The relevance of Trotsky in 2011 - Report back

Below is an enlarged version of the talk given at last night's Socialist Party branch meeting. There was an excellent discussion covering topics such as the importance of 'class' in modern Britain, women's liberation and the fight for democratic rights. We discussed the importance of building unity in the Anti-Cuts movement on the basis of saying NO TO ALL CUTS, and that class today can be summed up as the divide between those facing the axe and those wielding it - or in other words, for the millions and not the millionaires!

Introduction

When Leon Trotsky, Bolshevik leader in the Russian Revolution of 1917, was killed by an agent of Stalin in August 1940, he and his supporters had already lost all positions of power in the Soviet Union, he had been hounded by police and assassins all over the world, and had ended up in Mexico after finding that he was on a ‘Planet without a Visa’ as he called it. But despite being so isolated he was still the most hated man in the world, hated alike by capitalists like Churchill, by fascists like Hitler, and by so-called communists like Stalin – but nonetheless there were spontaneous demonstrations in his honour by Mexican workers and farmers, despite the efforts of the Mexican Communist Party to stop them. Why was someone so outwardly ‘defeated’ still so hated and feared by all world leaders, but at the same time instinctively loved by the poor and the oppressed? It was because of the principles he stood for, and more importantly how he put them into practice – and those principles are central to what the Socialist Party stands for today.

Firstly I should say there is no element of “hero” worship in following the ideas of Trotsky. We look at his work as what it was – a continuation of the work done by Marx, Engels and Lenin. As well as people like Rosa Luxembourg and James Connolly. The theories of Marxism are ideas that stand the test of time.
Trotsky himself said that at many of the important events in his life he ended up in the situation accidently – and whether he was there or not may not have affected the outcome. But what Trotsky could do better than anyone was to use the method of Marxism to adapt to changing circumstances, and then put that into writing so that the lessons could always be used by the world Labour movement.
The events of Trotsky’s life gave him plenty of opportunity to do this, and would in fact justify the label of ‘hero’ taken alone.
At 26 he led the first Russian Revolution of 1905 and was president of the first Soviet, or worker’s-council; in 1917 he was a key Bolshevik leader and helped to organise the first Soviet government; he built the Red Army from scratch to defend the revolution and beat the 21 armies of Imperialism. Later on he fought a long and bitter struggle for democracy and socialism in Soviet Russia – he organised the Fourth International to defend Marxism against all forms of Stalinism, reformism and centrism – and was exiled and finally murdered for ‘heroic’ efforts.
But as well as this, Trotsky had time to leave a large body of work that has great value for today. He was able to take any problem or subject; poverty and inequality, racism, fascism, feminism, art and literature, and many more, look at them from a all-rounded and multifaceted perspective - scientific, political, economic and sociological. This has left a great legacy for the international labour movement and I would recommend any one of his books for their style, clarity and precision alone.
Also, it is important to stress that what we have is not just static unchanging dogmas, but a methodology than can be constantly renewed - and that method is the method of Marxism.

Permanent Revolution

One of Trotsky’s major contributions is the theory of the Permanent Revolution.

This theory came from Trotsky’s experience of 1905 and basically looked at the class-forces of Russia to show how socialism could be achieved. It was linked to something he called the combined and uneven development of different countries, which came from Marx and said that economies developed at different speeds at different times, so in Russia you ended up with modern capitalism, feudalism and tribalism all existing together.
 Russia, it was said, was basically a pre-capitalist and feudal country, which was also semi-colonial because it was tied to British and French Imperialism in a thousand ways. In other words it had not yet experienced the democratic-revolution, otherwise called the bourgeois-revolution, which had happened in Britain, France, America, and so on, hundreds of years before. The democratic-revolution was supposed the be led by the capitalist class and to complete tasks such as abolishing feudalism, freeing peasants from the land, introducing a Parliament with universal suffrage, and giving trade union rights to workers. That list alone will tell you that it had never really happened anywhere to the full extent. I only have to remind you that 2011 will be the year of a Royal wedding in Britain!

The Russian Mensheviks, along with majority of Socialist leaders around the world, said that Russia needed to go through a period of capitalism first and only later – in hundreds of years – could go on to socialism. Therefore socialists should only support liberal-capitalists and not the independent organisation of workers.

Trotsky said NO to this. He basically said that in Russia the capitalist class was too weak, too cowardly, and too tied to Western imperialism to ever carry out the democratic-tasks –and so it would have to be done by the working-class directly, leading the poor of the whole country, who would then go over directly to the socialist-revolution and the abolition of capitalism. Hence the permanent part of the ‘Permanent Revolution’.

Lenin and the Bolshevik Party more or less agreed with this – they argued that Russia was the weakest-link in the chain of world imperialism, and would be able to first spark the worldwide socialist revolution, especially in Western Europe.

They called for a coalition government of workers and farmers,  that would represent the interests of both classes and carry out the democratic-revolution. But Lenin didn’t specify who would have the most influence in this coalition and how it would lead to socialism, and he called this an ‘Algebraic Formula’ which was not yet decided.
However, in the course of 1917 Lenin and Trotsky came together in complete agreement, and Lenin accepted that the urban working class must play the leading role, he felt that the formula had been answered and that workers were the only ones able to consistently fight for democracy. And so they created the first Soviet government – with workers democracy and workers control at it’s heart.

This may seem a bit obscure and old-fashioned, but I believe this theory is still applicable to many countries in 2011. There are many countries where the most basic democratic tasks have still not been completed – countries where the most advanced capitalism co-exists with medieval caste-systems and abject poverty, countries where the leaders are no closer to solving the most basic problems, and ethnic and religious divides are perpetuated and deepened. There are also environmental problems and diseases that should long ago have been solved but continue to wreak havoc.

Take the example of the Ivory Coast which has been on the news recently.

Laurent Gbagbo, as you will know, is following other Africa leaders in refusing to leave office, instead unleashing his personal militia, the ‘Young Patriots’, against political rivals. Gbagbo has been in power since 2000, but since 2002 has seen the nation increasingly divided along ethnic and religious lines. When he says that his rival, Ouattara, cannot guarantee peace if he becomes President, it is not just a threat, which is what it sounds like, but a tragic reality. All of the political parties in Ivory Coast base themselves on scapegoating one of the various ethnic or religious groups against another, and so the division of the country will worsen.
Ivory Coast is still a country, 50 years after independence, where 68% of the population rely on small subsistence farming and 1/3^rd of the whole economy is still owned by French companies to this day. Gbagbo came to power as a trade-unionist and a pro-democracy hero, and symbolised the hopes of millions of people in the country. But because he accepted the dictates of the world market – that Ivory Coast must remain an agricultural colony for foreign investors – he soon lost his popular support and had to rely on stoking up division and hatred instead.

This is happening again and again all over the world – but with no class able to move society forward, people will remain in poverty, oppressed by brutal regimes, tied to feudal land ownership and totally at the whim of natural events like floods and droughts. Only working-class unity, across religious, ethnic and national divides, can finally break this cycle.

This is where I would like to dispel one of the historical myths about Trotsky. That he apparently ‘underestimated’ the peasantry.

By peasantry what is meant is those people who make a living directly from the land, as opposed to workers who receive cash wages. They may own the land outright, but not enough to actually make profit and become capitalists themselves. Trotsky knew more about this class and how it lived than any of the other Bolshevik leaders, because he travelled thousands of miles raising the Red Army from the countryside. In saying that the urban workers must lead the revolution, he is not underestimating anyone, but simply understanding the class forces that will enable all of the poor people in the world to break decisively with capitalism and oppression.

Revolution Betrayed

The next of Trotsky’s lasting contributions to Marxism is the famous fight against Stalinism. Trotsky began to fight the rise of bureaucracy and dictatorship in 1923, when he organised the Left Opposition, and continued this battle until his death in 1940.

The point is not just that Trotsky fought Stalinism – but that he analysed what it was and where it came from – allowing Marxists to understand all the forms of ‘Stalinism’ that spread across the globe, and giving important lessons for the future. It has meant that organisations like ours have been able to correctly work out an independent, working-class policy in relation to world events.

Trotsky’s analysis is based on criticising the so-called ‘theory’ of ‘socialism in one country’ – which is a theory only insofar as it allowed an intellectually bankrupt group of usurpers to justify their monopoly of power, and intellectually came directly from the old Menshvik ideas about ‘stages’. What is more, ‘socialism in one country substituted the very meaning of the word socialism with a brutal, murderous and authoritarian regime.

One of the academic myths about Trotsky is that Stalinism is just a continuation of what Lenin and Trotsky stood for and achieved. This criticism is basically an attempt to say that socialism will never be possible and that the working-class should not organise independently. It boils down to the not-so-clever old quote – that inside every revolutionary is a policeman waiting to get out – but Trotsky was able to explain just that.

Lenin and Trotsky both knew that the revolution in Russia had to be followed quickly by a revolution in an advanced capitalist country. Otherwise there would simply not be enough food and goods to go round and there would be poverty in Russia. As Trotsky says in his book – ‘The Revolution Betrayed’ – “when there are few goods in the shop, people have to queue. When you have queue for food you need a policeman – and that is the beginning of the Stalinist bureaucracy” – and of course, the policeman always get fed first. Every time there was a failure in the world revolution – Germany in 1918, Hungary in 1919, Italy in 1920, and so on – the breadlines got longer and the police got stronger and more greedy.

It is important to point out as well that Stalinism didn’t happen over-night or automatically – but was the outcome of a vicious and one-sided Civil War against the working class – mass arrests and deportations of the Left Opposition, the Gulag, the Moscow Show Trials, the Great Purge, and so on. Stalin eventually murdered or every Bolshevik who took part in the 1917 Revolution. A river of blood separates Lenin, Trotsky - and Marxism itself - from Stalinism.

But despite all of this, despite the personal misery heaped on Trotsky by the bureaucracy – for example the murder of most of his own family – he was able to remain clear-headed and scientific, and always defended the positive gains of the Russian revolution for the working-class, for example the abolition of landlordism and capitalism, and the planned-economy.

Trotsky’s work on Stalinism also stems from his understanding of the permanent revolution – and helps to explain what happened in China and Cuba for example, where the working-class did not take power and workers-democracy was never instituted. In these countries, to try and simplify events, regimes marching from the countryside into the cities found a power-vacuum, and because of economic and political necessity had to break decisively with world-imperialism, but in order to do so the rulers of those countries had to break with capitalism completely and nationalise the means of production.

It is not understatement to say that if you want to call yourself a Socialist you have to be able to answer the question of what happened in Russia and elsewhere in the name of Marxism throughout the 20^th Century. Only Trotsky properly does so, which is why Trotskyism is nothing but the continuation of Marxism. He was able to re-affirm the very principles that made the Russian Revolution possible – that the revolution must be international, and that it needs to have the direct control of producers and consumers from day one.

Lessons for Today

Some of the most important work Trotsky did at the end of his life was to build the organisational framework for an international movement continuing the mission of Marx – to not only understand the world but to change it.

That is what we base ourselves on today – we are part of the Committee for a Workers International, which organises in over 40 countries to fight for worker’s rights. Everywhere we are, from Bristol to Hong Kong, we orientate towards the day-to-day struggles for a decent standard of living. We always defend every gain and benefit for the working class.

One more common criticism of Trotskyism is that our ideas are outdated and no longer applicable in the 21^st century. In fact, what is no longer applicable in the 21^st century are the huge inequalities throughout the world - the imperialist wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere; the blockade of Cuba; the oppression of Palestine; the abuse of power in Africa and elsewhere; the cuts and austerity in Europe. All of this is long outdated!

Never have these ideas been more relevant. Never has it been more possible – with modern communications and technology and so on – to unite the world under a democratically-planned, socialist economy. Trotsky used to talk about nationalising the 250 biggest monopolies under workers-control, during the 70s and 80s the Militant used the slogan of nationalising the top 100 monopolies. Nowadays we have no sure figure of how few it really it is! But we know that if the working class could take over only a small number of capitalist multinationals we would we well on the pay to planning ‘the commanding heights’ already.

Every so-called new idea that tries to tell us that times have changed, that socialism is not needed because peace and prosperity will happen automatically, is just a repetition of old ideas that try to say the working-class should not organise for its own independent liberation. Look at the so called ‘Third Way’ of New Labour – the fanfare that boom and bust was finally over and that the market had triumphed – that was a load of rubbish at the time of the boom, shown by the bloody wars abroad, and the racism and inequality at home – but all the while they were marching blindly into an unprecedented economic crisis. And now we know all too well that bust has not gone away, that the boom was based on credit and lies, that capitalism has not changed its spots, and that a Tory government are saying we are all in the same boat and have to feel the pain!

Trotsky teaches that the working-class must build the maximum possible unity, and link up with all the struggles of ordinary people. That is why we begin 2011 vowing to defeat the ConDem government and fight ALL CUTS. We know from experience that that capitalism will not go away on its own, it can always feed on misery and oppression – it needs to be overthrown by a mass movement around the world. That is why we are organised in the Socialist Party, trying to make that happen.