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Trotsky and his heirs: The American perspective
MARIO
D.
FENYO
Trotsky and His Heirs: The American Perspective*
The works of Leon Trotsky and of some of his ideological followers. which deal with socio-political problems in the United States and the West in the last four decades. can be grouped under five headings: interpretations of Marxist thought; party history in the United States; views on the socialist countries; Trotskyism and Western Europe; and race and other issues. This essay reviews a number of such works. most of them recent!y published. reissued. or translated.'
Interpretations of Marxist Thought Do the Trotskyists interpret Marxist thought any differently from other groups that claim to be Marxist? If so, how important are the differences? The Trotskyists themselves would not admit that there is any divergence at all between their party line and orthodox Marxism; on the contrary, they argue that they alone have maintained orthodoxy. Yet, members of the Trotskyist party in the United Statesofficially the Socialist Workers Party and its campus-oriented youth affiliate, the Young Socialist Alliance-have not balked at the designation "Trotskyist" and do not even seem to resent the nick... I am indebted to Amelia Marichild for her valuable assistance in the preparation of this review. I am, of course, responsible for its content, including any errors that may remain. 1. See list at the end of this review. SruoIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM
VOL.
X, Nos. 1 & 2,
SPRING/SUMMER
1971, 204-215
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name .. trots." In fact, they resort to that terminology themselves. In so doing, they accept a label initially used by their adversaries, and this gives fuel to the accusation that Trotskyism is something distinct, that somehow it deviates from Marxism-Leninism. The personality cult that seems to surround Leon Trotsky in the periodicals sponsored by the party does not help dispel the charge; indeed, his writings, not to mention his portraits, are reprinted almost to the exclusion of other socialist classics. The truth is that the term Trotskyist was invented by Stalin and his supporters; Trotsky used it only in quotation marks. He did not consider himself the leader of a new sect (no more than Luther, if I may be permitted a whimsical analogy, considered himself a Lutheran). Among the Trotskyists, George Novack is one of the best-known interpreters of Marxist thought. Although his writings are not nearly so compelling as those of Ernest Mandel, Les Evans, George Saunders, and certain other regular contributors to Trotskyist periodicals, his weakness is a matter of style rather than of content, for the notions he attempts to popularize in his writings are seldom debatable within a Marxist context. In The Origins of Materialism, Novack discusses the materialism of the Greeks which, he argues, gave birth to the materialist philosophy of the period of absolutism and eventually to the dialectical materialism of Marx. The book is written in simple language, presumably for the benefit of the less educated laborer or factory worker. .. Everything comes from matter and its movements," writes Novack, .. and is based upon matter. This thought is expressed in the phrase: 'Mother Nature.' This signifies in materialist terms that nature is the ultimate source of everything in the universe" (p. 4). A similarly didactic and pedestrian style characterizes Novack's Democracy and Revolution. Its theses are that there is a great variety of democracies, that democracy is perfectible, and that the form in which we encounter it in the United States is rather rudimentary. These ideas are not very revolutionary. More interesting are Novack's essays on history, entitled Understanding History. In these, Novack explains some less well-understood Marxist concepts, in particular the notion of .. uneven and combined development in world history" (also published as a separate pamphlet by Merit Publishers of New York). That principle provides a theoretical framework for understanding the occurrence of socialist revolutions in countries without an advanced industrial base or without a sizable industrial proletariat. This proposition was not devised by Trotsky; Lenin had written about uneven develop-
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ment in history, and Marx had already argued the possibility of revolutions taking place in underdeveloped countries. The concept of uneven development can be found in the writings of contemporary nonsectarian socialists like Walter Rodney (e.g., in his How Europe Underde veloped Africa)! Still, it was Trotsky who elaborated this concept, especially in his History of the Russian Revolution . It would be mislead ing to argue that there are not substantive issues separating Trotskyist parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party, from other parties that also claim to be Marxist-Leninist. A collection of essays, 50 Years of World Re volution, 1917-1967: An International Symposium, helps us understand some of the doctrinal controversies among groups claiming to be Marxist. Some of the essays are addressed to theoretical issues, such as "transitional programs," the "theory of permanent revolution," "the roots of bureaucracy," and" proletarian internationalism "-concepts either devised or emphasized by Trotsky and his followers . These discussions reveal the issues so often blurred by the invectives directed at the Trotskyists and by the polemics in which all sides indulge.
Party History in the United States Much of the information about Trotskyism in the United States has come from Trotskyists themselves. Other left-wing groups have attempted to thwart the Trotskyist movement by means of a conspiracy of silence. Only recently, after I had completed this review, did I come across a left-wing critique of Trotskyism entitled Left in Form, Right in Essence," Thus, my sources of information may be one-sided. Even the Trotskyists are not particularly informative about their history. Much of the literature listed in the most recent bibliography on Trotsky 4 has little or nothing to do with the North American scene. The " Internal Information Bulletin" series issued by the Socialist Workers Party is not truly a publication, for it is not made available to the uninitiated. Copies cannot be found in public libraries, although one suspects that they are readily available to the FBI, the CIA, and like-minded organizations. By far the best source on the history of the Trotskyist movement, therefore, remains the book by James P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism. Its subtitle, "from its origins (1928) to the 2. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972, p, 15. 3. New York: Guardian Press, 1974. 4. Louis Sinclair, Leon Trotsky : A Bibliography (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press , 1972).
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founding of the Socialist Workers Party (1938)," indicates its limitation. "Splitism" is characteristic of the entire Left in the United States; Cannon's book is useful to anyone interested in tracing the splits in which the Trotskyists were involved. The fact that the Socialist Workers Party has had a continuous existence since 1938 is no mean achievement, and some of the credit must go to Cannon himself. Cannon describes the policies of the predecessor organizations of the SWP as the most reasonable application of Marxist principles. The internally democratic nature of the Trotskyist movement, he claims, accounts for this victory of common sense. To the outsider, however, the policies adopted by the movement often appear to be a tightrope-walking act between dogmatism on the one hand and opportunism on the other. The party's members would claim that, debates and internal struggles notwithstanding, the party line remains essentially consistent to this day. The critics of the party, when they condescend to take notice, charge that the Trotskyist acrobats lean too far one way or another or have already lost their balance. In spite of attacks from all sides, and in spite of the intermittent conspiracy of silence, as Irving Howe and Lewis A. Coser pointed out in their The American Communist Party, "the American Trotskyist movement had an influence disproportionate to its numbers in the thirties among certain intellectuals and in a few trade unions." 5 True enough, the Trotskyists did not turn the other cheek. They reciprocated and escalated, and much of Cannon's book is denunciation of the" Stalinists," that is, the Communist Party of the United States. While Cannon denounces the Communist Party for, among other things, its lack of scruples, he confesses to not a little wiliness on the part of the Trotskyists themselves: witness the "French turn " (or "entryism "), the mass enlistment of Trotskyists in the ranks of the Socialist Party, in an attempt to dominate it in the late 1930s. Although Cannon's history ends in 1938, we do gain insights into the subsequent history of the movement from his Speeches for Socialism. This anthology contains the text of 33 speeches delivered between 1921 and 1964 on a variety of occasions. From some of these we learn, for example, of the wartime attitude of the SWP, the decision to consider World War II as simply another imperialist conflict much like World War I. The argument of the SWP can be studied in greater detail in Cannon's Socialism on Trial, which contains the court records of the famous Minneapolis trial of 1941. The trial resulted in the sentencing of 28 Trotskyist members of a Team-
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sters local, including Cannon himself, under the Smith Act, passed by Congress a year earlier. One of the specific charges levelled at them was that they had called for insubordination in the armed forces. It is a matter of record that the SWP consistently opposed the war, even and especially after the entry of the United States. The stand of the SWP was certainly not opportunistic, and may even be considered heroic; it was unpopular then, and it is criticized to this day. In fact, the wartime attitude of the SWP may explain in part the diminution of membership and influence after the promising 1930s. It should be noted, however, that the antistrike position adopted by the Communist Party during and after the war did not benefit the arch-rivals of the Trotskyists and may even have resulted in some workers shifting their allegiance from the CPUSA to the SWP. Furthermore, the substantial loss in membership of the SWP came as a result of McCarthyism, not of the party's attitude during the war. Ironically perhaps, the SWP picked up strength during the war in Indochina when, once again, it denounced the war as imperialist. The credit for the organization of the massive antiwar demonstrations in Washington, D.C., especially in the last few years, is claimed by the SWP and the YSA rather than any other left-wing or new left group . The latter 'tended to regard the issue as a " liberal" one.
Views on the Socialist Countries The interpretation of developments in the Soviet Union is part of the history of Trotskyism in every country. The Case of Leon Trotsky is the transcript of hearings held in Coyoacan, Mexico, in 1937, to give Trotsky an opportunity to answer the charges raised against him at the Moscow trials. The North American connection here is the "Preliminary Commission of Inquiry," whose members were, with one exception, U.S. citizens. Most members of this commission, including its chairman John Dewey, were not Trotskyists, nor even Marxists. They absolved Trotsky of all charges (Trotsky had vowed to deliver himself to the Soviet authorities should the inquiry result in a different conclusion) and came away impressed with the power of his intelligence. The transcripts of these hearings spread over 585 pages, not including the appendices . In Coyoacan Trotsky was on the defensive; more often than not, however, he took the initiative against his adversaries. In The Stalin School of Falsification, the reprint of a collection of speeches and comments first published in 1937, Trotsky attacked Stalin for his distorted account of the October Revolution and his betrayal of
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the ideas of Marx and Lenin. On the other hand, he repeatedly denied that there is, or has ever been, a fundamental difference between Lenin's ideas and his own. He describes himself as an orthodox Marxist who gradually, and sooner than many of his persecutors, evolved into a Bolshevik and became Lenin's righthand man. Indeed, the arguments first advanced at various sessions of the Central Control Commission of the Soviet Union in 1926 and 1927, and reproduced by Trotsky in this volume, are scarcely controversial (except, of course, in the Soviet Union, whence he was expelled, and where he was tried as a traitor because of some of them) . It was Stalin and not Trotsky who distorted the history of the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky described his own role in the revolution more or less in accordance with the commonly accepted interpretations found in works basically friendly to the Revolution (for instance, E. H. Carr, John Reed, the young Bertram Wolfe). One may wonder why, as George Saunders points out in the introduction, the denunciations directed against Stalin, beginning with Khrushchev's famous speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, never precede or go beyond the year 1934? Why is it, in other words, that Stalin's attitude during the years of rivalry and conflict with Trotsky, as well as during the years of the brutal collectivization program, is still assumed by Party historians in the Soviet Uriion to "be the correct one'! In 50 Years of World Revolution, 1917-1967, various authors give their evaluation of other socialist revolutions. Cuba receives an outstanding grade from Hugo Gonzales Moscoso of Bolivia: "an example of what the revolutionary masses of a semi-colonial country can accomplish with correct leadership" (p. 182). The SWP's attitude toward the Cuban revolution is discussed at greater length in a publication (April 1968) of the "Education of Socialists " series, and here also praise far outweighs condemnation. The evaluation of the Chinese revolution is less enthusiastic. In another publication in this series, "The Chinese Revolution and Its Development" (no date), the Chinese state is described as a "bureaucratic autocracy elevated above the worker-peasant masses in whose name it rules " (p. 33). Chairman Mao's ideas and policies are criticized on a number of grounds: he is accused of advocating socialism in one country, and peaceful coexistence. He is criticized for his theory of the twostage revolution, for his concept of the bloc of four classes, and for his suppression of socialist opposition, including the jailing of Trotskyists. Basically, therefore, the reproach against Mao and his disciples is the regard shown for the ideas, tactics , and achievements
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of Stalin. By the way, it would have come as a surprise to Mao to learn, from Nahuel Moreno's article on China, that his triumph "cannot be explained except by the revolutionary pressure of the European workers and the attitude of the Americans in the armed forces"-the only italicized sentence in the article. The author adds, by way of clarification, that "the American workers ... played a role of the first magnitude" in the Chinese revolution by their abstention from the ranks of counterrevolution (p. 148)! In all fairness to Trotskyists, however, such dogmatism is rather unusual.
Trotskyism and Western Europe The publications I have read do not provide any description of the evolution of Trotskyism in the countries of Western Europe, systematic or unsystematic, but some of the volumes under review do allow us certain insights and hindsights. The compilation entitled The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 consists mostly of reprints of Trotsky's letters to the Spanish Left Opposition, or the Spanish Communist Opposition as Trotsky calls them. The letters were written between 1930 and 1940, the dates on the cover notwithstanding; of the 89 letters published here, 52 date from the period prior to the outbreak of hostilities. These letters prove that Trotsky was a good tactician and a faithful disciple of Lenin; " The Communists never relinquish their freedom of political action under any conditions," he admonished in 1930, "but while safeguarding the full independence of their organization and their propaganda, the Communists nonetheless practice, in the broadest fashion, the policy of united fronts" (p. 61). Later, as we know. Trotsky argued against the popular fronts. and he likewise shifted his position on other issues in accordance with his analysis of specific political events. Similar in format is Trotsky's The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Even the time period is identical, since the items collected here were originally published between 1930 and 1940, while the bulk of them were written before Hitler came to power. The items, however, are not letters written to the Bolshevik-Leninists, as Trotsky refers to his followers in Germany. but pamphlets and articles. some of them lengthy. and most of them never published in English. The introduction. by Belgian Marxist and Trotskyist Ernest Mandel. offers an interesting analysis of fascism (although Mandel lays no claim to originality and states that he is merely explaining Trotsky's views). Thus, Mandel points to the misuse of the
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term fascist when applied to the ruling class of several contemporary capitalist countries; he adds, however, that a fascist adventurer would have" greater chances of success" in the United States than in Europe (p. 30). Ernest Mandel proves his mettle as an economist and Marxist thinker in three pamphlets entitled The Marxist Theory of the State, Decline of the Dollar, and Peaceful Coexistence and World Revolution. The first of these is a treatise on political science without reference to a specific geographical area, although Mandel does conclude his argument by remarking, oddly enough, that the state is not in the process of withering away in Belgium (p. 30) nor, for that matter, in the Soviet Union (p. 27). The second pamphlet, consisting mainly of reprints or translations of Mandel's financial articles, discusses not only the fate of the dollar but the fate of Western European currencies as well. As for the third, it is a rather polemical expose of certain failures of Soviet foreign policy since 1917. The predictable conclusions are that Stalin was consistently wrong after 1925 and that the application of peaceful coexistence is a betrayal of world revolution.
Race and Other Issues Besides attempting to capitalize on the antiwar movement, the Socialist Workers Party made efforts to attract some of the truly militant forces within the United States, particularly the black militants. The SWP was among the first of the left-wing organizations to recognize the revolutionary potential of the blacks, evidence of which was its attempt to build an alliance with black radicals on an ostensibly equal basis. The SWP theoreticians assumed that there were limits to what the blacks inside or outside the United States might contribute to a revolutionary cause. In order to achieve social change, they would need the help of the working class within the highly developed countries. a working class that is predominantly white. One might point out that such an analysis is not really Marxist. The fact remains, however, that there being a certain latitude in Marxist praxis, it is equally permissible and perhaps more consonant with historical fact to argue that blacks in Africa and blacks in the United States have achieved or could achieve significant change without assistance from the white working class. In any case, the SWP has given more credit to the militants among the minorities than have some other radical organizations. It did not brush aside the grievances of black militants on the
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grounds that race is not a factor in class conflict and did not subordinate race to class. The SWP went so far as to support an independent black party with a Marxist. and not necessarily Trotskyist, line (if such a thing is possible). The Socialist Workers Party itself put up black presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Clifton de Berry, Andrew Pulley). Several SWP pamphlets and articles on the issues of black liberation and black nationalism are evidence of this concern. Marxism and the Negro Struggle and How a Minority Can Change Society were among the first of these. The former contains three articles: one by Harold Cruse, who attacks Marxism as white, Western, and outmoded; and two replies to this article. written by George Breitman and Clifton de Berry, who argue that Marxism is as valid now as it ever was, and that the people of the Third World can be victorious only with the help of the working class within the imperialist countries. Black Nationalism and Socialism contains articles by George Breitman and George Novack. They argue that black nationalism and socialism are not incompatible. The pamphlet Two Views on PanAiricanism, by the black scholars Tony Thomas and Robert Allen, is relevant here because. as the authors point out. the Pan-Africanist concept was advocated by a number of Afro-Americans, from W. E. B. DuBois to Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. The Case for an Independent Black Party and a Transitional Program for Black Liberation contain the texts of two resolutions passed by the SWP. Paul Boutelle, who wrote the introduction to the former, points out that so far there is no black Marxist party, since the movement that came the closest to it, the Black Panther Party, developed a "fixation on the gun" (p. 5). He recommends the Chicano organization, La Raza Unida (not a Marxist party), as a model. The second pamphlet attempts to describe the black dilemma in a realistic light: ,. The political understanding of the black masses today is far less advanced than their combative frame of mind. Despite their bitterness, nine-tenths of the black voters cast a ballot for the Democratic candidate for president in 1968, as they did in 1964" (p. 11). The solution or resolution is the formation of a black political party, with an elaborate and progressive plank. So far no such party has come into being; yet the SWP is not to be blamed for that failure, no more than it should be praised if such a party were to come into existence. In much the same manner as George Novack oriented himself toward philosophical issues, George Breitman evolved into a specialist on the black cause, especially the ideas of Malcolm X. In The Last
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Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary and in Malcolm X: The Man and His Ideas, which has a corny photograph of Malcolm X with a baby on its cover, he explains his concern with the ideas of this black leader and martyr. After his break with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X turned away from religion and toward socialism and seems to have made friends in the ranks of the SWP (though George Breitman was not one of them and never met the black leader). Malcolm's fledgling Organization of Afro-American Unity advocated internationalism and may have been vaguely socialist. The SWP has likewise taken up the struggle on behalf of the feminists, although not without qualifications. In " Feminism and the Marxist Movement," 5 the editor of The Militant, Mary-Alice Waters, refutes the criticism that Marxists have not given sufficient importance to the role of women and their exploitation; she adds, however, that she is not prepared to accept "bourgeois feminism" or any criticism of Marxism originating from the advocates of liberation (nor would she accept criticism, presumably, from anyone else). James P. Cannon makes it clear in the anthology Speeches for Socialism that "the emancipation of women will begin in the very first days of the workers' government" (p. 401). Or, to paraphrase Cannon, women can no more liberate themselves by their own resources than the blacks can. The SWP and its youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance, have not rejected other minority groups either.:In its advertisements, The Militant "proudly admits that it sides with working people, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Native Americans, gay people, women, youth, prisoners, and all who are struggling against oppression." The Trotskyists in the United States are the targets of a wide range of recrimination, especially from the Left. Some of the most frequently aired charges are that they are Marxist in rhetoric only; that they are right-wing revisionists; that they devote most of their energy to attacks on truly Marxist organizations; that they are full of duplicity; that their writings should not be taken at face value. Perhaps I am gullible; I have reviewed their publications on the basis of content and have generally not attempted to compare the party's principles with its practices. the actions of its members with the printed word. To be sure. the Trotskyists in the United States have had little 5. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957, p. 163.
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opportunity to demonstrate either their adherence to principles or their disregard of them. No Trotskyist party has ever been in the vanguard of a socialist revolution, unless it be the October Revolution, which the Trotskyists feel entitled to claim as their own. In the United States, the organized Left remains weak, almost as weak as before the so-called cultural revolution of the late 1960s; the combined membership of the SWP and the YSA is but a few thousand. Hence, the Trotskyist movement is far too weak to think in terms of effecting radical change, especially since its adherents have always considered mass participation a necessary ingredient of such change. Nevertheless, in Towards an American Socialist Revolution: A Strategy for the 1970's, the thought of radical change is not discarded. " The American revolution," writes Gus Horowitz in his introduction to this selection of speeches delivered at a Trotskyist conference at Oberlin, Ohio, "will actually be a combined revolution: a revolution by the oppressed nationalities for liberation and self-determination, combined with a revolution of the working class against exploitation and alienation of capitalist relations" (p. 15). Maybe so.
Works Reviewed Allen, Robert, and Tony Thomas, Two Views on Pan-Africanism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). Barnes, Jack, et aI., Towards an American Socialist Revolution: A Strategy for the 1970's (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). Breitman, George, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). - - , How a Minority Can Change Society (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971 [1st ed. 1964]). - - , Malcolm X: The Man and His Ideas (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1965). Breitman, George, et aI., Black Nationalism and Socialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1968). - - , Marxism and the Negro Struggle (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965). Cannon, James P., The History of American Trotskyism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). - - , Socialism on Trial (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). - - , Speeches for Socialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). The Case for an Independent Black Party (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). The Case of Leon Trotsky (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969).
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Mandel, Ernest, Decline of the Dollar (New York: Monad Press, 1972). - - - , The Marxist Theory of the State (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969). - - , Peaceful Coexistence and World Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). Mandel, Ernest (ed.), 50 Years of World Revolution, 1917-1967: An International Symposium (New York: Merit Publishers, 1968). Novack, George, Democracy and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). - - - , The Origins of Materialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). - - , Understanding History (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). - - - , Uneven and Combined Development in World History (New York: Merit Publishers, 1966). Transitional Program for Black Liberation (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969). Trotsky, Leon, The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973). - - - , The Stalin School of Falsification (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972 [reprint of 1937 ed.] ). - - , The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971).
D.
FENYO
Trotsky and His Heirs: The American Perspective*
The works of Leon Trotsky and of some of his ideological followers. which deal with socio-political problems in the United States and the West in the last four decades. can be grouped under five headings: interpretations of Marxist thought; party history in the United States; views on the socialist countries; Trotskyism and Western Europe; and race and other issues. This essay reviews a number of such works. most of them recent!y published. reissued. or translated.'
Interpretations of Marxist Thought Do the Trotskyists interpret Marxist thought any differently from other groups that claim to be Marxist? If so, how important are the differences? The Trotskyists themselves would not admit that there is any divergence at all between their party line and orthodox Marxism; on the contrary, they argue that they alone have maintained orthodoxy. Yet, members of the Trotskyist party in the United Statesofficially the Socialist Workers Party and its campus-oriented youth affiliate, the Young Socialist Alliance-have not balked at the designation "Trotskyist" and do not even seem to resent the nick... I am indebted to Amelia Marichild for her valuable assistance in the preparation of this review. I am, of course, responsible for its content, including any errors that may remain. 1. See list at the end of this review. SruoIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM
VOL.
X, Nos. 1 & 2,
SPRING/SUMMER
1971, 204-215
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name .. trots." In fact, they resort to that terminology themselves. In so doing, they accept a label initially used by their adversaries, and this gives fuel to the accusation that Trotskyism is something distinct, that somehow it deviates from Marxism-Leninism. The personality cult that seems to surround Leon Trotsky in the periodicals sponsored by the party does not help dispel the charge; indeed, his writings, not to mention his portraits, are reprinted almost to the exclusion of other socialist classics. The truth is that the term Trotskyist was invented by Stalin and his supporters; Trotsky used it only in quotation marks. He did not consider himself the leader of a new sect (no more than Luther, if I may be permitted a whimsical analogy, considered himself a Lutheran). Among the Trotskyists, George Novack is one of the best-known interpreters of Marxist thought. Although his writings are not nearly so compelling as those of Ernest Mandel, Les Evans, George Saunders, and certain other regular contributors to Trotskyist periodicals, his weakness is a matter of style rather than of content, for the notions he attempts to popularize in his writings are seldom debatable within a Marxist context. In The Origins of Materialism, Novack discusses the materialism of the Greeks which, he argues, gave birth to the materialist philosophy of the period of absolutism and eventually to the dialectical materialism of Marx. The book is written in simple language, presumably for the benefit of the less educated laborer or factory worker. .. Everything comes from matter and its movements," writes Novack, .. and is based upon matter. This thought is expressed in the phrase: 'Mother Nature.' This signifies in materialist terms that nature is the ultimate source of everything in the universe" (p. 4). A similarly didactic and pedestrian style characterizes Novack's Democracy and Revolution. Its theses are that there is a great variety of democracies, that democracy is perfectible, and that the form in which we encounter it in the United States is rather rudimentary. These ideas are not very revolutionary. More interesting are Novack's essays on history, entitled Understanding History. In these, Novack explains some less well-understood Marxist concepts, in particular the notion of .. uneven and combined development in world history" (also published as a separate pamphlet by Merit Publishers of New York). That principle provides a theoretical framework for understanding the occurrence of socialist revolutions in countries without an advanced industrial base or without a sizable industrial proletariat. This proposition was not devised by Trotsky; Lenin had written about uneven develop-
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ment in history, and Marx had already argued the possibility of revolutions taking place in underdeveloped countries. The concept of uneven development can be found in the writings of contemporary nonsectarian socialists like Walter Rodney (e.g., in his How Europe Underde veloped Africa)! Still, it was Trotsky who elaborated this concept, especially in his History of the Russian Revolution . It would be mislead ing to argue that there are not substantive issues separating Trotskyist parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party, from other parties that also claim to be Marxist-Leninist. A collection of essays, 50 Years of World Re volution, 1917-1967: An International Symposium, helps us understand some of the doctrinal controversies among groups claiming to be Marxist. Some of the essays are addressed to theoretical issues, such as "transitional programs," the "theory of permanent revolution," "the roots of bureaucracy," and" proletarian internationalism "-concepts either devised or emphasized by Trotsky and his followers . These discussions reveal the issues so often blurred by the invectives directed at the Trotskyists and by the polemics in which all sides indulge.
Party History in the United States Much of the information about Trotskyism in the United States has come from Trotskyists themselves. Other left-wing groups have attempted to thwart the Trotskyist movement by means of a conspiracy of silence. Only recently, after I had completed this review, did I come across a left-wing critique of Trotskyism entitled Left in Form, Right in Essence," Thus, my sources of information may be one-sided. Even the Trotskyists are not particularly informative about their history. Much of the literature listed in the most recent bibliography on Trotsky 4 has little or nothing to do with the North American scene. The " Internal Information Bulletin" series issued by the Socialist Workers Party is not truly a publication, for it is not made available to the uninitiated. Copies cannot be found in public libraries, although one suspects that they are readily available to the FBI, the CIA, and like-minded organizations. By far the best source on the history of the Trotskyist movement, therefore, remains the book by James P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism. Its subtitle, "from its origins (1928) to the 2. London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972, p, 15. 3. New York: Guardian Press, 1974. 4. Louis Sinclair, Leon Trotsky : A Bibliography (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press , 1972).
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founding of the Socialist Workers Party (1938)," indicates its limitation. "Splitism" is characteristic of the entire Left in the United States; Cannon's book is useful to anyone interested in tracing the splits in which the Trotskyists were involved. The fact that the Socialist Workers Party has had a continuous existence since 1938 is no mean achievement, and some of the credit must go to Cannon himself. Cannon describes the policies of the predecessor organizations of the SWP as the most reasonable application of Marxist principles. The internally democratic nature of the Trotskyist movement, he claims, accounts for this victory of common sense. To the outsider, however, the policies adopted by the movement often appear to be a tightrope-walking act between dogmatism on the one hand and opportunism on the other. The party's members would claim that, debates and internal struggles notwithstanding, the party line remains essentially consistent to this day. The critics of the party, when they condescend to take notice, charge that the Trotskyist acrobats lean too far one way or another or have already lost their balance. In spite of attacks from all sides, and in spite of the intermittent conspiracy of silence, as Irving Howe and Lewis A. Coser pointed out in their The American Communist Party, "the American Trotskyist movement had an influence disproportionate to its numbers in the thirties among certain intellectuals and in a few trade unions." 5 True enough, the Trotskyists did not turn the other cheek. They reciprocated and escalated, and much of Cannon's book is denunciation of the" Stalinists," that is, the Communist Party of the United States. While Cannon denounces the Communist Party for, among other things, its lack of scruples, he confesses to not a little wiliness on the part of the Trotskyists themselves: witness the "French turn " (or "entryism "), the mass enlistment of Trotskyists in the ranks of the Socialist Party, in an attempt to dominate it in the late 1930s. Although Cannon's history ends in 1938, we do gain insights into the subsequent history of the movement from his Speeches for Socialism. This anthology contains the text of 33 speeches delivered between 1921 and 1964 on a variety of occasions. From some of these we learn, for example, of the wartime attitude of the SWP, the decision to consider World War II as simply another imperialist conflict much like World War I. The argument of the SWP can be studied in greater detail in Cannon's Socialism on Trial, which contains the court records of the famous Minneapolis trial of 1941. The trial resulted in the sentencing of 28 Trotskyist members of a Team-
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sters local, including Cannon himself, under the Smith Act, passed by Congress a year earlier. One of the specific charges levelled at them was that they had called for insubordination in the armed forces. It is a matter of record that the SWP consistently opposed the war, even and especially after the entry of the United States. The stand of the SWP was certainly not opportunistic, and may even be considered heroic; it was unpopular then, and it is criticized to this day. In fact, the wartime attitude of the SWP may explain in part the diminution of membership and influence after the promising 1930s. It should be noted, however, that the antistrike position adopted by the Communist Party during and after the war did not benefit the arch-rivals of the Trotskyists and may even have resulted in some workers shifting their allegiance from the CPUSA to the SWP. Furthermore, the substantial loss in membership of the SWP came as a result of McCarthyism, not of the party's attitude during the war. Ironically perhaps, the SWP picked up strength during the war in Indochina when, once again, it denounced the war as imperialist. The credit for the organization of the massive antiwar demonstrations in Washington, D.C., especially in the last few years, is claimed by the SWP and the YSA rather than any other left-wing or new left group . The latter 'tended to regard the issue as a " liberal" one.
Views on the Socialist Countries The interpretation of developments in the Soviet Union is part of the history of Trotskyism in every country. The Case of Leon Trotsky is the transcript of hearings held in Coyoacan, Mexico, in 1937, to give Trotsky an opportunity to answer the charges raised against him at the Moscow trials. The North American connection here is the "Preliminary Commission of Inquiry," whose members were, with one exception, U.S. citizens. Most members of this commission, including its chairman John Dewey, were not Trotskyists, nor even Marxists. They absolved Trotsky of all charges (Trotsky had vowed to deliver himself to the Soviet authorities should the inquiry result in a different conclusion) and came away impressed with the power of his intelligence. The transcripts of these hearings spread over 585 pages, not including the appendices . In Coyoacan Trotsky was on the defensive; more often than not, however, he took the initiative against his adversaries. In The Stalin School of Falsification, the reprint of a collection of speeches and comments first published in 1937, Trotsky attacked Stalin for his distorted account of the October Revolution and his betrayal of
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the ideas of Marx and Lenin. On the other hand, he repeatedly denied that there is, or has ever been, a fundamental difference between Lenin's ideas and his own. He describes himself as an orthodox Marxist who gradually, and sooner than many of his persecutors, evolved into a Bolshevik and became Lenin's righthand man. Indeed, the arguments first advanced at various sessions of the Central Control Commission of the Soviet Union in 1926 and 1927, and reproduced by Trotsky in this volume, are scarcely controversial (except, of course, in the Soviet Union, whence he was expelled, and where he was tried as a traitor because of some of them) . It was Stalin and not Trotsky who distorted the history of the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky described his own role in the revolution more or less in accordance with the commonly accepted interpretations found in works basically friendly to the Revolution (for instance, E. H. Carr, John Reed, the young Bertram Wolfe). One may wonder why, as George Saunders points out in the introduction, the denunciations directed against Stalin, beginning with Khrushchev's famous speech at the Twentieth Party Congress, never precede or go beyond the year 1934? Why is it, in other words, that Stalin's attitude during the years of rivalry and conflict with Trotsky, as well as during the years of the brutal collectivization program, is still assumed by Party historians in the Soviet Uriion to "be the correct one'! In 50 Years of World Revolution, 1917-1967, various authors give their evaluation of other socialist revolutions. Cuba receives an outstanding grade from Hugo Gonzales Moscoso of Bolivia: "an example of what the revolutionary masses of a semi-colonial country can accomplish with correct leadership" (p. 182). The SWP's attitude toward the Cuban revolution is discussed at greater length in a publication (April 1968) of the "Education of Socialists " series, and here also praise far outweighs condemnation. The evaluation of the Chinese revolution is less enthusiastic. In another publication in this series, "The Chinese Revolution and Its Development" (no date), the Chinese state is described as a "bureaucratic autocracy elevated above the worker-peasant masses in whose name it rules " (p. 33). Chairman Mao's ideas and policies are criticized on a number of grounds: he is accused of advocating socialism in one country, and peaceful coexistence. He is criticized for his theory of the twostage revolution, for his concept of the bloc of four classes, and for his suppression of socialist opposition, including the jailing of Trotskyists. Basically, therefore, the reproach against Mao and his disciples is the regard shown for the ideas, tactics , and achievements
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of Stalin. By the way, it would have come as a surprise to Mao to learn, from Nahuel Moreno's article on China, that his triumph "cannot be explained except by the revolutionary pressure of the European workers and the attitude of the Americans in the armed forces"-the only italicized sentence in the article. The author adds, by way of clarification, that "the American workers ... played a role of the first magnitude" in the Chinese revolution by their abstention from the ranks of counterrevolution (p. 148)! In all fairness to Trotskyists, however, such dogmatism is rather unusual.
Trotskyism and Western Europe The publications I have read do not provide any description of the evolution of Trotskyism in the countries of Western Europe, systematic or unsystematic, but some of the volumes under review do allow us certain insights and hindsights. The compilation entitled The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 consists mostly of reprints of Trotsky's letters to the Spanish Left Opposition, or the Spanish Communist Opposition as Trotsky calls them. The letters were written between 1930 and 1940, the dates on the cover notwithstanding; of the 89 letters published here, 52 date from the period prior to the outbreak of hostilities. These letters prove that Trotsky was a good tactician and a faithful disciple of Lenin; " The Communists never relinquish their freedom of political action under any conditions," he admonished in 1930, "but while safeguarding the full independence of their organization and their propaganda, the Communists nonetheless practice, in the broadest fashion, the policy of united fronts" (p. 61). Later, as we know. Trotsky argued against the popular fronts. and he likewise shifted his position on other issues in accordance with his analysis of specific political events. Similar in format is Trotsky's The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. Even the time period is identical, since the items collected here were originally published between 1930 and 1940, while the bulk of them were written before Hitler came to power. The items, however, are not letters written to the Bolshevik-Leninists, as Trotsky refers to his followers in Germany. but pamphlets and articles. some of them lengthy. and most of them never published in English. The introduction. by Belgian Marxist and Trotskyist Ernest Mandel. offers an interesting analysis of fascism (although Mandel lays no claim to originality and states that he is merely explaining Trotsky's views). Thus, Mandel points to the misuse of the
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term fascist when applied to the ruling class of several contemporary capitalist countries; he adds, however, that a fascist adventurer would have" greater chances of success" in the United States than in Europe (p. 30). Ernest Mandel proves his mettle as an economist and Marxist thinker in three pamphlets entitled The Marxist Theory of the State, Decline of the Dollar, and Peaceful Coexistence and World Revolution. The first of these is a treatise on political science without reference to a specific geographical area, although Mandel does conclude his argument by remarking, oddly enough, that the state is not in the process of withering away in Belgium (p. 30) nor, for that matter, in the Soviet Union (p. 27). The second pamphlet, consisting mainly of reprints or translations of Mandel's financial articles, discusses not only the fate of the dollar but the fate of Western European currencies as well. As for the third, it is a rather polemical expose of certain failures of Soviet foreign policy since 1917. The predictable conclusions are that Stalin was consistently wrong after 1925 and that the application of peaceful coexistence is a betrayal of world revolution.
Race and Other Issues Besides attempting to capitalize on the antiwar movement, the Socialist Workers Party made efforts to attract some of the truly militant forces within the United States, particularly the black militants. The SWP was among the first of the left-wing organizations to recognize the revolutionary potential of the blacks, evidence of which was its attempt to build an alliance with black radicals on an ostensibly equal basis. The SWP theoreticians assumed that there were limits to what the blacks inside or outside the United States might contribute to a revolutionary cause. In order to achieve social change, they would need the help of the working class within the highly developed countries. a working class that is predominantly white. One might point out that such an analysis is not really Marxist. The fact remains, however, that there being a certain latitude in Marxist praxis, it is equally permissible and perhaps more consonant with historical fact to argue that blacks in Africa and blacks in the United States have achieved or could achieve significant change without assistance from the white working class. In any case, the SWP has given more credit to the militants among the minorities than have some other radical organizations. It did not brush aside the grievances of black militants on the
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grounds that race is not a factor in class conflict and did not subordinate race to class. The SWP went so far as to support an independent black party with a Marxist. and not necessarily Trotskyist, line (if such a thing is possible). The Socialist Workers Party itself put up black presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Clifton de Berry, Andrew Pulley). Several SWP pamphlets and articles on the issues of black liberation and black nationalism are evidence of this concern. Marxism and the Negro Struggle and How a Minority Can Change Society were among the first of these. The former contains three articles: one by Harold Cruse, who attacks Marxism as white, Western, and outmoded; and two replies to this article. written by George Breitman and Clifton de Berry, who argue that Marxism is as valid now as it ever was, and that the people of the Third World can be victorious only with the help of the working class within the imperialist countries. Black Nationalism and Socialism contains articles by George Breitman and George Novack. They argue that black nationalism and socialism are not incompatible. The pamphlet Two Views on PanAiricanism, by the black scholars Tony Thomas and Robert Allen, is relevant here because. as the authors point out. the Pan-Africanist concept was advocated by a number of Afro-Americans, from W. E. B. DuBois to Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. The Case for an Independent Black Party and a Transitional Program for Black Liberation contain the texts of two resolutions passed by the SWP. Paul Boutelle, who wrote the introduction to the former, points out that so far there is no black Marxist party, since the movement that came the closest to it, the Black Panther Party, developed a "fixation on the gun" (p. 5). He recommends the Chicano organization, La Raza Unida (not a Marxist party), as a model. The second pamphlet attempts to describe the black dilemma in a realistic light: ,. The political understanding of the black masses today is far less advanced than their combative frame of mind. Despite their bitterness, nine-tenths of the black voters cast a ballot for the Democratic candidate for president in 1968, as they did in 1964" (p. 11). The solution or resolution is the formation of a black political party, with an elaborate and progressive plank. So far no such party has come into being; yet the SWP is not to be blamed for that failure, no more than it should be praised if such a party were to come into existence. In much the same manner as George Novack oriented himself toward philosophical issues, George Breitman evolved into a specialist on the black cause, especially the ideas of Malcolm X. In The Last
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Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary and in Malcolm X: The Man and His Ideas, which has a corny photograph of Malcolm X with a baby on its cover, he explains his concern with the ideas of this black leader and martyr. After his break with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X turned away from religion and toward socialism and seems to have made friends in the ranks of the SWP (though George Breitman was not one of them and never met the black leader). Malcolm's fledgling Organization of Afro-American Unity advocated internationalism and may have been vaguely socialist. The SWP has likewise taken up the struggle on behalf of the feminists, although not without qualifications. In " Feminism and the Marxist Movement," 5 the editor of The Militant, Mary-Alice Waters, refutes the criticism that Marxists have not given sufficient importance to the role of women and their exploitation; she adds, however, that she is not prepared to accept "bourgeois feminism" or any criticism of Marxism originating from the advocates of liberation (nor would she accept criticism, presumably, from anyone else). James P. Cannon makes it clear in the anthology Speeches for Socialism that "the emancipation of women will begin in the very first days of the workers' government" (p. 401). Or, to paraphrase Cannon, women can no more liberate themselves by their own resources than the blacks can. The SWP and its youth organization, the Young Socialist Alliance, have not rejected other minority groups either.:In its advertisements, The Militant "proudly admits that it sides with working people, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Native Americans, gay people, women, youth, prisoners, and all who are struggling against oppression." The Trotskyists in the United States are the targets of a wide range of recrimination, especially from the Left. Some of the most frequently aired charges are that they are Marxist in rhetoric only; that they are right-wing revisionists; that they devote most of their energy to attacks on truly Marxist organizations; that they are full of duplicity; that their writings should not be taken at face value. Perhaps I am gullible; I have reviewed their publications on the basis of content and have generally not attempted to compare the party's principles with its practices. the actions of its members with the printed word. To be sure. the Trotskyists in the United States have had little 5. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957, p. 163.
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opportunity to demonstrate either their adherence to principles or their disregard of them. No Trotskyist party has ever been in the vanguard of a socialist revolution, unless it be the October Revolution, which the Trotskyists feel entitled to claim as their own. In the United States, the organized Left remains weak, almost as weak as before the so-called cultural revolution of the late 1960s; the combined membership of the SWP and the YSA is but a few thousand. Hence, the Trotskyist movement is far too weak to think in terms of effecting radical change, especially since its adherents have always considered mass participation a necessary ingredient of such change. Nevertheless, in Towards an American Socialist Revolution: A Strategy for the 1970's, the thought of radical change is not discarded. " The American revolution," writes Gus Horowitz in his introduction to this selection of speeches delivered at a Trotskyist conference at Oberlin, Ohio, "will actually be a combined revolution: a revolution by the oppressed nationalities for liberation and self-determination, combined with a revolution of the working class against exploitation and alienation of capitalist relations" (p. 15). Maybe so.
Works Reviewed Allen, Robert, and Tony Thomas, Two Views on Pan-Africanism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). Barnes, Jack, et aI., Towards an American Socialist Revolution: A Strategy for the 1970's (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). Breitman, George, The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). - - , How a Minority Can Change Society (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971 [1st ed. 1964]). - - , Malcolm X: The Man and His Ideas (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1965). Breitman, George, et aI., Black Nationalism and Socialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1968). - - , Marxism and the Negro Struggle (New York: Merit Publishers, 1965). Cannon, James P., The History of American Trotskyism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). - - , Socialism on Trial (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). - - , Speeches for Socialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). The Case for an Independent Black Party (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). The Case of Leon Trotsky (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969).
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Mandel, Ernest, Decline of the Dollar (New York: Monad Press, 1972). - - - , The Marxist Theory of the State (New York: Merit Publishers, 1969). - - , Peaceful Coexistence and World Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970). Mandel, Ernest (ed.), 50 Years of World Revolution, 1917-1967: An International Symposium (New York: Merit Publishers, 1968). Novack, George, Democracy and Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). - - - , The Origins of Materialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971). - - , Understanding History (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972). - - - , Uneven and Combined Development in World History (New York: Merit Publishers, 1966). Transitional Program for Black Liberation (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1969). Trotsky, Leon, The Spanish Revolution, 1931-1939 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973). - - - , The Stalin School of Falsification (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972 [reprint of 1937 ed.] ). - - , The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971).