Trotskyism
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Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself a Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party. He considered himself an advocate of orthodox Marxism. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalin or Mao, most importantly in declaring the need for an international "permanent revolution". Numerous groups around the world continue to describe themselves as Trotskyist and see themselves as standing in this tradition, although they have diverse interpretations of the conclusions to be drawn from this.
Trotskyism is sometimes also used critically by those from a Stalinist or social democratic background to denote any of various political currents claiming a tradition of Marxist opposition to both Stalinism and capitalism.
"Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." - James P. Cannon in History of American Trotskyism.
Trotsky, the Russian Revolution and Stalin
Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", and he argued that in countries where the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not triumphed already (in other words, in places that had not yet implemented a capitalist democracy, such as Russia before 1917), it was necessary that the proletariat make it permanent by carrying out the tasks of the social revolution (the "socialist" or "communist" revolution) at the same time, in an uninterrupted process. Trotsky believed that a new socialist state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions quickly took hold in other countries as well. This theory was accepted by Lenin and the Bolshevik party and guided their conception of the Russian Revolution as part of the world revolution. The Stalinist faction within the Bolshevik Party adopted the theory "socialism in one country" in 1924 in order to justify making deals with imperialist countries and in order to advance their own position and conception of Marxism by attacking the theories of the current group of leaders (e.g., Trotsky).
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR, opposed political deals with the so-called imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East. The Left Opposition, led by Trotsky, grew in influence throughout the 20s, until Stalin used force against them in 1928, sending Trotsky into internal exile and jailing his supporters. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey, then Norway, and finally to Mexico.
After 1928, Stalin used his power in the USSR to gain bureaucratic control over the various Communist Parties throughout the world, and expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. At this point, inner party democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism, was destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and a fascist. The Communist Parties, such as the CPUSA, then began to support capitalist governments. Stalin did this to show that he was not a threat to capitalist rule and so hoped to avoid an invasion by the imperialist powers, as happened after the 1917 revolution.
Trotsky later developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had become a "bureaucratically degenerated workers' state". Capitalist rule had not been restored, and nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under Lenin, were still in effect. However the state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile to those of the working class. Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from imperialist powers and against internal counter-revolution, but called for a political revolution within the USSR to restore socialist democracy. He argued that if the working class did not take power away from the Stalinist bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism in order to enrich itself. In the view of most Trotskyists, this is exactly what has happened since the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika in the USSR. Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's Republic of China has also led to capitalist counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky's criticisms of Stalinism were described in his book, The Revolution Betrayed.
In 1937, Stalin unleashed a political terror against all the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917. He also killed many of the Soviet Union's leading generals including Mikhail Tukhachevsky in a purge because they had served under Trotsky when he was the commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.
"Trotskyist" has been used by Stalinists to mean a traitor; in the Spanish Civil War, being called a "Trot", "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the USSR-supported elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or agent provocateur. George Orwell, a prominent socialist novelist, wrote about this practice in his book Homage to Catalonia and in his essay Spilling the Spanish Beans. He showed that instead of helping to fight against the fascist forces, the Stalinists did them a great favor by rooting out all the Trotskyists in Spain and then pulling out their forces, allowing Franco to win. In his book Animal Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he represented Trotsky with the character "Snowball" and Stalin with the character "Napoleon."
Stalin pulled out of Spain in order to make a rapprochement with the United Kingdom and France. He later signed a deal with Hitler. This proved to many people that Stalin was selling out the revolution in order to defend an elite stratum within the Soviet Union, as Trotsky had been saying.
Still not satisfied, he tried Trotsky in absentia, and killed almost all his relatives. An agent of the Russian government (Ramon Mercader) finally assassinated Trotsky in Mexico in 1940.
Founding of the Fourth International
Before his assassination, however, in 1938, Trotsky and the organisations that supported his outlook established the Fourth International. He said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists. At the time of the founding the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese Communist movement, Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies. Thus these movements had to deal with official repression as well as the violent attacks and treachery of the Stalinists.
The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other, and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the USSR no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International organised an international conference in 1946, and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War, and the tasks for revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states". As the Cold War intensified, the FI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo which anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, in so far as they were placed under pressure by the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation: Yugoslavia was their test case. The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 'reunification congress' which established the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the French and British sections as a whole as well as many members of the ICFI in other countries maintained the continuity of the ICFI. Those members who urged discussions about the continued significance of the 1953 split were expelled from the USFI.
Trotskyists Win Mass Support
However, the Sri Lankan Trotskyist party and the Bolivian Trotskyist party became the mass workers parties in those countries, prior to experiencing defeats and setbacks at a later stage. In both countries, however, there remains a large scale presence of competing Trotskyist groups. In recent years Trotskyism has also developed large scale support in a number of lesser developed countries in Latin America where it can count on some tens of thousands of supporters in both Argentina and Brazil. Elsewhere in the Third World support for Trotskyist ideas is more diffuse and generally confined to intellectuals but can be found in a diluted form among some sections of various progressive movements as in South Africa.
In France, millions of people, 10% of the electorate, voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.
No governing Communist party or successful Communist revolution has to this date professed Trotskyism, although Trotskyism's influence in some recent major social upheavals is very evident.
Trotskyism Today
There are a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world. Most are linked to one or another of the various international Trotskyist tendencies.
This International, sometimes called the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, is probably the largest contemporary Trotskyist tendency.[citation needed] It derives from the 1963 reunification of the majorities of the two public factions into which the FI split in 1953: the ISFI and the ICFI. Its best known section is the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France.
In many countries its sections work within non-Trotskyist political parties or in alliances with other left groups.
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of UCI. UCI has small sections in a handfull of other countries.
International Socialist Tendency
An international grouping, led by the Socialist Workers Party, the largest Trotskyist group in Britain.
The CWI led by the Socialist Party (of England and Wales (formerly Militant). Previously CWI supported entryism into Social Democratic parties, but now concentrates on building national sections as separate parties.
The CMI is a group that split from CWI, when CWI abandonned entryism. CMI groups continue the policy of entering mainstream Social Democratic parties. In Pakistan, the group has a sizeable following and has elected MPs. There it works within the Pakistan People's Party. Leading figures in CMI are Ted Grant and Alan Woods.
A Trotskyist international organization, which integrated by tendencies of different historic origins: Workers Party (Argentina), Progetto Comunista (Italy), Workers Revolutionary Party (Greece), Workers Cause Party (Brazil), Workers Revolutionary Party (Chile), Workers Party (Uruguay) and other minor organizations.
The Movement for the Refoundation of the Fourth International was founded in 1997 in Genua, Italy, and it adopted its current name (CRCI) in 2004 at its first International Congress in Buenos Aires, when the current estatutes and program were voted.
A tendency, primarily based in Latin America, which was led by Nahuel Moreno. One of its main sections is the Unified Socialist Workers Party of Brazil.
There used to be several groups claiming the name of ICFI, but now only one remains active. Its sections are called Socialist Equality Parties. They publish the World Socialist Website, the most widely read international socialist publication on the internet.
Others
Among other better known groupings are the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), formerly known as International Spartacist Tendency, the League for the Fifth International led by the British Workers Power group, who call for a Fifth International and the Workers Liberty groups, who are the largest third camp Trotskyist tendency. Socialist Party USA also contains a a Trotskyist current.