What is Trotskyism?

«WHAT 1S TROTSRVISM?

By Ernest Mandel (TSIS IS Tuk THAT OF A SPEGCH CY ERNEST MAIDEL, SECRETARY GF THE FOURTH INTER- NATIONAL, DELIVERED DURING A DEBATE WITH MOITTY JUMISTON, THE COMMUNIST PARTY of GREAT ERITAINS? Ci:TEF "EXPERT" ON TRUTSKYISH. TILE DEBATE WAS SIGNIFICAN.

Il THAT Tif STALINISTS HAVE BEEN FORCED TO DEBATE WITH A POLITICAL CURRENT WHICH THEY WAVE REPEATEDLY DECLARED TG LE DeAD AND IRRELEVANT).

The fact that Monty Jchnstene is here debating with me this evening on the problem of Trotskyism t day shovld in itself be considered evidence of what Trotskyism is nt. i amn-t ging to insult the intelligence of anyune present by saying that is is not counterrevolutionary or an agency vf fas¢gsm or ~ an agency “1 imperialism, sr any »f that nonsense. ir if-t.at were the case not only would this debate not take slace but many cther things witich have been happening in the world in the last few years would be inc umprehensible.

One thing Tretskyism is not is a defeated tendency in the international workers movement. It 1s nut a Menshevik-—tyne revisica-.f Marxism that has been crushed definitively, as was said in the S:viet dion in its fifteenth party congress in 1527; as was reneated by the unfortunate Nikita Sergeivitch Khrushchev at the twentieth party congress of the C.mmunist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956; as has been reneated sver and over again in innumerable publications under the control .f the stalinist bureaucracy. Because, if it were really a crushed, defeated, nonexistent, eliminated, Menshevik tendency, wny weuldanybody want t discuss with it? Why is Mont: Johnstone here debat— ing? Why is the Soviet bureaucracy after having crushed, destroyed, eliminated and vanquished this tendency, forty, thirty, twenty, and ten years ago, why are the spokesmen for these bureaverats t.day forced to write bovks, pamphlecs, and articles and keep coming back to this oreblem? Why have there been three er four new becks on ‘rotskyism published in the Soviet Union in tis last twelve months, if curs is a definitively defeated tendency” So I think that the first noint we ought to make this evening is to rerder historicil justice to the founder -f the Sed Army and t. the leader of the insurrection -f the .ctober revoluntion which initiated tha first victériocus working-class revoluticn in a whole country... On this ninetieth ainiversary of the birth .f Leon Trotsky, which coincides with the anniversay of the October revolution, the political movement he founded, the ideas he stoud fr, the programme he defended, live sstronger than ever in the world, There is today a vibrant youth movement; Thousands of young people are: caming t. Vrotskyism all cver the world, And that is the only reason Monty Johnst ne of the Commmist Party feels obliged to debate with us about ~rotskyism, that is the only reason why the S.viet bureaucracy has to put out a steady stream "nf speeches, palisilets, magazine articles and bovks on the subject of aretsk;.

Trotskyism t.day is mainly a y-uth movement, a movement of youth that is being built and expanded sm the five continents. For that very salte reason I am not going t- dwell in the least on the question that Monty Johnst ne is z_ing =

ts talk about quite a ist. What Trotsicy wrote or did-nut write ia 19.5, in 1512, in 1$17,; cr in 1816, For I want ts say irom the beginning that this is vretty irrelevant to the actualities of the comtemmorary revolutionary struggles Does amyone really think that 251,45. neonle vote for a Trntskyism Presidential canditate in France, does anyone really think that in Ceylon today a Trot—gkyist trade union leader leads tens of thousands of workers in big strikes does anyone really think that tens of thousands of people demonstrate benind banners which the whole of public opinion in Japan today calls Trotskyist, because cf what Trotsky wrote in 1907 cr 15127 The overwhelming majority of these people have not read what he wrote and are not interested in reading all that - this is a mistake on their vart, necause everybody should be interested in the history of the revolutionary ovement - but they rightly regard that as irrelevant to the main problem ynich we have tc understand and explain: What is the origin, what is the soot of the strength of world Trotslnyism today, why do thousands and thousands of people flock to its banner on a world scale, and why do the Soviet bureaucrats and Monty Johnstone, their British ssokesman, have to re-open a debate which they hoped had been finished with machine-gun bullets thirty or thirty-five years ago, in the peried of the infamous Moscow Trials?

I will give four basic reasons why the Trotskyist movement is stronger now than ever before; why thousands sf neonle are adhering to it throughout the world; why it has a bigger smsucrical, geographical and political .

axtension than ever before, even during the 1929s, while it was still a reniency inside the Communist parties and the Commmmist International.

The first reason has to do with a basic problem of the colonial revolution and the way forward for the underdeveloned, semicolonial countries. Stalinism and Stalinist parties, parties which call teluaselves Commmist, still gollew a Menshevik or semi-Menshevik policy. That is, they believe as the fa ssian Mensheviks believed, that because these countries are backward, because the industrial bourgeoisie has not yet come to political power, that the immediate strategic task for the working class and poor peasantry is some how to establish an alliance with this national bourgeoisie against imperialism and egainst feudal and semi-feudal forces. The ag or such an alliance would te to arrive at a coalition form of goverment - a “goverment of the four classes!’ as it was called in China from 1925.

to 1827 - a govermuent of the “National ~yont¥, or a regime of"National Democracy", as it was called in the new official programme of the Soviet Commmist Party. ; Experience has confirmed what Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution proclaimed as early as 1906, that there is no way out for amy underdeveloned colonial or semicolonial country along such a road; that any struggle that limits itself to fighting against rural feudal or semifeudal landlords, or foreign imperialism, while keeping the national bourgeoisie in »ower. whi le maintaining capitalist property relations intact, while refrainifg rom establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the poor peasantry, will inevitably leave these underdeweloped countries backward stagnating, exploited and suexploited by international & national capital- Such a policy will not be able to tear the millions populating these coun tries out of their age-old miseries. Experience has also taught a much mo re terrible lesson. Thousands and thousands of commmists in Brazil in 1964, in Iraq, in 1958, and 5 hundred thoudand Communists in Indonesia in 1965 had to pay with their lives for the illusion that it was possible,

a a A a eA SAS I desirable, or necessary to establish durable relationshins of coAlition & collaboration with bourgeois cr semibcurgecis pclitical forces. Such a su bordination & sacrifice of ind2»endaat mass struggle can cnly lead to cru shing defeat for the working class and the poor peasantry.

Trotskyism lives and grows, wins new members, attracts new tendencies and builds new parties in the underdeveloped ccuntries because it stands for this basic rule of revolution. There is nc possibility of acquiring reali national liberation, real indesendence from imperialism, without overthrowing the bourgeois class together with the agents of foreign imperialisa and the feudal and semifeudal landlords. There is no nossibility of liberating the people, peasants and workers, withcut establishing the dic tatorship cf the sroletariat allied with the nour peasantry, without crea ting a wrkers state. Only in those countries where this hanpened-China, Cuba, lliorth Vietnam, and it's happening now in Scuth Vietnamis there a way to social and economic progress. Wherever, through the responsability of the Commmist Parties following the Moscow line, which is Stalinist Menshevisa, taat has been prevented from happening, there have been defeats, misery, tears and blocdshed for the working peovle of those coun— tries. It is this contemporary reality, rather than quotations from 1607, 1917, en 1521, that has to be faced by atycne who wants to understand what is going on in this sector of the world revolution. Fer the Trotskyist move ment, for the revolutionary Marxists throughout the world, it was a mment cf great vindication when the leading idea cf the nermanent revolution-that the only read tc victory in a backward country is through a socialist reveluticn-— was taken cver by the Cuban revcluticnaries and proclaimed in the Second Declaration of Navan, after the first victoricus revolution in the Western Nenisnhere. This gave »reof that Leon Trotsky and the Fourth Internaticnal had been cne hundred ver cent cor rect in thkir strategic lins fur the mderdeveloned countries.

a ee re eee ten ph RSVOLUTIONARY RGAD The second reacn for the growth of Trotskyism on a world scale is that we stand ccitletely and uncenditicnally for the revolutionary road to socia lism in the industrializea imperialist countries as against the refurnist electoral road defended by the Cormmmist Parties in Western Bursze, Japan North America, Australia and lew Zealand. When we say that we follow the revoluticnary read, this dees not mean that we are wartisans of xutsclism or adventurism, that we think that a faw hundred yeczle here and a few hundred there can snatch power unexsectedly without anybody taking notice of it, in the advanced capitalist coumtries. There the bourgecisie revresents tretiendous powsr. it has political exmerience, it has the benefits of political tradition and sclitical continuity. Its rule over these countries does not depend simoly and sclaly wien its weanon of recression “its arsy and its police—but rather won the ideclogical and »clitical in fluence it still wields over a large wart of the xetty bourgeoisie and even aticong a part of the working class itsslf.

Gur clear and unccttsromising stand in favcr «f the revilutisnary read tc.

socialism essentially sivots arcund turee ncoints: Fisrtly, objective situations indesendent of the will and ecntrol cf any groun or party pericdically create prerevelutionary situaticus in industrialized, advanced countries. At these motents of revoluticnary mass upsurge these objective situations unavoidably lead t: larce-scale ticns of the working class such as general strikes and factory cecimaticns which cbvicusly go beyond the limits sf struggle for immediate ~ wage demands and working conditicns. The duty cf reveluticnary —arties

and groups representing threrevolutionary vanguard is to prepare themsel ves and the best working class militants to intervene during these hours days and weeks, for it is only through these periodic upsurges of the ma ss movement that the chance is presented to overthrow capitalist power.

You cannet overthrow capitalism gradually, you cannot abolish a bour geois army battalion by battalion, you cannot destroy the power of the bourgeoisie piece by piece. You can only accomplish these aims through the revolutionary mobilization of the msses, and revolutionary actions of this sort are not possible every day when “business as usual" prevails Revolutionary action is possible only during these prerevolutionary situ ations when the tension of the class relations is at its maximm and the class conflict is sharpest. A party, a vanguard and a class must be prepared to intervene at that juncture in a decisive manner in order to make a breakthrough toward the conquest fo power and a victorious socialist revolution. Secondly, if you want to develop a situation in which the working class wants to know what to do next, in which conditions for revolution are favorable, you must engage in prior propaganda, agitation, and action for transitional demands, especially for the key demand fer workers con trol of production, which crowns all other demands of the working class in its struggle for power in the industrialized cowmtries. To think that a working class which has been educated, day after day, month after month year after year, in nothing but immediate trade union demands and electcralpolitics will in some mystericus way suddenly become capable of revolu tionary consciousness and action in a revolutionary situation is to believe in magic or miracles.

Lenin said that the ABC of revolutionary policy and the duty cf a revolut ionary party is to conduct revolutionarg propaganda also in periods that are not yet revolutionary. Lenin said that this is precishty what makes the difference between a revoluticnmary and a reformist or centrist party.

Whén revolution drvgs break ont, many peopke smidenly discover their revo luticnary soul. But a revolutionary party has the constant duty to pronagandize for revolution even if the situation has not yet reachec the point of showdown betwean the classes. Its work in this respect can be an influential factor in acelerating revoluticnary consciousness.

Thirdly, we believe that the struggle for transitionnal Cemands, for those demands which cannot be incorporated or assictilated into the normal functioning of bourgeois society should mot be conducted solely by propagandistic means. Every opportunity should be taken to impel the working class inte Motion around such demands. They should be introducec into the ongoing daily struggle of the class by all avenues. Unless the workers acquire experience by fighting for these demands in partial struggles they will be unable te generalize their cutlock at the height of revolutionary intensity. Otherwise these demands will appear tw then as somthing that falls from the sky, that is imposed from without or advocated only by small minority groups I would like to ask Monty Johnstons how he squares the following quotqaticn from Lenin regarding the obligations cf a vanguard party with the course followed by the French Cotmmmist Party in May 1968. Lenin said: Will this situation last long; how ouch tore acute will it become? Will it lead tc revolution? This is scmething we do not know, and nobody can know. The answer can be orcvided cnly by the experience gained curing the development of revolutionary sentiment and the transition

to revoluticnary action by the advanced class, the — préletariat. There can be nc talk in this connecticn about “illusicns" or their repuciation, since no socialist has ever guaranteed that this war (and not the next one), that today!s revolutionary situation (4nd not tomorrow's) will procuce a revolution. What we are Ciscussing is the indisputable and funcamental duty cof all socialists-that of revealing to the masses the existence cf a revolutionary situation, explaining its scope and depth, arousing the proletariat's revolutionary conscicus ness and, revoluticnary determination, helping it to go over to revolutionary action, and forming, for that purpose, organisations suited to the revoluticnary situation. Just compare that quotation, which breathes the spirit of genuine Bolshevism, with the conduct of the Commmnist Parties of France, Italy, Greece, Belgium and other capitalist countries over the past twentyfive years( not tc go still further back to the prewar pericd), esnecially with the conduct of the French CP in May 1668, and you will understand both the fundamentally refornist character of these parties and why thousands of young rebels are achering to Trotskyism in these countries.

WOR ERS STATE

The third reason for the growth of Trotskyism today has to do with the crucial question of workers democracy. The main historical goal tc be attai ned in those countries that have already abolished capitalism is the instituticn of democratically centralized workers self-management in opposition to.the material privileges and the monopoly of political anc ecommic power wielced by the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic rulers are the cbject of hatred by thousands of youth, critically minded intellectuals, and advanced workers in these postcapitalist states. That was graphically evicenced during these few months in the Czechoslovakia of 1568 when these elements of the population had the chance tc speak cut, at least in part their real thoughts anc feelings.

The bureaucratic regimes in these countries are cone of the main reasons for the discrediting of the cause of socialism ih the industraalized West which deters mrmch larger nwabers of students, intellectuals, anc workers from cotting out wholeheartedly in favor of a socialist revpluticn anc communism. What I am referring tc is not a full-fledged sccialist society, that is to say, a society without any social differentiation, where commodity production and money relations have withered away. Such conditions cannot exist in any of the East European countries today and that is not what is invlved in our discussion of their political situaticn and problens.

What is both possible and urgently called for in the existing situation is what I call a political revolution, a set of changes in the superstructure of the system which would initiate cr fulfill the elementary demands of the Marxist and Leninist program on the nature of the dictatorshiy of the prole tariat, leading to the building of a socialist scciety. In none of the works by Marx and Engels will you find a single sentence, for example, which asserts that tha dictatorship of the proletariat means the monupoly of nower by a single party.

Nor will you find the slightest supnort for the abominable notion that the the dictatorshin of the »roletariat means the application cf a repressive censorship, not agains® nonexistent representatives of capitalism and landlorcism, but against the working class. These practices have been introduced anc implemented by Stalinism.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Kremlin bureaucracy not cnly violated “te sovereignity and independance of a small naticn and a fraternal and aluied workers state. It was equally criminal in cther respects.

ls identified the suppression of cemocartic rights such as freedom of expres son for workers, students, anc intellectuals, with the name cf commmmisn by tating away from the Czechoslovakian workers the rights they had regained setween January anc August 1568 to vote independently om resolutions, tc save then published in their trade union journals, to criticize the governcent if they cisaggeed with its policies and to criticize the managers of their factories. “ese were not ver# extensive rights anc they were a far cry from the full- “edged socialist democ. acy they were entitled ts and striving for. Lenin in &ezre_ancd Revolution says that under the dictatorship of proletariat the woxers should have a thousand-fcld more freecom cf self-expression and sei- organization than they enjceyed under bourgeois democracy.

pehertheless, even this elemetary right was taken away and hundreds of dousancs af soldiers were sent into Czechoslovak Socialist Republic for that grzose. That was a shateful disgrace. That is why we Trotskyists first have « reestablish what Marxism and Leninism really stand for, because the crimes $talinism have so distorded their true content in the minds of many workers socialist democaacy invelves far ture than the self-evident right cf the worser: to free expression without state censcrship cr penalties. Socialist Demosry teans the self-management cf the working class cn a cerwcratieally cen- +erhized basis. It means that the workers should run the factcries not cnly s¢ »ndividual anc senarate units, but the economy as a whole. This requires -3z2 subordimation cf the naticnal planning authorities to the congress of <rkers councils. It means that the mass of the working class actually exergeg the power and determines through its discussions and cecisicns how 4e annual national income shall be divided between the cconsurmtion and +e accumulation funds, that is, between what is used up and enjoyed for smediate needs, and what is set aside and reinvested for future growth.

~Aithout the possession and exercise wf such rights the working class dces net really rule, whatever complinents the official propagandists may offer tc aonsole it for its lack or loss cf power. It is because the Trotskyist program “st consistently advocates such democratic rule of the workers that it is yound to win more forces in the Soviet Unicn and East Eurone, where the underiring trends of development are more and more directed toward a political rewlution by the masses against the arbitrariness cf the bureaucratic autocracy.

THTERNATIONALISM

FINALLY, Trotskyism is most noteworthy today for its uncompromising internationalism. After August ISI4 and still more after Uctober ISI7, Lenin and the Bolsheviks set about to revive the principles and the instrument cf internationalism which had been trammled upon by the prowar and pro-imperalist social democratic leaders. One of the most bitter fruits of the anti-Marxist theory of socialism in one country, which Stalin originated and imposed on world Commmnism from 1924 cn, was the violaticn anc betrayal cf the international sclidarity cf the working-elass struggle. This flouting cf inter-

nationalism culminated in the scuttling of the Commnist Internaticnal by Stalin in 1943 as a favour to Churchill and Roosevelt.

| Now the leaders and followers of international Stalinism dre begining .to taste some more of these bitter fruits,which result from subordinating the welfare of the workers movement to the narrow and selfish dictates of the Kremlin bureaucracy. They see the appaling spectacle of the two largest workers states in the world at each others throats, and even hinting at the possibilities of hostilities between each cther. This situation has cone about not because either the Soviet or the Chinese masses willed it, but because it is a logical consegence cf the despicable: petty bourgeois nationalist yendencies and outlocks that guide the bureaucratic strata at the head of these countries today.

The Soviet leaders have gone so far as to- encourage and allow so-called commumist journalists to talk about "the yellow peril" and to depict the Chinese pecple as misled by a "new Genghis Khans" and as a"menace to civilisaticn". The fact that such utterly reactionary and racist utterances ~~ come from a government anc a party that still calls themselves communist shows the degree of degeneration to which these organisations have succumed, At the hight cf its power, Stalinism boasted cf the monclithic character of of the world Commmmist movement which was bound together by ideological terror and enforced conformity. Now all that is passed. The last Moscow conference of the "World Communist Parties" demonstrated how far cisintegr— ation has proceeded, There are hardly two Commmmist parties which have any measure of autcnomy today that think alike and nursue the same line.

They contend against cone another and harbour all scrts of divergent tendencies and factions. Ome can count up to fifteen different “Comumist" tendencies on a world scale. The Stalinists used to deride the Trotskyist movement in the past for being ridden by incessant facticnalism and splits. They are silent on this score nowadays - and for good reason! None of the splits among the Trotskyists has bean cmonarable to the gigantic fissures that have opened up in the internaticnal Communist movement and keep widening from year to year. Confronted with the tremendous centralized power of the innerialist counterrevolution in the world arena, the youth and the revolutionaries en all continents keenly feel the need for an equivalent centralization of their own forces. They cannot believe that the polycentrism and decentralization that characterize world Stalinism: - where the revoluticnary movement and the working class in each country is left to its cwn devices and no one is concerned with the international interests and aims of the struggle for socialism - is ideal. They cannot believe this because it runs counter to the most urgent needs of the struggle of the working masses and to the traditions of Marxism and Leninism.

They were movec to respond so powerfully te Che Guevara's famous appeal for "two, three, many Vietnams' because it corresponded to their inner most urge for an international coordination of their anticolcnialist, anti-imperialist, anticapitalist efforts. Che's final message was essentially a call for some central leadership for the world revelution.

This explains why the idea cf the Fourth International as a new revol— utionary working-class organization carrying on the best traditions of

a Marxism, which sc many dismissed as unreal and utopian, is capturing the mincs and stirring the imagination of thousands cf young people all over the globe. The socialist revolution cannct advance and certainly cannct triumph cn a world scale without the resurgence of the need for a new revolutionary international impressing itself on the conscicusness of sericus fighters for a new world: The international we want to build and are building will be centralized, but it will not be bureaucratically centralized. It was the bureaucratic centralism of the Stalinist tyne, that fake centralism which had nothing in commen with Lenin's conceptions vf organizing the working-class vanguard, which spawned the disintegrated anc . reacticnary tendencies at work in the world Communist mvenent tocay. History will prove that deman obstacle but the indispensable vehicle for elaborating a programme and implementing united action against the class eneny. these, then, are the four pillars of Trotskyism today: the theory and practice of the permanent revolution, the revolutionary road to sccialisn through working-class revolution fer socialist democracy in the Societ bloc and China, and proletarian internationalism. The fourth Internaticnal is a growing force on all of the continents because its fundamental ideas express the objective requirements of the world revolutionary process and carry on the ideas cf Leninism, cf sccialism and communism in cur epoch,