Tony Cliff: defender of state capitalism

This article is a pile of rubbish. You ultra-lefts would annoy me if you weren't so irrelevant.

"Cliff and his various groups always defended Trotskyism’s participation in the war "It was not possible to simply call for the defeat of one’s ruling class ... It was necessary to defend democracy against fascism" (Socialist Review May 1995)."

You attempt here, by hoping no one would copy and paste this quote into google and read the entire socialist review article, to imply that Trotskyists supported the Allied countries in the war, defending "democracy" against "fascism". You rightly imply that this would be a total betrayal of proletarian internationalism.

The only problem is, the claim that the Trots supported the Allies is a slanderous lie. The SR article actually argues that the only consistent defence of democracy against fascism is the class struggle; in other words, supporting the Allies would be capitulating *TO* fascism; overthrowing one's own ruling class was the only way to defeat fascism.

This is elementary ABC for any serious revolutionary: arguing that independent working class activity is the only way to secure real gains.

Of course, I wouldnt be surprised if you idiots did not consider bourgeois democracy different from fascism. Ill give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you support workers striking for wage rises. So then what is so wrong about arguing that workers should defend independent trade unions and civil liberties (however restricted) against a secret police regime where their chances of organising are much much lower?

Is this not a progressive struggle, strengthening workers' organisation and consciousness, giving them confident in their own abilities? Must you see everything in black and white? Do you not recognise the possibility of arguing "defend progressive gains, but dont fool yourself, they arent enough?" There is a difference between defending a bourgeois democracy via the class struggle and via backing it uncritically. The latter capitulates to chauvinism and harms the development of working class concsiousness (and this is what you imply Trots did). the former pushes that consciousness forward by showing workers that only *they*, by struggling against their own bosses, can defend any measure of freedom.

Of course, you guys aren't real revolutionaries. You're quite happy standing on the side calling those who fight for progressive demands "the left wing of capitalism's apparatus" or whatever, never connecting with any real struggle.

If idiots like you had been around in 1917 you would have said "fuck the Provisional Government, its the same as Kornilov blah blah they are all capitalism blah blah socialist revolution right now or nothing, if you dont agree with me fuck you". For shame. Defending the PG against Kornilov, its bourgeois character notwithstanding, its a STEP FORWARD. It showed the workers they were the best defenders of freedom, and built THEIR confidence in THEMSELVES. It was a step towards the victorious revolution in October. You morons cannot grasp this simple truth.

For lying to the class by distorting the meaning of the SR article in perfect Stalinist fashion, shame.

Anonymous said: "There is a difference between defending a bourgeois democracy via the class struggle and via backing it uncritically."
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You can't defend bourgeois democracy with class struggle; the two are diametrically opposed. This is the entire point and, whatever its intentions, leads to a capitulation to the ruling class.
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In WW1 communists didn't back the "progressive" countries against the absolutists. Those who did were called traitors to the working class by Lenin. So, in WW2, did the Trotskyists call for workers in the Allied countries to go on strike, to rise up against their own government, to turn the imperialist war into a civil war?

The article answers: "They took a position against the war as an imperialist war, but recognised that it was not possible to simply call for the defeat of one's own ruling class--as Lenin had done in the imperialist war of 1914--without taking into account the special conditions which the existence of fascism created." - pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr186/german.htm
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In other words, the Trotskyists rejected Lenin's position by special pleading about the nature of fascism. The article says: "In effect the argument that he and his followers put is that workers wanted to defeat fascism, which they saw as the greatest threat. In order to do so they had to overthrow their own ruling class in order to fight better against the fascists".
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Except, of course, this "overthrowing" of the ruling class really meant joining the Army because the revolution wasn't possible at that moment. Lenin's argument was never that workers should overthrow the Tsar or Kerensky government so that they could fight the Kaiser's forces more effectively!
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The "Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy" from 1940, Socialist Workers Party (US) is particularly telling. After paying homage to internationalism it boils down its programme to: "The revolutionary strategy can only be to take this militarism as a reality and counterpose a class program of the proletariat to the program of the imperialists at every point. We fight against sending the worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and equipment. We oppose the military direction of worker-soldiers by bourgeois officers who have no regard for their treatment, their protection and their lives. We demand federal funds for the military training of workers and worker-officers under the control of the trade unions. Military appropriations? Yes—but only for the establishment and equipment of worker training camps! Compulsory military training of workers? Yes—but only under the control of the trade unions!"
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So soldiers need to be given the right equipment and training? So says every bourgeois party! Look at the wailing and gnashing of teeth in Britain because soldiers in Afghanistan don't have enough helicopters! Self-management of workers in the Army? As if putting workers in charge of the armed forces fighting under an imperialist banner has anything at all to do with class struggle ...

You continue to construct a strawman of the Trot argument in two ways.

First, you still are trying to make it out as if the Trots were arguing against revolutionary defeatism. They were not. The article says "it wasn't possible to *simply* call for revolutionary defeatism". This isn't saying revolutionary defeatism is wrong. It's saying that on TOP of calling for it, it is necessary to connect with workers' fears about fascism.

Conditions change. In WW1 there was no such thing as fascism. In WW2, workers round the world rightly feared this behemoth which would deny them any form of independent organisation. They WANTED TO FIGHT IT. This is a progressive fight to defend working class organisation and living standards. To simply ignore the wish of workers who wanted to do this, or to pretend that their situation (including the possibility of a socialist revolution) would be the same as under a bourgeois democracy, is to disconnect yourself from the practical struggle being waged by them day by day in favour of ultra-left phrases.

You're pretty ignorant of Trotsky's writings if you think the Trots never called for strikes etc during ww2. its one of the most dominant themes in trotsky's writings, one of the most persistent criticisms he aimed at the stalinists, who argued that strikes should not be allowed to happen because fascism needed to be defeated.

Answer this: did Lenin betray the working class when he called on the workers to defend Kerensky against Kornilov? By your logic you would have to answer yes, since it is impossible to defend bourgeois democracy via class struggle. But you're wrong. The workers did defend the PG against White Terror; they stopped the ruling class imposing a worse dictatorship. Not because they loved the PG but because they supported it the same way a "rope supports a hanged man"; it was better than a Kornilov dictatorship. In doing so, they saved the soviets, and learned that the Bolsheviks were the best defenders of the working class. Consciousness was raised, and October drew closer.

Second, you pitch the argument as being about defeating Hitler. It was not. The Trots were arguing that the best way to defeat fascism *at home* was to overthrow one's own government. This is the essence of revolutionary defeatism.

In addition, on top of all this, you have not yet addressed the question of progressive demands. If soldiers are demanding better conditions, then it is a revolutionary duty to support them. Any struggle which improves the material conditions of the masses and raises their consciousness by turning their attention to the real enemy, the enemy at home, *must* be supported by revolutionaries. The reason you ultra-lefts are fake revolutionaries is because you substitute your own consciousness for that of the working class. If they dont immediately desire socialist revolution, you refuse to listen to their demands. In this way you will never prove that revolutionaries are the best defenders of the working class and will never win leadership of the movement against the reformists.

You cant just throw phrases against reformists and the bourgeois parties to the working class. You have to *prove* you are worthy of the working class by giving a shit about what they want. This means fighting alongside them when they make progressive demands.

The entire history of Trotskyism, its reason for being, is to defend one element of the ruling class against another. To 'defend the gains' of the working class by asking the workers to support the 'lesser of two evils'. The UK Socialist Workers Party wants to create a 'left electoral alternative' to the Labour Party- divert the attention and resources of the workers into the parlimentary bourgois shellgame.

What you call "Progressive Demands" already has a name: The Minimalist Programme, from the 2nd International. The classic example of how reformism starts and then spreads, finally consuming a genuinely working class party or organization- ending with Bernstein and Kautsky type leaders who tell us we can Vote our way to Socialism and turn the Unions into organs of social change.

A lot of worker's of the last several generations have let themselves be led to irrelevance and failure by following reformist pseudo-revolutionary groups. Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists- all of whom ask us to dilute proletarian principles for the sake of immediatism, oppertunism and substitutionism.

Anonymous - better to have a moniker of some kind if you want to develop a discussion with people - it seems that you don't read our material at all if you think we are against workers' demands (and yes, demands by soldiers when they express their real material needs rather than the needs of the war machine).
But the Trotskyist 'demands' formulated in the Proletarian Military Programme were entirely based on the idea of strengthening the existing state's war against fascism. What use to the workers was 'trade union control' of the war effort when the trade unions were already entirely integrated into the capitalist state?

I'm the one who was "anonymous".

No, I do read your material. I just find it incomprehensible, from a revolutionary point of view. The basic problem is that you want socialism *now*, without taking into account, at all, the current state of working class consciousness. Bordigists display little to no understanding of how such consciousness develops to the point where a socialist revolution is possible.

The point by Mike is a classic example. He rejects out of hand any reform whatsoever, as it seems to me. How the hell do you expect to ever gain a following among workers unless you actually show that you care about their struggle? Just yelling at them to make a revolution now isn't going to cut it.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt Mike and assume you don't mean that you are against purely economic demands such as wage rises. But I don't see how defending the right to trade union organisation, or the right to free assembly, things which would be further curtailed under fascism, is somehow "the lesser of two evils" or different. It's not about defending bourgeois democracy in its totality; its about defending something of benefit to the working class in their struggle for socialism, namely, the ability to organise. Such freedoms would be crushed under fascism.

This would make a socialist revolution both more difficult in a direct sense and because by expounding these ideas you would cut yourself off from the working class which is rightly desiring to fight fascism. You guys see everything in black and white, and that's the problem. You can't seem to grasp the concept of fighting for reforms in a revolutionary way, as Luxemburg wrote; you want it all or nothing. And you're willing to toss the working class to the Kornilovs in the process.

As for you Alf, your interpretation of that war measure rests not on something the SWP said (show me where it says that this is to strengthen the war machine), but on your interpretation of the necessary consequence of his argument, based on the notion that trade unions are part of the capitalist state. Needless to say, this is empirically wrong. Your inability to take a dialectical approach in regards to consciousness is evident here also. You cannot grasp that trade unions, while undoubtedly conservative and under the thumb of a reactionary bureaucracy, can in times of heightened class struggle turn into their opposites. They do, in the final analysis, depend on their members' support. If the members are revolutionary, they must be too.

The demands are progressive because they focus in on the fact that the soldiers' living conditions are primarily the fault of their own ruling class. Its not as if the SWP is saying that they wanted better conditions for the soldiers so that they could better kill other soldiers!

Basically, none of you have answered the Kornilov question or 1917 more generally. The Bolsheviks took steps in 1917 which you guys would no doubt consider a betrayal, and yet they made a successful revolution on the basis of these steps. Ultra-leftism of your kind in contrast bears a large share of the responsibility for the failure of the German revolutions. Furthermore, none of you have yet responded to the fact that your description of the original british swp article quoted is a pure distortion of the british SWPs position (the one about fighting fascism).

For the record, I do not agree with the British SWPs broad left front strategy atm. But this is on tactical grounds, not on some ultra-left principle like you.

I'm not a Bordigist, or a member of the ICC.

The mistake you make anonymous is confusing the role and tasks of the revolutionary organization. As you can plainly see on the ICC press, support for worker's struggles is paramount- it goes above all else (most of the ICC press is dedicated to publishing working class struggles all over the globe, and incorporating the lessons from past struggles to better influence current and future ones).

The ICC takes its heritage from Bilan, and the earlier Marxist left practice of drawing a balance sheet on the balance of class forces. Unlike the anarchists who proclaim the revolution is always possible at any moment, and the various leftists (Trots, Maoists, social-democrats,etc) who have oppertunistic and idealistic concepts of revolution that have no basis in the actual balance of class forces (such as the Trotskyists who believed the anti-fascist mobilizations of the 1930's and 1940's would result in a situation similar to the end of WWI and a new global proletarian wave; when this was the period of deep counter-revolution), the ICC applies the Marxist method of historical materialism to accurately depict the global strength of the proletariat as it waxes and wanes (as it has done successfully for several decades).

Here is a link to a good primer on the role of a revolutionary organization (along with further links which expand on the topic):

http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/cconc/5_role_or_revolutionaries

The working class has several organizations that it spawns at different times; one of which is the revolutionary organization (of which the ICC is one). Another is the class Party (formed in 1919 as the Third International). Other organizations of the class (worker's council, shop/factory committee, red guards, etc) are also formed when the balance of forces in the class struggle reaches a certain point. The class party gives rise to tendancies and fractions.

It is a difficult concept for the leftists to swallow: regardless of which branch of the left one is (Trot, Maoist, Stalinist, etc) they all have a habit of rolling all of these organizations into the function of one organ.

When a revolutionary organization leaves its class terrain and becomes involved in imperialist war, trade unionism, parliamentarism, no matter how 'Critical' their support or involvement is, they have left their class terrain and have become part of the left of the bourgeoisie.

Leaving the class terrain of the working class for the sake of 'speeding up' the revolution (by working with trade unions, supporting bourgois parties or candidates in elections, supporting one bloc over another in an imperialist war, joining bourgois groups for the sake of anti-fascism/anti-racism/etc) is called 'Immediatism' and 'Oppertunism'. Many great revolutionaries (such as Trotsky, Bordiga, etc) have indulged in this most bad of habits, as have too many to name once revolutionary organizations.

Cutting corners and making 'Critical' alliances with the bourgoisie will not make the revolution happen any sooner. Nor does it expand class consciousness. All it does is move the person, people or groups involved over to the side of our class enemy. The balance of forces in the class struggle will determine when and how the revolution can happen.

We wrote this article about the Kornilov coup, arguing against the Trotskyist notion that it validates tactical alliances with the bourgeoisie:
http://en.internationalism.org/wr/306/1917-Kornilov

Adam: the fact that I talked about trade unions being part of the state isn't the whole issue. Even if the Trotskyists had called for the war effort during WW2 to be organised by workers' councils it would still have been a betrayal, because the whole logic of the 'Proletarian Military Policy' was to call for a more effective war effort, not for a class struggle against the war effort.

Mike, I'm familiar with the positions of the "Left Communists", Bordigists or not. I fundamentally disagree with them. Your entire post oozes the fetishisation of spontaneity and "purity" of the class struggle. The entire position is that you just sit on the sidelines and let the working class get on with it.

At most you occasionally "analyse" a situation, declaring whether the time is right for a revolution or whatever, or to condemn someone else for daring to get involved in the actual class struggle. For example, look at what you just wrote on the fascist reaction. So, the Trots were too optimistic. I agree on this. I do not share the orthodox Trotskyist enthusiasm in this period. But at least they were willing to involve themselves in the struggle! You're content to just say "the time is one of reaction" and that's it.

Your characterisation of Trotskyism is a very poor caricature. Rather than your all-encompassing characterisation of non ultra-lefts as all part of the bourgeoisie, I'll put forward my own grand statement: Left Communism, like all distortions of Marxism, have failed to assimilate dialectics, and are instead left with a crude materialism. Crude materialism always leads to idealism and vice versa, the putschism of the ultra-lefts in Germany after WW1 being a prime example.

What you fail to grasp is that a revolutionary organisation can become involved in the class struggle - and if it takes the correct approach, if it applies Marxist theory in practice and allows that practice to inform its future theory - it can become a revolutionary party, a party of the working class. The Bolsheviks did this. But they did it because they were able to make many correct decisions about what to do. But the first and most fundamental decision is not cut yourself off from the class. Declaring anyone who defends a progressive demand a traitor does this.

Nor has any Trot ever argued that the party replaces the Soviets or anything of the like, only that the party is a necessary component. This is Stalinist crap which you have repeated with no justification.

Alf, that article on Kornilov is little more than wordplay. It does nothing but assert over and over again that the united front was a distortion later theorised, and not something utilised in 1917. In doing so, it distorts what the united front actally is.

First, I must apologise for my own sloppy phrasing earlier. I did indeed say that the workers defended the PG and Kerensky against Kornilov. This was wrong; this was just a byproduct. They were defending the Soviets.

However, this does not discredit the united front. Your understanding of it, shown in that article, is very poor (perhaps due to sloppy phrasing such as mine, again I apologise). The point of the united front is that it unites around a progressive demand all the forces that desire that demand. In this manner it strengthens the chance that the demand will be won; at the same time, it exposes the bankruptcy of the non-revolutionaries.

This is what the Bolsheviks did. They proposed an alliance with Kerensky against Kornilov. Had Kerensky refused, the reactionary nature of the PG would have been clear for all to see. Kerensky accepted, but even then, the Bolsheviks proved themselves the best defenders of the soviets among the political parties, and the masses gained confidence in their own power.

"Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing Line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.

We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential.and must not be forgotten."

This is the united front. Let us now apply this to the fascism context. What Trotsky proposed was "to the workers willing to fight fascism, we are with you, regardless of which party you are a member of or whether you are in a trade union or not. But remember, only a revolution can ultimately defeat the fascists".

If the SPD refused, it exposed its bankruptcy. If it accepted, the revolutionaries could prove they were the best - they took the initiative and fought most ardently. Either way, the working class is drawn towards revolution.

The problem with your position is that you conflate fighting fascism with defending bourgeois democracy. There is a difference, a subtle one. The working class wants to fight fascism, and for good reason. If you simply say liberalism, fascism, all the same, screw anyone who fights fascism then you are making yourself irrelevant to the class.

As for the Proletarian Military Policy I stand by it, not as a correct tactic at the time, but as a principle. The issue at question here is whether it was correct in principle, which you argue no, since it capitulates to imperialism etc

Again you refer to its "logic". Nowhere do you actually prove that the SWP wished to make a more effective effort, you just deduce this based on your own shoddy unmarxist "logic". In fact, the "logic" of the Proletarian Military Policy is to turn the soldiers' eyes towards the misery inflicted upon them by their own bosses. A wage rise doesn't end wage slavery. But we support it because it betters the workers' material conditions and raises class consciousness when they fight for it. The PMP was developed at a time when it was assumed a revolutionary situation was coming; time to turn all attention towards the bosses and arm the soldiers for revolution.

Without a doubt the Trotskyists were wrong in the analysis that the revolution was around the corner. They made a mistake tactically with the PMP. But this is a question of principle. It is not always wrong to call for something like the PMP.

What's the "good reason" for fighting fascism Adam?

Your accusations against left communists are contradictory. How can we be 'putchist' and 'spontanetist' at the same time? First lets destroy the 'putschist' accusation. Socialism can only be built by the proletariat as a class; this has been the policy of all left communist organizations. The term 'ultra-left' isn't characteristic of left communism; New Left 'urban guerillas', Kunerists, anarchists can be given this label for their disregard of consciousness and the necessity for a class party.

You have a very mechanistic view of class consciousness. How exactly does trade union victories turn into class consciousness? How do electoral campaigns that result in a successful election of a leftist party or politician result in increased class consciousness? The results of history, of the last 80+ years, have proven this mechanistic view of class consciousness is false.

There have been numerous victories of unions and leftist parties- 'revolutionary' unions, 'independant' unions have reached massive proportions over the last several decades- why, during the 1970's during the peak of post-WWII strikes (wildcat and official), with the highest peak union membership & density and universal, widespread successes of Popular Front style parties and governments in the West (from social-democratic to socialist-communist coalitions, etc) was there no revolution? According to your mechanistic view of how class consciousness is cultivated and spread, that is through revolutionaries giving 'Critical' support for trade unions and 'workers parties' and the various anti-coalitions (anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, etc), why was there no revolutionary wave at the height of these movements popularity and mass appeal?

The ICC and left communists almost in general (aside from councilists and some anarchists) do not subscribe to a 'spontaneous' theory of revolution or of the party. The class struggle is a living organism, which can be tracked with Marxist historical materialism. The ICC in particular has a solid record of correct predictions for the future by correctly analyzing the class struggle (such as predicting the fall of the Russian imperialist bloc well before the bourgeois experts).

You say, with the Fascism example, that by giving support to fight the fascists, the working class will be drawn to revolutionary positions and groups. However, every element of the left (except some syndicalists and the left fractions of the Third International) completely threw their support behind anti-Fascism and the united fronts & popular fronts. Despite the complete support of virtually every Stalinist, Trotskyist, anarchist group, the anti-Fascist movement did not result in a revolution, or anything close to it.

How can you explain that? Why should we accept your criticism for not adopting positions that have failed spectacularly in the past and offer no explanation for this failure?

Left communism has an answer- that the concrete reality of the class struggle, as it waxes and wanes, was ignored for the sake of immediatism and oppertunism by the degenerating Third International, who jumped class lines and joined the bourgoisie in its pursuit of imperialist war (and followed this betrayel by becoming completely assimilated by the capitalists by participating in parliamentary elections, coalition democratic governments and leading leftist trade unions).

Coming up with a balance sheet of class forces as a means to judge the past and present actions of the proletariat in the struggle for socialism is far from a 'spontaneous' theory of class struggle. Also, if you would read the ICC's text on the tasks of a revolutionary organization (to which I agree), you would clearly see that the ICC actively engages in the class struggle in ways that it can influence class consciousness.

A quote from the 'Basic Positions' of the ICC:

"The revolutionary political organisation constitutes the vanguard of the working class and is an active factor in the generalisation of class consciousness within the proletariat. Its role is neither to ‘organise the working class’ nor to ‘take power’ in its name, but to participate actively in the movement towards the unification of struggles, towards workers taking control of them for themselves, and at the same time to draw out the revolutionary political goals of the proletariat’s combat.

OUR ACTIVITY
Political and theoretical clarification of the goals and methods of the proletarian struggle, of its historic and its immediate conditions.

Organised intervention, united and centralised on an international scale, in order to contribute to the process which leads to the revolutionary action of the proletariat.

The regroupment of revolutionaries with the aim of constituting a real world communist party, which is indispensable to the working class for the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society."

http://en.internationalism.org/basic-positions

Mike, you wrote that Trotskyists have a "a very mechanistic view of class consciousness." If their conception is mechanical, then the machine analog is a Rube Goldberg contraption; in the Trotskyist view, a thousand twists, turns, and detours, all leading through the terrain of the bourgeoisie (parliament, trade unions, even infiltration of opently hostile political entities) are necessary to somehow "lead" the workers to class consciousness. It's very bizarre!

As for the charge that by opposing the anti-fascist struggle the communist left had made itself "irrelevant to the working class," this is probably true, but it's not the communist vanguard's job to appease counter-revolutionary workers. As the KAPD said in their "Theses on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution":

"The communist party, as the organization of the most conscious elements, must itself strive not to succumb to these vacillations, but to put them right. Through the clarity and the principled nature of their slogans, their unity of words and deeds, their entry into the struggle, the correctness of their predictions, they must help the proletariat to quickly and completely overcome each vacillation. Through its entire activity the communist party must develop the class consciousness of the proletariat, even at the cost of being momentarily in opposition to the masses. Only thus will the party, in the course of the revolutionary struggle, win the trust of the masses, and accomplish a revolutionary education of the widest numbers."

This approach may not have served the communist left well, in numeric terms, in the long period of counter-revolution, but today I think both organizationally and intellectually the communist left exists as a basis for which the militant working class can (and has) regrouped around.

Surely Adam is missing a point here. Comparing the Bolsheviks' attitude at the time of the Kornilov insurrection with the calls for "training and equipment" that Samyasa quotes above, is like comparing chalk with cheese. At the time of the Kornilov insurrection, there was a situation of what Trotsky called "dual power" to the point where many regiments had already declared that they were going to accept orders solely from the Soviet. Clearly, such a situation did not exist in 1940! Calling for "defense of democracy" on condition that it should be "revolutionary" (this was also George Orwell's position by the way) in a situation where there is absolutely no chance of the workers making a revolution, in the end comes down to defending the bourgeois state - because the workers have not been able to create their own organs of power. It's as if Lenin had supported conscription in 1914 (as Trotsky did in 1940) because the workers wanted to struggle against "Prussian militarism". The reactionary nature of Trot demands may or may not be contained in the demands themselves or in the intentions of the demanders - it is certainly contained in the situation within which those demands are made.
The point is not to be "pure". The point is to understand what is possible at any given point in the class struggle. This was one of Trotsky's talents in 1917, but it failed him completely in the 1930s because he did not realise that Stalinism really was a counter-revolution, and that the counter-revolution had won. The communist left understood that, and they stuck to an uncompromising class line not because of any illusions they had that it could be realised (they had far fewer illusions than Trotsky) but because they were convinced of its importance in principle, and for the future.

It's sad that the only representative of so-called "Trotskyism" here is, Anonymous, for Anonymous's lies are precisely why real Leninism-Trotskyism have gotten such a bad press among anti-opportunist ostensible communists like the ICC, or other anti-opportunist ostensible communists.

First, one quotation from "Anonymous" with which I wish to deal:

"The SR article actually argues that the only consistent defence of democracy against fascism is the class struggle; in other words, supporting the Allies would be capitulating *TO* fascism; overthrowing one's own ruling class was the only way to defeat fascism."

I did not read the SR article. But "Anonymous" is quoting it and defending it.

First, Trotsky never "defended democracy against fascism." That's a lie.

What Trotsky did was, in the case of Nazism's rise in Germany, for instance, in 1930-1933, passionately argue for the main German left workers' parties -- the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and SPD (Social-Democratic Party of Germany) to forge a military workers' united front in the streets to drive the Hitler Nazi stormtrooping gangsters off the streets. The KPD had under its political influence not only its direct party membership, but probably upwards of 4 million workers organized in various trade unions influenced by the KPD. The SPD had under its political influence not only its direct party membership, but upwards of 6 million workers in various trade unions influenced by it. Both the KPD and the SPD had their own workers' armed paramilitary left-wing organizations of workers. Trotsky primarily directed his arguments not at the SPD, but at the KPD, for Trotsky in 1930-1933 was part of a world movement of communist left oppositionists who considered themselves at that historical moment communists expelled from the Stalinist-controlled Communist International seeking readmission into the Communist International on the sole condition of being able to retain their political views and argue for their political views inside the Communist International. Trotsky therefore, like others in his movement of left-wing Marxist oppositionists, considered the KPD of Germany still capable at that historical moment of 1930-1933 of being reformable from within, and not yet terminally destroyed by counter-revolutionary Stalinism. As a result, Trotsky directed his arguments for the forging of a workers' military united front against Hitler Nazi fascism to the KPD. But that also did not prevent him from also writing some arguments, including one letter directed to a "Social-Democratic worker," to some workers under the political influence of the SPD, Social-Democratic Party. Trotsky, as one of the two main co-leaders of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia with his colleague, V. I. Lenin, and as a co-founder with Lenin and with millions of other communists of the Third International in the foundation congresses of the Third (Communist) International in 1919, held to the view the Third International held that the SPD (Social-Democratic Party of Germany), and other component political parties of the Second International of Social-Democratic "socialist" parties, had had their moment manifesting their terminally having gone over to the side of global capital -- August 4, 1914, when the Social-Democratic Party of Germany in particular in the German parliament (Reichstag), voted for funds for the funding of German capitalist imperialism's carrying out its military imperialist warfare in World War I. But Trotsky and the other Third Internationalists in the period of the first four congresses of the Third International (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922) did not translate their view that the various Social-Democratic Parties' leaderships had gone over to the side of global imperialist capital at the start of World War I into a simplistic view that communist internationalist revolutionists should therefore abstain from seeking, by propaganda, by agitation, by intersecting workers on strike with literature and a line, by participating with workers on strike for higher wages and better working conditions, by seeking to forge tactical alliances with workers of trade union and political perspectives differing from those of Third International-affiliated Communist Parties for workers' united fronts to drive fascists off the streets, and by other actions, seeking to influence workers from other organizations and movements and formations.

The problem I have with "Anonymous," however, is that "Anonymous," in implying Trotsky or Trotskyists use "class struggle" to "defend democracy against fascism" is disappearing the intransigently hard, programmatic communist element in Trotskyism and therefore in effect capitulating in line by a backhanded way to the accusations against Trotskyism of the ICC militants and other communist left militants.

Trotsky consistently differentiated between bourgeois democracy, and proletarian democracy. And throughout his political career, Trotsky basically didn't even like the word, "democracy." Trotsky defended intransigently the conception of the dictatorship of the working class -- the dictatorship of the proletariat -- and wrote one of his most important booklets, "Terrorism and Communism," against the German centrist Social-Democrat, Kautsky, precisely because of Kautsky's having previously written a book counterposing in an abstract fashion "democracy and dictatorship." Trotsky, in "Terrorism and Communism," written in the period when Trotsky led the Soviet Red Army in ongoing war against 14 capitalistic and imperialistic armed forces sent into then-new revolutionary Soviet Russia in the period 1918-1922 on a battle line 7 thousand miles long, said that throughout the history of modern revolutions, including bourgeois revolutions, the revolutionary side in such revolutionary confrontations with the old decrepit and decadent and reactionary ruling classes of the old order was compelled to resort to terroristic measures against the old ruling classes they were seeking to depose on the road to bringing into effect a new order of society. Trotsky in "Terrorism and Communism," in fact, was doing nothing but saying positions that were quite similar to the positions said by V. I. Lenin in his own book answering Kautsky entitled, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky." Both men were not looking at democracy as some kind of abstract word lifted out of the context of the class war and class struggle, but, rather, were looking at this word in the context of the class war and class struggle.

Furthermore, Trotsky also said this about democracy: "Democracy did not come to power by the democratic road." Here, in the use of this term, "democracy," Trotsky clearly was talking about that historically specific kind of democracy called, bourgeois democracy. I reside in the United States. Here in the country in which I reside, bourgeois democracy came to power by exterminating something like 14 million Native American aboriginal people called "Indians" by the whites here. Bourgeois democracy here came to power by enslaving millions of black Africans, something like 20 million of whom died on slave ships brought to the Western hemisphere during the period of the slave trade. The same could be said of bourgeois democracy in England, where the Scottish yeomanry and Irish peasantry were at different phases of the development of English bourgeois capitalism miserably despoiled of their little means of production and little plots of land on the road to making modern British bourgeois industrial and then finance capitalism. And as the Trotskyist, Abram Leon, wrote in his booklet, "The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation," the original European Jews, while somewhat more prosperous during the period of late Roman antiquity and early feudalism from having been money lenders to the kings of ancient times, soon began losing everything they had with the development of European feudalism on into capitalism as European Christian capitalist monarchs and overseers of more capitalistically entrepreneurial types of landholding sought, by lynch mobs and pogroms, to despoil and destroy the prosperity of the Jewish people early in the period of the rise of capitalism in Europe. This despoliation and destruction of the prosperity of the Jewish masses continued to the point where the Jewish people were driven to becoming first artisan workers in Russia and Eastern Europe, and then into Germany, and then, all the way into the 20th Century when, with the rise of Hitler's Nazis, they were completely exterminated and driven out of Europe, but not till Hitler had killed 6 million of them. This led, of course, to the modern tragedy of Palestine, two historically long-oppressed peoples or nations or ethnic groups fighting over the same piece of real estate, a tragedy which, the Palestinian Trotskyists of 1948 rightly predicted, could only be democratically resolved by transcending bourgeois democracy by the permanent revolution, and making a Socialist Egalitarian Federation of the Near East in the context of which both the Palestinian Arabic people and the Hebrew-speaking people would have equality in ethnic and national rights, as would all other peoples of the Near East.

But the permanent revolution is not about siding with or "defending" "democracy" against "dictatorship." It is, rather, about transcending bourgeois democracy by the immediate transition to proletarian internationalist egalitarian communist dictatorship based on armed and elected workers' councils a/k/a soviets. And Trotsky's use of the term "democracy" was quite a bit based in that perspective.

Additionally, Trotsky well realized when his hope for smashing fascism by united workers' armed defense remained a hopeful perspective, and when it no longer remained realistically feasible or viable tactically. In his 1930-1933 writings (published here in the U.S. under the title, "The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany: Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1929-1940"), Trotsky held that there remained some realistically feasible and realistically viable and tactically feasible and tactically viable hope of the German workers' parties actually making the objectively imperiously necessary armed workers' united front to smash Hitler's Nazi fascists before Hitler could first be appointed chancellor in January of 1933, then before Hitler could consolidate his power in Germany. Right up through into the middle of 1933 and even a little later than that, Trotsky sought to fight for the workers' united front to smash the Nazis before he finally decided Hitler's regime had sufficiently consolidated their power so that at that point it was no longer realistically and tactically feasible and viable.

After that point, Trotsky concentrated on whether there would emerge out of exiled German Communists or among the international Third Internationalist Communists of the time when Stalinism had pretty decisively controlled the Third International some kind of Communist opposition to the line the Stalinists in Germany had followed of no united front with the Social-Democrats, or some kind of Communist opposition in the Stalinist Third International to the more generally bankrupt line of the Stalinists.

Once it became clear to Trotsky that no serious opposition including one of reassessment or reappraisal of that Stalinist line was to re-emerge in the Stalinist Third International, Trotsky then concluded it was necessary to build brand new Communist Parties and a Fourth International, for, in Trotsky's view, the KPD in Germany and, more generally, the line on the basis of which it had operated, dictated by Stalin in Moscow, had pretty much paved the way to Hitler's counter-revolutionary right-wing totalitarian labor-smashing Nazi fascist dictatorship coming to power without serious proletarian opposition in the streets which could have, had it been mobilized, have thwarted the Nazi fascists from coming to power by pulling the wind out from behind their sails.

Throughout this, however, Trotsky never disappeared his call for socialist revolution. His entire point about the nature of the workers' united front against fascism was that it was a maneuver for splitting the rank-and-file workers of the various ostensibly Communist and ostensibly Socialist organizations from the tops of their leaderships -- setting the bases of these organizations against the counter-revolutionary and in essentials pro-bourgeois tops of these organizations. The tactic of the workers' united front was designed to show the rank-and-file workers that the way was being paved for their own destruction by their own counter-revolutionary mis-leaderships' refusals to come to an agreement for the military destruction in the streets of Hitler's Nazi stormtrooping labor-killing and trade union-smashing right-wing thugs and gangsters. Trotsky fully hoped and expected not only a workers' united front to emerge out of the situation in 1930-1933, and fought for that, but out of that expected the entire political and social environment and climate within Germany to shift on the ground over to the left as a result of the forging of effective workers' united fronts to smash Hitler's Nazi killers in the streets, with the resultant effect of opening up Germany to the making of a proletarian socialist revolution led by a communist vanguard party.

Trotsky had supporters inside Germany who spread the line for which Trotsky was arguing, in incredibly difficult circumstances, too, in light of the fact that at this historical moment in time, the Stalinists' line was that the Trotskyists were "counter-revolutionaries," while the Stalinists held that the Social-Democrats were "social-fascists," and therefore "merely" "another variety" of fascists. So Stalinists typically physically attacked Trotskyists.

The view of the workers' united front as a tactic for simultaneously defending the workers' class interests from the most serious immediate threat to the workers' class interests while simultaneously opening up the situation and making the situation gravitate in a leftward direction was the line of the Communist International, or Third International, too, in its pre-Stalin period, in the early congresses of 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922. The idea was that the workers' united front was a tactic, not a program. The idea was not for some kind of permanent bloc of all factions of the workers' movement, revolutionary and reformist. Rather, the idea was, as the early Third Internationalists put it, "March separately, strike together." The idea here was, the revolutionaries marched under our own banner with our own slogans, our own program, our own positions, intransigently, uncompromisingly, not subordinating it to anybody else's line or position, but that revolutionary workers and other workers would, at the moment of necessity, come together to fight the anti-labor enemy. That was the perspective of the workers' united front as originally developed by the Third International in the time when Lenin and Trotsky were leading the early Soviet regime in 1917-1923, and when the Communist International operated in 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922.

The problem with the "Socialist Review" and Tony Cliff's crowd of "Trotskyists" is, however, that they are not and were not Trotskyists. In 1973, I was in a faction of the International Socialists in the U.S. at a time when Tony Cliff's British International Socialists were aligned with the American International Socialists, and my faction was called, the Leninist Tendency. We sympathized politically with the Spartacist League of the U.S.; this group today is aligned internationally with other like-thinking groups in an international called the International Communist League-Fourth Internationalist. In 1973, there was a broader left-wing in the International Socialists in the U.S. that called itself the Revolutionary Tendency. The position of Tony Cliff's International Socialists in England was expressed rather succinctly by one of their supporters in the U.S. when he told the majority of the International Socialists that they ought to "expel forthwith" both the bigger left-wing tendency of the International Socialists, the Revolutionary Tendency, and us, the Leninist Tendency. There was no desire here for the factional struggle to be fought out in a way that would educate the rank-and-file of the organization and let the chips fall where they may. Rather, the unprincipled and opportunist Cliffites operated in a quite non-Trotskyist and un-Trotskyist fashion in favoring the bureaucratic expulsion of two factions of the International Socialists here in the U.S. which were further to the left on issues of program than were either the majority right-wing of the American International Socialists or their English Cliffite allies. Program here was subordinated to bureaucratic right-wingism.

The Cliff gang have never tolerated internally any dissent from serious left-wingers in their English group. They have engaged in wholesale bureaucratic expulsions at the drop of a hat. The notion they are anything other than rank opportunists is a laughable impertinence.

Nor can they be equated with Trotsky, who as an uncompromising intransigent internationalist communist egalitarian. It is quite right that the Trotskyists did NOT "defend" the "democratic" imperialist side in World War II against the Hitler Nazi fascist imperialist side in World War II. That is, indeed, a lie.

As for the proletarian military policy of Trotsky, some Trotskyists since that time have argued that was a position that was quite mistaken and was, in some sense, something of a capitulation to social patriotism at the time. The ostensible and so-called "Trotskyists" of the Spartacists have made that argument, as have some of the ostensible and so-called "Trotskyists" that emerged from them, the Internationalist Group of Jan Norden and the mis-named International Bolshevik Tendency of Bill Logan. The proper approach in this matter is to go with your class when conscripted, but simultaneously not to extend going with your class into some kind of call for "better" military training under trade union control when the nature of that military is still controlled by the bourgeois capitalist imperialists ruling class's military brass. That more or less is the position taken by real Marxists and real Trotskyists, as well as some ostensible Trotskyists who claim to be real Trotskyists, but seem to me to be impostors.

I think Tony Cliff's decision in 1950 to drop military defense of North Korea and China in the imperialist war of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie against North Korea was a counter-revolutionary capitulation to the Anglo-American imperialist bourgeoisie. This is something that the ICC doesn't agree with me on, because the ICC and other so-called "left communists" actually don't see a difference between the Soviet Union in World War II and Nazi Germany, and therefore think it's a matter of indifference whether the Soviet Red Army smashed Hitler in World War II, or whether Hitler's Nazi Germany smashed the Soviet Union in World War II. Since I think it was a good thing that the Soviet Union's Red Army smashed Hitler in World War II, but since I also think Leon Trotsky was right on the money in his 1936-1937 book, "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?," in calling not for the overthrow of the state-owned and nationalized planned economy and state-owned and nationalized means of production in the Soviet Union, but instead for the ousting of the Stalinist petit-bourgeois totalitarian bureaucratic government and its replacement by a government of elected workers' councils (soviets), I find myself here opposing both "Anonymous" and the comrades of the ICC.

I think y'all both have it wrong.

Anyway, that's for the moment what I have to say.

Best for now,

Al (Allan) Greene

You re-hash a lot of Trotskyite rhetoric, but I don't see a single argument, or refutation of anything so far printed, in your post. It seems you believe that trying to get at the intentions of Leon Trotsky when he wrote explains to us that he in fact did not support the Allied side in WWII. What matters not is what he intended. History has born out that, through various 'defense of the socialist fatherland'-esque articles, the 'proletarian military programme', etc Trotsky himself was an apologist for the Allied side against fascism- and Trotskyist groups, along with all other left groups, Stalinist, Socialist and Anarchist included, fought on the side of the Allies, for whatever reason, either in the regular military or as the 'Resistance', during the Second World War. This is analagous to the point that it doesn't matter what an organization calls itself, but how it behaves, that determines what side of the Class divide it is situated on. No matter how much rhetorical analysis and intellectual mining one does now, it does not change what happened. Whether he intended it or not, it happened. Encouraging workers to fight in imperialist conflicts, to pick sides no matter how 'Critically' in an imperialist conflict, puts Trotskyism squarely on the same side as the Stalinists, social-democrats, anarchists, etc who also supported the bourgois swindles of anti-fascism and/or the defense of the USSR.
Supporting any militarization of the proletariat at the hands of the bourgoisie is unacceptable for anyone considered a revolutionary. Internationalism has always been the most sacred tenant of the worker's movement, going back to the Communist League and First International.

July 7, 2010
Wednesday

Dear All:

First, I find it fascinating how BOTH ultra-lefts like Mike AND Stalinists use the "Trotskyite" libel to label Marxists of a Trotskyist persuasion. Decades ago, in the 1960s, when I was affiliated with the Independent Socialist Clubs of America a/k/a International Socialists, before, in 1973, affiliating with the Spartacist League, I had it explained to me by supporters of the Young Socialist Alliance youth group in the 1967-1969 period of the Socialist Workers Party, that the term, "Trotskyite," was the old Stalinist libel or slur used by the Stalinist thugs in the 1930s who beat the crap out of Trotskyists and murdered us in the gulags of Stalin's death and slave labor camps like Vorkuta. I didn't realize that, and from then on, used "Trotskyist," rather than "Trotskyite."

But both ultra-lefts like Mike and Stalinists use the same libel. Hmmmmmmm............. Interesting, interesting, interesting. Could that potentially mean something? One wonders.........

Now, then, on the pmp, or proletarian military policy.

I think the Spartacists and International Communist League-Fourth Internationalist, and the 2 Trotskyist groups who broke from them, the Internalist Group of Jan Norden, and the International Bolshevik Tendency, as well as, much earlier in the 1940s, Max Shachtman's Workers' Party here in America, made a good, cogent criticism of Trotsky's proletarian military policy and also here in the U.S. of Cannon's. I think they were right to characterize it as having an objectively social patriotic trajectory.

But when Mike idiotically says Trotsky's "intentions" don't mean anything, what he's done here is, by sleight-of-hand, to disappear the record of 42 years of revolutionary socialist political struggle of Trotsky and state that Trotsky had in effect "become" a "social patriot" because of his mistaken notion of the PMP in 1939-1940, and that of Cannon's as well here in the U.S.

In my view, that's sort of the position of someone who hasn't the organic ability to tie the shoes of Trotsky or, for that matter, Cannon, making a statement of the sort that might be appreciated by one of BP's marketing team trying to palm off on the residents living around the Gulf of Mexico that BP was doing something about the Gulf oil gusher as a substitute for BP's spending their profits in genuine technologically feasible resolution of the gusher. Mike would make a good marketer for BP, is another way of putting it, for marketers can take any side of any question, and that's the sort of "logic" of Mike in his slander of Trotsky.

Trotsky did not "support" the allied imperialisms in World War Two. Nor did international Trotskyism "defend" the allied side of imperialism in World War Two. Trotsky held the position that so long as the Soviet Union was not involved in the War, it was an inter-imperialist war among imperialist powers.

Trotsky was murdered by a Stalinist assassin in Mexico before Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. At that point, international Trotskyism in the official Fourth International came to hold that the war between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany was, on the side of the Soviets, a defensible war.

The reason was quite rational and logical from a Marxist internationalist standpoint.

The official Fourth International (not the group that split the Fourth International, Shachtman's group here in the U.S., but the official Fourth International, i.e., the actual real organized embodiment of Trotskyism internationally) held with Trotsky as espoused in Trotsky's 1936-1937 book, "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?," that the Soviet Union was more or less akin to a gigantic bureaucratically misruled labor union which had expropriated the private bourgeoisie. The Communist International in its first four congresses of 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, still saw labor unions, even those whose leaderships had crossed the class line and supported the bosses, as in the organic rank-and-file labor nature of those organizations still labor organizations with pro-capitalist leaderships; that is, the CI in its pre-Stalinist period still saw labor organizations even with pro-bourgeois leaderships as "bourgeois workers' organizations," and saw reformist labor parties as, using Lenin's phrase, "bourgeois workers' parties." Lenin even used the American pre-World War One socialist, Daniel DeLeon's phrase, "labor lieutenants of the capitalist class in the working class," to describe the leadership of bourgeois workers' parties like the British Labour Party, the German Social-Democratic Party, or labor unions led by pro-bourgeois leaderships. The reason from Lenin's and the early CI's standpoint was, there was for the CI an IMPLIED SPLIT between the RANKS and the LEADERSHIP.

But not for such "Marxists" as Mike, or the ultra-lefts, who, LIKE THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS, and LIKE THE STALINISTS, and LIKE THE REFORMISTS, say, "Oh, IT'S ALL THE SAME AND THE RANKS ARE THE SAME AS THE LEADERSHIPS." That's the implied trajectory of the positions of the ultra-lefts.

Trotsky held that the Soviet Union, by 1935, had become what Trotsky called a bureaucratically degenerated workers' state. He voiced that position in his first major article revising his earlier position, a position he'd earlier held prior to 1935 that any counter-revolution in the Soviet Union would imply a restoration of capitalism internally, in his 1935 article, "The Workers' State, Thermidor, and Bonapartism." On the basis of the views he espoused in that article, in 1936, he wrote his maturest "summing-up" of the nature of the Soviet Union, "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?" In that book, he made the analogy between a gigantic bureaucratically mis-ruled labor union which had nonetheless expropriated bourgeois property, and the Soviet bureaucratically mis-ruled workers' state. And in that book, he basically expounded his position that in that situation, Marxists solidarize with the gains embodied in the expropriated property that emerged out of the original Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, while opposing the counter-revolutionary leadership of the Stalinist caste. Trotsky called for a new proletarian revolution to establish a government of elected workers' councils in the Soviet Union, but to strengthen, not destroy, the system of state-owned and state-expropriated property in the country, and do that by putting it under the supervision and control of the new revolutionary workers' government of elected workers' councils he sought inside the Soviet Union.

This position of his was not unlike the position of revolutionaries inside the rank and file of bourgeois workers' parties and bourgeois workers' unions. The revolutionaries oppose the pro-bourgeois leaderships and favor driving them out by mobilizing the rank-and-file behind a revolutionary program, including not only rank-and-file democratic control of the unions, but turning the unions into class struggle-based workers' organizations which, translated into plain English, means fighting to displace the pro-boss leadership with a class war principle-based leadership.

The basic idea of the workers' united front originated not by Trotsky originally, but by the Communist International of which both Lenin and Trotsky were components in 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, was not that the diverse workers' organizations should form some big oatmeal mush giving mushy support to the bosses and capital, but, rather, the workers' united front was originally envisioned as a TACTIC OF THE COMMUNISTS to SPLIT -- SET THE BASE AGAINST THE TOP -- of the REFORMIST PRO-BOURGEOIS workers' organizations and workers' parties.

Doing that necessitated doing so on a HARD PROGRAMMATIC BASIS. And doing that necessitated a perspective which did NOT LUMP THE RANK-AND-FILE of such organizations WITH THE LEADERSHIP -- or, in other words, did not implicitly make the rank-and-file of such movements and organizations responsible for the betrayals and treasons of the leaderships of such movements and organizations.

But for people like Mike, and other ultra-lefts, it's all the same thing. To them, the rank-and-file and the leadership are essentially one and the same. AND THAT'S THE SAME LINE AS THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS AND THE STALINISTS HAVE, and THAT'S THE SAME LINE AS THE BETRAYING, TREASONOUS, TRAITOROUS BUREAUCRACY THAT'S SOLD THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT DOWN THE RIVER ALSO HAVE. They all say, "If you oppose us, you oppose unions/labor parties/workers' parties," or whatever it is they claim to lead. And Mike and the ultra-lefts SAY THE SAME THING.

It's lumping the ranks with the leadership. It's what communists have historically called the flip side of opportunism, which is what ultra-leftism really is, the flip side of opportunism.

The counter-revolution led by Stalin and the bureaucracy that turned the old Soviet Union from a healthy workers' state into a bureaucratically degenerated workers' state did have a basis laid for it in the authoritarianism that emerged as early as 1918. I will grant you ultra-lefts that.

But if you think this authoritarianism dropped out of the skies, you're being blatantly anti-materialist in your view of things. Do you honestly think that any social revolution, beset by 14 imperialistic armed forces from 14 different capitalistic countries, as beset the Soviet people starting as early as 1918, could play by the rules of the Marquess of Queensbury? Do you honestly think that some kind of authoritarianism would not emerge in that kind of material context?

I grant you that such communists as Gabriel Miasnikov and Timothy Sapronov in Russia did attempt early on to organize and mobilize protest currents and protest factions of revolutionary workers, old Bolshevik workers, against these trends and tendencies. And I also grant you that these comrades were sincere, revolutionary-minded comrades, not counter-revolutionaries with counter-revolutionary intentions.

But if you think Lenin and Trotsky were operating in 1918 or 1919 in some kind of fashion of aiming to get precisely the opposite of what they'd spent all their lives fighting for, I think you're nuts.

Additionally, if you think Trotsky spent the last 18 years of his life from 1923 on fighting against Stalin and the Stalinist bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution with some deep down "clever" aim in mind at the end of his life in 1939-1940 of becoming a social patriot, again, I think you're nuts.

I think the ICC have admirable positions, and I think there's internal Marxist logic to your positions. I am inclined to a view that both grasps and has some sense of identifying with your criticisms of the perspective Trotsky had.

But your tendency to view Trotsky as some kind of counter-revolutionary or Trotskyism as some kind of counter-revolutionary tendency because Trotskyism did not lump the rank-and-files of bourgeois workers' parties and bourgeois workers' unions with the leaderships of those organizations, or because Trotsky saw something defensible in the previously expropriated bourgeois property in the old Soviet Union makes me think you're nuts on this question.

I also think it's dishonest to lump Tony Cliff, whom I don't view as a Trotskyist at the time of the Korean War, when he sided with the U.S. side in that War, essentially disappearing Trotsky's analysis of the nature of the sorts of countries that emerged out of the aftermath of World War Two that resembled the Soviet Union of Trotsky's book, "The Revolution Betrayed" of 1936-1937, with Trotskyists and Trotskyism. Cliff broke from Trotskyism on this question of the nature of both the Soviet Union and states like the Soviet Union (China, North Korea, and similar societies), which in my view were socially and economically qualitatively like the Soviet Union.

The issue of surplus value extraction is, I think, an appropriate issue to raise. I have some respect for the ICC, an ultra-left group who, however, I still admire and respect, and also for the League for the Revolutionary Party-Communist Organization for the Fourth International, a Trotskyist party, for tackling the issue of surplus value extraction as happening via the aegis of state ownership. I also like the article here of the ICC, because I learned something new in it about some of the left communist organizations who came, say, in the case of the Italian comrades, to see surplus value extraction occurring in the Soviet state as early as the outbreak of World War Two.

But the issue of imperialism I think is more dubious. Lenin analyzed imperialism as emerging out of the search for markets in his book, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism." I think both some of the Trotskyists, and the late Isaac Deutscher, made a salient and pertinent point that the sort of expansionism of the Soviets post-World War Two could not be simplistically called, "imperialist," but might more scientifically correctly be termed a kind of "defensive expansionism." I think that sort of defensive expansionism was characteristic of Stalin and Stalinism IN THE ABSENCE of a revolutionary internationalist proletarian program-based Soviet leadership that would have favored Lenin's and Trotsky's position of world socialist revolution as the only real "defense" of the Soviet Union. Stalin and Stalinism, like the bourgeois workers' parties' pro-bourgeois misleaderships and like the bourgeois workers' unions' pro-bourgeois misleaderships, objectively propped up bourgeois private-property-based capitalism, and did so by the enormous influence and control Stalinism wielded, particularly in the 1930s, over the various component parties of the CI, Communist International, at the time by which Stalinism had displaced and replaced the last jot and scintilla of revolutionary proletarian leaderships in all said parties. I think this actually started in 1929, too, and again, the so-called "Third Period" Stalinism's so-called ultra-leftism was really nothing but the flip side of the open and brazen opportunism which came later, after Hitler came to power in Germany, which really was the August 4, 1914 of the German Communist Party and of the Communist International, much as the voting for the war funding and war credits had been the key betrayal and treason of the Second International's parties in the period of 1914, especially in Germany.

I do not reject the communist views of the ICC or the communist views of Trotskyists. I think both the ultra-lefts and the Trotskyists are communists. I think the notion either is not is nutty.

But it's necessary to be honest in these discussions and arguments if we're going to get anywhere, and I didn't see that in Mike's article, or in some of the rejoinders to the so-called "Trotskyist" Anonymous.

--Al Greene

July 7, 2010
Wednesday

In my above post I should have put in the title "Fascinating How Y'all Used 'Trotskyite' Label," and I did not, so the point might have been lost.

--Al Greene

July 7, 2010
Wednesday

Dear Comrades:

Oh, yeah, one thing I left out in my posts above.

It to me goes without saying that if one views any organization as in some sense a workers' organization, then when that organization comes into confrontation with the capitalist bosses or an organization of the capitalist bosses, one defends that workers' organization, if, that is, one is a Marxist.

That means even if a labor strike happens to be misled by rotten, pro-boss, pro-capitalist, mis-leaders of a bourgeois workers' union, one sides with the labor strikers against the bosses and the bosses' cops and the bosses' capitalist associations and capitalist organizations.

That also means that even if one is faced with a rotten, retrograde, really awful, bureaucratically counter-revolutionary cultish Stalinist caste-governed type of bourgeois workers' organization like North Korea being assaulted by a bourgeois capitalist organization like the United States of America, one militarily defends North Korea.

That does NOT mean one "defends" or "supports" the BUREAUCRACIES misruling these diverse bourgeois workers' organizations.

What one defends is, the state-expropriated means of production and state-expropriated property in these societies.

I have some questions.

In China, for instance, where the Beijing Stalinist bureaucracy for something like 30 years, now, has in de facto and tacit effect been doing what ALL Stalinist bureaucracies do, and SELLING OUT to PRIVATE BOURGEOIS CAPITALIST INVESTORS FROM THE U.S. AND JAPAN AND HONG KONG, there has been MASSIVE LABOR RESISTANCE ON THE GROUND AMONG CHINESE WORKERS to the Beijing Stalinist state bureaucracy's PRIVATIZATIONS. In such situations, WHAT POSITION DO YOU TAKE? DO YOU SAY, OH, IT'S ALL THE SAME THING, OR, OH, IT'S ALL OF APIECE, AND NOT SIDE WITH THE CHINESE WORKING CLASSES OPPOSING THESE PRIVATIZATIONS, OR, ON THE OTHER HAND, DO YOU SIDE WITH THEIR LABOR RESISTANCE AGAINST THESE PRIVATIZATIONS?

As a communist, I SIDE WITH THEIR LABOR RESISTANCE AGAINST THESE PRIVATIZATIONS.

But I also favor in principle formation of a REVOLUTIONARY WORKERS' PARTY with COMMUNIST principles fighting for a CHINESE SOVIET-TYPE GOVERNMENT OF ELECTED WORKERS' COUNCILS to OVERTHROW the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy and REPLACE it by a GOVERNMENT OF ELECTED WORKERS' COUNCILS.

And THAT WAS THE POSITION OF TROTSKY IN HIS 1936-1937 BOOK, "THE REVOLUTION BETRAYED," ON THE SOVIET UNION.

I would also DEFEND China AGAINST a PRIVATE CAPITALISM-BASED COUNTRY'S RULING CLASS, SUCH AS THE U.S. OR JAPAN OR GERMANY, in a military confrontation between China and one of these other states.

But what I defend is the STATE EXPROPRIATED MEANS OF PRODUCTION, NOT the bureaucracy.

I don't lump the bureaucracy with the state-expropriated means of production just as in a bourgeois workers' union I don't lump the bureaucracy with the class interests of the rank-and-file workers in that union.

I favor the principle, SET THE BASE AGAINST THE TOP, in such bourgeois workers' organizations as bourgeois workers' unions or bourgeois workers' parties.

Also, that does NOT mean ALWAYS being in such movements or unions or parties. One is "in" them when it's tactically feasible to be "in" them and one is NOT "in" them when it's not tactically feasible to be "in" them. That's a question of ongoing tactical assessments over a long period of time, not an abstract and non-thought-out position one takes as if it were something lifted magically out of the totality of concrete circumstances and concrete facts.

Sometimes, it's MORE tactically feasible to organize OUTSIDE THE UNIONS, and I RECOGNIZE THAT AS ANY REVOLUTIONARY DOES. NOBODY should make a FETISH of unions, EVER. I think that to the degree that sort of thing DID arise because of some of the formulations of Lenin in, say, his booklet, "Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder," those formulations had a wrong result. But I don't think that was the original intention of Lenin. I think he was arguing against a DIFFERENT KIND of abstract fetishism, a fetishism of ALWAYS BEING OPPOSED TO AND OUTSIDE OF BOURGEOIS WORKERS' ORGANIZATIONS, and he therefore, using one of his own famous formulations, "bent the stick" a bit further in the opposite direction.

The issue, however, is looking at concrete circumstances and concrete truths FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE CLASS INTERESTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN CLASS STRUGGLE.

That, I argue, is the main standpoint from which one has to approach these issues.

--Al (Allan) Greene