Thanks Roger. A good fast overview. Even when I was a loyal
Democrat, I never believed our government could be "Reformed". Those
in control are not prone to giving away even a bit of their power.
FDR managed to take enough from the Ruling Class back in the 30's,
enough to save their ratty hides, but there was never a doubt that so
long as the Ruling Class retained power, they would bend their efforts
to regaining all that they had given up. And more.
We need to know our goals and keep our eye on them, despite how we
maneuver to reach them. Never mistake the method as the solution.
Bernie Sanders, for me, is a piece of the route toward a new System.
He is part of the old System and would never bring in real change.
But as long as we keep that in mind, his campaign can be a great
assistance.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/20/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/41115/Why+is+Leon+Trotsky+relevant+today%3F
Why is Leon Trotsky relevant today?
On the 75th anniversary of the assassination of the Russian
revolutionary Leon Trotsky, Sue Caldwell asks if his ideas can help
activists fighting for another world today
Lenin and Trotsky with soldiers in Pertrograd, 1921
Lenin and Trotsky with soldiers in Pertrograd, 1921
Austerity, war and oppression are radicalising thousands of people who
want a different society.
But it has also thrown open a debate about how we fight for it.
Do we need a revolution or can we reform capitalism? Would a revolution
inevitably end with the horrors of 20th century Russia? Is it possible
to trust the “reformist” Labour Party and trade union leaders, and can
revolutionaries work with them?
The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky took on all of these questions.
But he wasn’t just an intellectual.
Trotsky was a revolutionary activist whose writings addressed political
questions that were thrown up during struggles of the early 20th century.
He fought the most feared forces of the Tsar, Russia’s dictator, until
the 1917 Russian Revolution. In the civil war that followed, Trotsky led
the Red Army to victory.
He argued for socialist revolution and was willing to challenge orthodox
theory to further that fight.
The common belief among Marxists was that socialist revolution could
only happen in the Western developed countries.
More backward countries, such as Russia, would need a “bourgeois
revolution” first so capitalism could develop.
This would replace the Tsar with a parliamentary democracy and allow
capitalist firms to flourish and push out the old feudal ways. Only then
would Russia be ready for socialist revolution.
Theory
Trotsky argued against this and developed his “theory of permanent
revolution”.
He insisted that Russia couldn’t be seen in isolation from global
capitalism.
Russian capitalist firms were late to develop, but they had learned and
copied from their more advanced rivals.
He called this “uneven and combined development”. While the Russian
peasantry was bigger than the working class, thousands of workers toiled
in giant factories in Moscow and Petrograd.
This meant that those workers had enormous power. The peasantry was
atomised and difficult to organise. Workers, said Trotsky, were the only
force that could bring down the Tsar.
But having tasted their power, workers wouldn’t want to give it up. This
meant that they could take the revolution further and form a socialist
government, based on workers’ councils.
The two revolutions of 1917 proved Trotsky’s thoery.The Tsar was
overthrown and replaced by a government in February.
Then another revolution in October, led by Russian revolutionary
Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party, brought the working class to power.
Trotsky in 1937
Trotsky in 1937
During the revolution Trotsky led the St Petersburg workers’ council and
was also the key organiser of the October insurrection.
He writes brilliantly about these events in his book The History of the
Russian Revolution, a treasure trove of revolutionary strategy and tactics.
Trotsky’s theory is still important today. Capitalism has spread across
the globe, but there are still more backward societies.
During the Arab Spring most people argued that the revolutions could
replace the dictatorships with liberal democracies.
Revolutionary socialists rightly argued that Egypt’s large working class
would be the decisive force in bringing down the dictator Hosni Mubarak.
But it didn’t have to end there. Through bringing down Mubarak, there
was potential for workers to take the revolution further in a socialist
direction.
Trotsky also understood that the success of the Russian Revolution was
tied to it spreading across Europe.
He was a leading figure in the Communist International, which brought
together new Communist parties across the world fighting for revolution.
But the revolutions in Europe, namely in Germany, failed because there
wasn’t a large enough independent revolutionary leadership.
The majority of workers in Western Europe looked to mass reformist
parties to bring change through parliament.
Trotsky developed a wealth of strategy and tactics to help revolutionary
parties grow when the majority of workers still look to “reformism”.
His most important contribution was the “united front”.
Revolutionaries have got to organise independently of reformists to be
effective.
But in order to win workers to revolutionary ideas, revolutionaries also
have to fight alongside reformists in day to day struggles.
He argued that “any party which mechanically counterposes itself to this
need of the working class for unity in action will unfailingly be
condemned in the minds of the workers”.
Nowhere was the need for the united front more urgent than to face the
rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Trotsky berated the German Communist Party (KPD) for its complacency. He
warned that “should fascism come to power it will ride over your skulls
and spines like a terrific tank”.
Trotsky argued that the fascists wanted to crush both reformist and
revolutionary organisations.
But the KPD had become a tool of Stalin’s imperialist foreign policy and
followed its twists and turns. Stalin partly feared that a revolution in
Germany would expose his counter-revolution in Russia.
The Communists denounced the Labour-type Social Democrats as “social
fascists” and refused to unite with them against Hitler.
While the KPD refused to work with workers who looked to the Social
Democrats, it still had significant influence in the working class.
Trotsky’s allies were in tiny and isolated organisations.
Fortunately activists fighting fascism today—from Greece to Britain—have
put the lessons from Trotsky’s writings into practice.
In Britain we’ve managed to hold back the fascists.
In the 1970s and 1990s the Anti Nazi League first pushed back the
National Front and then the British National Party (BNP). More recently,
Unite Against Fascism has humilitated the BNP and the English Defence
League (EDL).
This was done by revolutionaries working in a united front with
reformists from the Labour Party, Muslim groups and many others.
Leaders
Trotsky’s writings on the united front aren’t just useful when it comes
to fighting fascism. His writings on the General Strike of 1926 in
Britain grapple with how revolutionaries should deal with the Labour
Party and trade union leaders.
Their betrayals meant the strike went down to defeat—and the Communist
Party mistakenly argued for power to be handed to the TUC rather than
workers.
Trotsky argued against the treachery of the Labour Party and union
leaders and for “the ruthless exposure of the reformists’ illusions”.
It’s never easy to get the correct balance right between working with
and against reformists and their leaders.
Revolutionaries have to stand with them to defend working class
organisation against the bosses and fascists.
But it’s also crucial that revolutionaries argue against them sowing
illusions in reformism and build a revolutionary alternative.
For example, we welcome left reformist parties such as Syriza, Podemos
and the momentum around the Jeremy Corbyn campaign.
These can push politics to the left. But only the working class has the
power to transform society.
Revolutionaries today should build on Trotsky’s work—but we should also
challenge orthodoxy.
Trotsky had many strengths but also some serious weaknesses.
He lambasted Stalin as the “gravedigger of the revolution”.Yet he
continued to believe that the Soviet Union was still a workers’ state,
but with a parasitic clique on top that workers had to topple.
When Eastern Europe fell under the Soviet Union’s domination, many of
Trotsky’s followers argued those states were also workers’ states with
the same parasitic cliques.
But there had never been a succesful workers’ revolution in Eastern
Europe. If Trotsky’s followers were right then socialism wasn’t
necessarily about workers freeing themselves through a revolution.
In fact, Russia had become a “state capitalist” regime, with a ruling
class that exploited workers just like bosses do.
Trotsky didn’t live to see this situation develop. But we can still use
and develop the insights in his writings to further the struggle for
socialism today.
The need for working class revolution to change society is as necessary
today as it was in Trotsky’s day.
Article information
Features
Tue 18 Aug 2015, 17:31 BST
Issue No. 2467
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Leon Trotsky
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