Trotsky vs Baldwin: is 'gradualness' the British way?

The suffragettes: one of those inconvenient truths for Baldwin

Here's my brief introduction to Counterfire's re-posting of a classic Trotsky article from 1925:

Leon Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and, for several years afterwards, a leading figure in the socialist government of Russia's new workers' state. He was also a prominent voice in the international communist movement that mushroomed after 1917, writing about a wide range of international topics.

Analysis and action went together: he commented on major political developments with a view to influencing socialists in the countries he was writing about, hoping to influence the strategy and tactics they would pursue.

Britain had been shaken by strike waves and demonstrations after the end of World War One. In 1919 the country came closer to a revolutionary situation than at any other time in the 20th century. There was a period of fluctuating, sometimes dramatic, class struggle until the defeat of the General Strike in 1926.

This was part of a wider European upsurge that involved a number of countries, most significantly Germany, experiencing revolutionary upheavals. This wider upsurge was also the context for the growth of Communist Parties and for intense debates in the labour movement, which involved large reformist parties (like Britain's Labour Party) as well as the newer Communist Parties. In Britain the Communist Party was launched in 1920 and played a dynamic role in working class movements for the next several years, though it didn't have more than a few thousand activists.

Trotksy's published writings on Britain in the 1920s include the 1925 article re-published below. He begins by mocking the then Tory prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who was a huge figure in interwar British politics, and responds to Baldwin's dismissal of socialist ideas. Baldwin had returned to 10 Downing Street after the collapse of the first ever (but short-lived) Labour government in the previous year. At the time of Baldwin's speech - to which Trotsky was responding - there was consequently a fair amount of confidence and bounce in Tory ranks, but also an anxiety that stemmed both from several years of working class resistance and the spectre of communism emanating from Russia.

Trotsky moves on to the substance of his article. This is partly to do with the nature of how modern capitalist societies develop, and especially the way that wars and economic crises are engendered by them. But it also concerns something much more hopeful: if capitalism makes war and crisis inevitable, it also makes resistance - and indeed revolution - inevitable. And Britain - for all its fabled 'gradualness' - is not immune to that.

Trotsky documents how Britain's history is not the story of peaceful, gradual progress that Baldwin espoused, but a history of war, conquest, conflict and class struggle. He is especially scathing about the acutely violent record of British colonialism. He also notes how the English Revolution of the 1640s had been a vital motor of historical progress in Britain, a fact obscured by Tory fantasies of timelessness and social peace.

Trotsky goes on to sketch a radical, and truly bracing, alternative popular history of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which highlights the impact of wider international changes (especially the French Revolution) and the role of popular movements and workers' struggles. In this historical framework, Trotsky reasserts Marx's central idea that history is driven forward by class struggle and that hope lies in the self-emancipation of the working class. This, he shows us, is as relevant to supposedly 'gradual' and 'peaceful' Britain as to anywhere.

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Trotsky's crash course on revolution and counter-revolution

This is my Counterfire review of 'Trotsky: Writings in Exile', edited by Kunal Chattopadhyay and Paul Le Blanc (Pluto, 2012).

Leon Trotsky kept the flame of authentic revolutionary socialism burning from the late 1920s onwards. Despite the most unimaginable persecution by Stalin’s regime, he sustained a commitment to internationalism, equality and radical democracy after Lenin’s death, the rise of Stalinist counter-revolution and the marginalisation of the revolutionary tradition. He did not do this through dogmatic fidelity to Marxist ‘classics’, but by analysing fresh developments and challenging orthodoxies.

Having played a role in the Russian Revolution second only to Lenin, Trotsky later found himself isolated and persecuted. During his later years, Trotsky’s role as a practical revolutionary leader was hardly comparable to the part he played in 1917’s revolution and the years which had followed it. During that turbulent time he had organised the Red Army in defending a besieged workers’ state in civil war, helped give political leadership in the new Russia and played a central role in the Comintern, an international of socialist organisations which aimed to spread working class revolution.

Yet his later contributions as political analyst, theoretician and historian were extraordinary. His mature writings are informed by a special sort of practical experience, as a leading figure in turbulent events of remarkable historic importance, as well as deep knowledge of the Marxist tradition. Trotsky also sought to gather revolutionaries in new networks which could sustain the genuine traditions of socialism from below, and give some flesh to the radical perspectives he (and his small number of collaborators) developed. These efforts were of limited practical success due to immensely hostile circumstances, but invaluable for sustaining the tradition. After the Second World War, Trotsky’s later writings would become the basis for a great deal of what sustained the revolutionary left, with, admittedly, some important revisions to account for changing realities.

Pluto’s ‘Get Political’ series aims to make the writings of various radical thinkers and writers accessible to a new generation. Three volumes in particular, this one together with selected writings by Lenin and Luxemburg, are designed to share the insights of the path-breaking generation of Marxists which emerged around the turn of the twentieth century. These individuals are, after Marx and Engels, the most influential theorists in the Marxist tradition, making leaps forward in our understanding of revolution, reformist socialism, imperialism, fascism, and much more.

University students might learn about Marx, Gramsci and perhaps a few other Marxist thinkers, though often in somewhat distorted form, but they are unlikely to encounter Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky at all, despite their theoretically rich contributions. These figures are firmly associated with an activist, not academic, Marxism: ridiculed, despised or ignored by the mainstream. It is one of the strengths of the editorial introductions in this series that the editors have extensive experience as revolutionary activists. The three books are supported by a website with slide shows and study materials, launched by a statement signed by numerous writers, activists and academics. They are meant as resources for discussion and self-education, geared towards the needs of a new generation of activists, not mere historical or academic curiosities.

The Trotsky volume contains articles, speeches and essays from 1929, when Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, until his assassination by one of Stalin’s agents in Mexico in 1940. It largely omits excerpts from full-length works like the epic 1,200-page History of the Russian Revolution (of which left-wing comedian Mark Steel once remarked, ‘the only problem is its length - it should be twice as long’) or The Revolution Betrayed, a detailed account of the rise of Stalinism.

Instead the focus is on complete shorter works, from articles of just a few pages to substantial essays.
This is, I think, a strength: the overall result is a remarkably wide-ranging book but one packed with coherent and succinct pieces on major topics. There is helpful and detailed guidance on further reading, both Trotsky’s own writings and a range of works about him and his ideas, such as the multi-volume biographies by Isaac Deutscher and Tony Cliff.

The core of Trotsky’s analysis of the rise of Stalinism was his grasp of an elementary fact: ‘socialism in one country’ is impossible. Lenin and Trotsky both insisted, in the years immediately following 1917, that Russia’s fledgling workers’ state could only survive if there were successful revolutionary uprisings in Europe. Trotsky, following Lenin’s death in 1924, developed an analysis of Stalinism as a victory for counter-revolution, one which was predicated on the isolation of Russia’s revolution and the determined efforts of hostile imperialist powers to crush it. Stalinism, he wrote, was ‘the negation of Bolshevism’.

Trotsky was perceptive about the disastrous effects of civil war, which left the Russian working class hollowed out, while the power of the bureaucracy grew. This was the material basis for the authoritarianism associated with Stalin. While critiquing this counter-revolutionary phenomenon, Trotsky promoted the authentic tradition of revolutionary socialism. In a forensic and powerful speech he gave in Denmark, he reasserted the tremendous achievements of the early years of revolutionary Russia.

The extract here from Trotsky’s writings on Germany in the early-to-mid 1930s is astonishingly clear, illuminating the complex processes which underpinned the rise of Hitler to power in 1933. The political strategy Trotsky advocated was influenced by his prescient grasp of the enormous dangers posed by Hitler’s rising Nazi Party in the early 1930s. His pieces on Germany from this period are among the greatest writings in the entire Marxist tradition. The article contained in this volume is an extraordinary example of first-rate political analysis: acutely perceptive, concise, urgent, and powerfully expressed. As well as offering a peerlessly astute insight into Nazism, its class basis, the historical forces driving it, and the direction in which it was heading, the article is a model of political writing.

As well as probing the problem, Trotsky was clear-sighted about the solution. Trotsky - emphatically, repeatedly, insistently - urged the unity of all socialists to defeat the threat of Nazism in Germany. He argued that a united front was more necessary than ever, calling for a coalition of Communists and supporters of the Social Democrats (the German equivalent of the Labour Party) to mobilise on the streets and through the trade unions. He was, however, a marginal figure with no political base. His words were ignored, with tragic consequences. Communists and Social Democrats were persecuted, and many later killed, once Hitler took power.

A number of selected pieces are connected to the book’s central thread of revolution and counter-revolution in Russia, even if it is not immediately obvious. One example is Trotsky’s introduction to Harold Isaacs’ magisterial history of the Chinese revolution. The negative role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy, through its disastrous foreign policy, was a critical factor in the outcome of events in China. This essay is as good a brief introduction to the Chinese Revolution as you will find anywhere.

What is even more important is how essays like the one on China fit into the greater whole: it is part of the book’s larger narrative. The whole selection is united by a number of central concerns: recovering the real Bolshevik tradition from massive Stalinist distortion, tracing the rise of Stalinist counter-revolution and its dire consequences internationally, and probing the mechanics and dynamics of revolution. Writings in Exile is a potted history of major developments between 1917 and the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, but it is also a crash course in revolution and counter-revolution from one of the Marxist tradition’s most gifted writers.


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Tariq Ali: advice to a young activist

Tariq Ali, asked to offer advice to those who are new to left-wing activism, replied:

'Well, I think you have to be activists who learn from many different traditions. Certainly from Trotsky and Gramsci and Lenin; and Marx, for that matter. One can learn a great deal from these great thinkers, but to put any of them on a pedestal is just wrong.

We have to create something new. It can’t be totally new, because we can’t ignore the past and our history, but there are certain things which have to be done in a different way.

And that style of political organisation without any serious debates or discussions, where minorities are booted out, expelled… it was a parody in the sixties and seventies, but today it’s just a joke. I really think that young people are not attracted to that at all.

What you’ve asked me is not an easy question, because the honest answer is that I am not 100 percent sure myself what the best way is to go about it. But what I do know is that the old style is the wrong way to go.'

Read more HERE

Also see this short introduction to Trotsky - and my own thoughts on roughly the same topic as Tariq Ali addresses above.


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Revolution on film

I'm currently listening to Arcade Fire's new album, 'The Suburbs'. Today is the 70th anniversary of the death of Trotsky, who in 1905 was chair of the Petrograd soviet (workers' council).

That's two very good excuses for posting this popular YouTube classic, which combines an Arcade Fire track with highlights from Sergei Eisenstein's film 'Battleship Potemkin', a montage of memorable moments depicting the mutinous multitude of 1905 (sorry, no excuse for excessive alliteration).





One other thing: as tributes to Trotsky go, nothing quite compares to THIS.


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Socialism from below: Trotsky's revolutionary life

Leon Trotsky died on 21 August 1940, killed by a Stalinist agent. In 1917 he had been second only to Lenin as a leading figure in the Russian revolutionary movement. In October 1917 he was the main organiser of the insurrection which enabled the Russian working class to overthrow the state.

Trotsky was tremendously talented and had many strengths. He wrote, with outstanding perception, across a wide range of topics; he was a powerful orator, important marxist theoretician and immensely capable political organiser. Trotsky also demonstrated great personal commitment and courage in his continued defiance of Stalin, suffering expulsion from his party, exile from his country and the killings of several of his family before finally being assassinated himself.

He adhered to his revolutionary socialist ideas and principles to the end, despite being personally persecuted and politically marginalised, and dedicated himself to keeping alive the authentic tradition of socialism from below and internationalism. He was helped in this by his gift for brilliant clarity of political analysis, and also his fidelity to the ideas which had guided him and his fellow revolutionaries in more favourable times.

Read the rest of my brief introduction to Trotsky (plus an excellent chapter, on the insurrection of October 1917, from his 'Lessons of October') HERE.

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History captured in a moment

Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the murder of Leon Trotsky. In his epic 'History of the Russian Revolution', Trotsky describes a demonstration by 2,500 workers in Petrograd, in February 1917, which was attacked by the Cossacks. This is a superb description of an exciting and important moment in the revolutionary process, and captures something of the nature of revolutionary change:

'Cutting their way with the breasts of their horses, the officers first charged through the crowd. Behind them, filling the whole width of the Prospect, galloped the Cossacks. Decisive moment! But the horsemen, cautiously, in a long ribbon, rode through the corridor just made by the officers.

‘Some of them smiled,’ Kayurov recalls, ‘and one of them gave the workers a good wink.’ This wink was not without meaning. The workers were emboldened with a friendly, not hostile, kind of assurance, and slightly infected the Cossacks with it.

The one who winked found imitators. In spite of renewed efforts from the officers, the Cossacks, without openly breaking discipline, failed to force the crowd to disperse, but flowed through it in streams This was repeated three or four times and brought the two sides even closer together.

Individual Cossacks began to reply to the workers’ questions and even to enter into momentary conversations with them. Of discipline there remained but a thin transparent shell that threatened to break through any second.

The officers hastened to separate their patrol from the workers, and, abandoning the idea of dispersing them, lined the Cossacks out across the street as a barrier to prevent the demonstrators from getting to the centre. But even this did not help: standing stock-still in perfect discipline, the Cossacks did not hinder the workers from ‘diving’ under their horses.

The revolution does not choose its paths: it made its first steps toward victory under the belly a Cossack’s horse.'

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John Humphrys and the early days of British Trotskyism

Just seen this for the first time - great for Trotskyist trainspotters like me!



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Birthday blog post: revolutionaries today

Luna17 is one year old today. I started the blog on 19 March 2009 as a means of promoting the ideas and the kinds of activism I consider important. Throughout the last year I've sought to give it a clear orientation on 'offline' campaigning, which reflects my own political activism. While I only occasionally blog directly about my own activities, I often use this blog as a platform for promoting particular events and campaigns.

My initial impetus was that I knew of no left-wing blogs in the North East of England. I intended to plug that gap, but I quickly dropped the idea of devoting lots of space to local events and issues. This was mainly because I realised that most people checking out Luna17 weren't local, so I'd be limiting its reach if I preoccupied myself with local material.

I make a point of posting a wide range of material, in terms of the topics covered but also the kind of material: news reports, commentaries, videos, links to others, the occasional theoretical piece. For this birthday posting, I thought I'd select a small number of my more analytical writings. The common theme is the revolutionary tradition and socialist strategy.

The revolutionary tradition: standing on the shoulders of giants

Tweeting Trotsky

Revolutionary leadership and democracy

The future of the revolutionary party

Lenin, Lukacs and the actuality of the revolution

Note: The first post is from my temporary blog, compiled last summer, devoted to Tony Cliff.

Trotsky for a new generation... sort of

Via the Canadian movie industry:



I'm not sure what to say, but if you want to know more (and I know you do) see HERE.

What does it mean to be a revolutionary?

I've read a lot of Tony Cliff, but nowhere does he write more succinctly and eloquently than in this passage from his 1960 essay 'Trotsky on substitutionism'. The title may suggest something quite obscure, but that's not the case at all - Cliff is writing about big and important issues for socialist activists. I was going to attempt a synopsis of his ideas, or write a commentary, but there's nothing better than just letting this speak for itself.

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One can visualise three kinds of leadership that for lack of better names we shall call those of the teacher, the foreman and the companion in struggle. The first kind of leadership shown by small sects is “blackboard socialism” (in Britain an extreme example of this sort is the SPGB) in which didactic methods take the place of participation in struggle.

The second kind, with foreman-worker or officer-soldier relations, characterises all bureaucratic reformist and Stalinist parties: the leadership sits in a caucus and decides what they will tell the workers to do, without the workers actively participating. What characterises both these kinds of leadership is the fact that directives go only one way: the leaders conduct a monologue with the masses.

The third kind of leadership is analogous to that between a strike committee and the workers on strike, or a shop steward and his mates. The revolutionary party must conduct a dialogue with the workers outside it. The party, in consequence, should not invent tactics out of thin air, but put as its first duty to learn from the experience of the mass movement and then generalise from it.

The great events of working-class history have shown the correctness of this emphasis beyond all measure of doubt. The workers of Paris in 1871 established a new form of state – a state without a standing army and bureaucracy, where all officials received the average worker’s salary, with the right of recall of all officials, etc., before Marx began to generalise about the nature and structure of a workers’ state.

Again the workers of Petrograd in 1905 established a Soviet independently of the Bolshevik Party, actually in opposition to the local Bolshevik leadership, and in the face of at least suspicion, if not animosity, on the part of Lenin himself. Therefore one cannot but agree with Rosa Luxemburg when she wrote in 1904:

'The main characteristics of the tactics of struggle of Social Democracy are not “invented”, but are the result of a continuous series of great creative acts of elementary class struggle. Here also the unconscious precedes the conscious, the logic of the objective historical process comes before the subjective logic of its bearer.'

The role of Marxists is to generalise the living, evolving experience of the class struggle, to give a conscious expression to the instinctive drive of the working class to reorganise society on a socialist basis.

Because the working class is far from being monolithic, and because the path to socialism is uncharted, wide differences of strategy and tactics can and should exist in the revolutionary party. The alternative is the bureaucratised party or the sect with its “leader”. Here one cannot but regret Trotsky’s sweeping statement that “any serious factional fight in a party is always in the final analysis a reflection of the class struggle”. This verges on a vulgar materialist interpretation of human thought as growing directly out of material conditions!

What class pressures separated Lenin from Luxemburg, or Trotsky from Lenin (1903-17), or what change in class pressures can one see in Plekhanov’s zigzags: with Lenin in 1903, against him in 1903, against him in 1905, with him again (and at last breaking, it is true, with Lenin and with the revolutionary movement and joining the class enemy)? Can the differences in the theory of imperialism between Lenin and Luxemburg be derived from an analysis of their position in class society? Scientific socialism must live and thrive on controversy. And scientists who start off with the same basic assumptions, and then use the same method of analysis, do differ in all fields of research.

In order that the party should be able to conduct a dialogue with the masses, it is necessary not only that the party have confidence in the tremendous abilities of the working class in action, but also that the party understand correctly the situation in the country and the conditions of the working class, materially and morally. Any self-deceit on its part must cut short the dialogue and turn it into a boring monologue.

The party has to be subordinated to the whole. And so the internal regime in the revolutionary party must be subordinated to the relation between the party and the class. The managers of factories can discuss their business in secret and then put before the workers a fait accompli. The revolutionary party that seeks to overthrow capitalism cannot accept the notion of a discussion on policies inside the party without the participation of the mass of the workers – policies which are then brought “unanimously” ready-made to the class.

Since the revolutionary party cannot have interests apart from the class, all the party’s issues of policy are those of the class, and they should therefore be thrashed out in the open, in its presence. The freedom of discussion which exists in the factory meeting, which aims at unity of action after decisions are taken, should apply to the revolutionary party. This means that all discussions on basic issues of policy should be discussed in the light of day: in the open press. Let the mass of the workers take part in the discussion, put pressure on the party, its apparatus and leadership.

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Red cards for dissent

A creative idea from Philosophy Football, inspired by a 1920s Trotsky quote. Mark from Philosophy Football explains it thus:

Every team needs a fourth international, though expect this particular player to pick up plenty of red cards for dissent. The quote is genuine, taken from Trotsky's 1925 'Where is Britain Going?' His analysis of the consciousness-sapping qualities of football remains a source of debate! Philosophy Football's latest T-shirt is available in sizes S-XXL, plus women's skinny rib fit , from HERE.

Revolutionary leadership and democracy

'If the leaders seek only to preserve themselves, that is what they become; preserves – dried preserves. If they enter the movement, they give the impulse to five, ten, twenty others. It is more important to multiply our cadres than to preserve them, and they can be multiplied by the hundreds. Our cadres need education and experience in mass movements, and how can they get this outside the life of the masses?'
Leon Trotsky, 'Some Questions on American Problems' (1940)

These words were amongst the last ever written by the great revolutionary, before Stalin's icepick fell. While we 21st century revolutionaries are thankfully untroubled by the monstrous authoritarianism of Stalinism, it's still worth considering the sentiments here.

Trotsky is saying something about those who at least claim the status of revolutionary leadership. When they turn inwards and seek self-preservation, lashing out at opponents and stamping on dissent - rather than engaging with others and pushing outwards - they ultimately forefeit any authority as leadership. They become useless and sterile. But this is not, Trotsky seems to be suggesting, a quirk of personality or a mere temporary defect. It has a material basis.

It is, in other words, when leaders fail to absorb themselves in the real struggles in the outside world - and, in particular, when they fail to offer leadership to those in struggle - that the process of rot and decay becomes pronounced. Impotent sectarianism is what follows. The most vital corrective is an assured grasp of the united front, which Trotsky wrote about HERE.

This is, as I'm sure is obvious, intimately connected with the challenge of ensuring a healthy, vibrant democratic culture inside socialist organisations. It's John Molyneux's article on this subject - which I linked to a few days ago, but HERE it is again - that prompted me to muse on the topic. I'm not going to enter into a sustained response here, but while I appreciate Molyneux opening up the subject (and his comments on the legitimacy of factions towards the end certainly resonate) I broadly disagree with him.

While the author doesn't explicitly reject the tenets of Leninism, he introduces so many caveats that democratic centralism starts to look very dubious. But this is to get it the wrong way around. When ostensibly revolutionary parties degenerate it is not in any sense democratic centralism that is at fault - it is, instead, precisely the case that they've moved away from genuine democratic centralism.

I think Molyneux also gets things back to front in another important way too. He repeatedly implies that problems of internal democracy have been at the root of political problems in socialist organisations. But, generally, it's the other way around: political errors and wrong strategies lead to a corruption of democracy.

The reason is fairly obvious. A correct and principled politcal strategy can be articulated clearly, without evasion or ambiguity. But when the course being followed is the wrong one, it is a different matter. It then becomes necessary for leaders to lie to the members, for senior bodies to be secretive instead of open, for dissidents to be disciplined, suspended or expelled, and for a culture of denunciation and personalisation to develop.

So it is not the democratic principles associated with the Leninist model of party building that are at fault. Quite the opposite. When things go badly it is for profoundly political reasons - and the rest will inevitably follow. Lenin wrote somewhere that organisational questions are always bound up with political questions. This is something Molyneux seems in danger of neglecting.

What can appear as an internal crisis is in reality an external problem. Or, to put it another way, the real source of difficulty is how the party envisages its relationship with wider movements and with the class. Are revolutionaries just incorrigible sectarians, leeching on the movements, or are they determined to shape and lead resistance?

Are they dried preserves, or are they throwing themselves into the life of the masses?