditation, the monastic life, theological speculation. Such tendencies were highly respected and advertised, with the assistance of an occasional miracle. However, the theology was not independent of the class structure of contemporary society; dangerous speculations led a man to the stake. Not only feudal rulers, but the later merchant classes used theology, protestantism in the latter case. The early saints and martyrs upon whose reputation the church was apparently founded, did not suffice in the later period. When the Church itself became a great holder of feudal property, abbacies and bishoprics turned into the prerogatives of particular rich families, or groups of families; this happened, incidentally even with Buddhism as may be seen from the history of the Barmecides, or of the few ruling families of Tibet till its recent liberation, or from the history of the richer monasteries in Ceylon. The foundations of Sankara, Ramanuja, and even a real people's saint like Tukarama are now chiefly preoccupied with methods of increasing their wealth, retaining outworn prerogatives, avoiding taxes. The wealthy Church in Europe needed the Inquisition to support its claims; that holy office found Galileo's thought dangerous. The crusades were diverted to strange aims, such as the conquest of Constantinople, and the suppression of a popular movement in the Albigeois. The Index Expurgatorious shows the church's attitude towards certain type of advanced thinking, while the last Spanish civil conflict demonstrated what steps the church in Spain, as Spain's greatest owner of property, was capable of taking against a democratic government. A fairly close parallel could be drawn on the thesis that science is the theology of the bourgeoisie; at least it replaces theology whenever the bourgeoisie- capitalist mode of production displaces the feudal. The scientist must remain comparatively poor like the monk, but is admired, admitted to the board of the capitalist baron just as the cleric was to that of the feudal lord. His discoveries must be patentable, but he rarely makes the millions; Pasteur and Faraday received a beggarly pittance of the profit made from their discoveries. A press-agent may make the scientist's miracles known, but only if they are acceptable to the lord of the press, hence to the ruling class. And most striking of all, in the period of decay, witch-hunting is as prominent in its own way as with the end of feudalism. Though a creation of the bourgeoisie, science is not its monopoly, and need not decay with the bourgeoisie. The art of dancing began as part of ritual, but is now one of society's aesthetic pleasures even though the witch-doctors who initiated it have mostly vanished. Music is no longer necessary to promote the growth of plants; even as I write, I can hear the primitive rhythm of tomtoms and ancient chants being practised at midnight- not for better crops but for the sake of some relief from the daily grind of life by people who are milkmen, factory workers, and house.servants. Sculpture does not mean the underground mysteries of pre-historic French grottos; the Parthenon statuary is admired in the British Museum, but no longer worshipped. There is no reason for science to remain bound any longer to the decaying class that brought it into existence four centuries ago. The scientist needs this freedom most of all, namely freedom from servitude to a particular class. Only in science planned for the benefit of all mankind, not for bacteriological, atomic, psychological or other mass warfare can the scientist be really free. He belongs to the forefront of that great tradition by which mankind raised itself above the beasts, first gathering and storing, then growing its own food; finding sources of energy outside its muscular efforts in the taming of fire, harnessing animals, wind, water, electricity, and the atomic nucleus. But if he serves the class that grows food scientifically and then dumps it in the ocean while millions starve all over the world, if he believes that the world is over-populated and the atom-bomb a blessing that will perpetuate his own comfort, he is moving in a retrograde orbit, on a level no beast could achieve, a level below that of a tribal witch-doctor. After all, how does science analyse necessity? The sciences are usually divided into the exact and the descriptive, according to their being based upon a mathematical theory or not. This distinction has faded away because the biological sciences have begun to feel the need for exact numerical prediction, while physics and chemistry have discovered that, on the level of the individual particle, exact prediction is not possible as with the movement of the solar system. Both have found the new mathematical technique, based upon the theory of probability, that they need. In the final analysis, science acts by changing its scene of activity. It may be objected that astronomy does not change the planets or the stars; is it not purely a science of observation? Astronomy first became a science by observing the changes in the position of heavenly bodies. Further progress was possible only when the light that reaches the astronomer was changed by being gathered into telescopes, broken up by passage through spectrographs, or twisted by polarimeters. Parallel observations of changes, say in metallic vapours, in the laboratory enabled conclusions to be drawn about the internal constitution of the stars. There is no science without change. If this be admitted, we are near the end of the inquiry. The reason why the scientist in a capitalist society today feels hemmed in and confined is that the class he serves fears the consequences of change such as has already taken place over a great part of the world's surface. The question of the desirability of such change cannot be discussed dispassionately, cannot be approached in a scientific manner, by the supposedly 'free' scientist. The only test would be to see the two systems in peaceful competition, to see which one collapses of its own weight, succumbs to its own internal contradictions. But the scientist who says that this should be done finds himself without a job if he is on the wrong side of the "'iron curtain". |
The real task is to change society, to turn the light of scientific inquiry upon the foundations of social structure. Are classes necessary, and in particular, what is the necessity for the bourgeoisie now? But it is precisely from cognition of this great problem of the day that the scientist is barred if a small class .should happen to rule his country. Perhaps the crisis cannot be considered immediate in new democracies like India, where the bourgeoisie is itself a new class? This is incorrect. The new class did not develop its own science any more than it invented its own Indian steam engine and motor car. Just as they import the best paying machinery, the science they need is also imported in ready-made form. They are also ready to import any political ideology that serves their end. This means that instead of the centuries of development from medieval to modern as in Europe we can expect at best decades in India, under the leadership of a bourgeois-capitalist class that has only re-oriented but not lost its colonial mentality. Monthly Review (New York), vol. 4, 1952, pp. 200-205, with addi- lions, as printed here, in Vijnan-Karmee, vol. IV, October 1959, pp. 5.11. “Exasperating Essays” Index | Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in India Marxists Internet Archive Library |