In 1940 the theory of Trotskyism seemed founded on a rock. Today, August 4th, 1950, this is the situation in the world Trotskyist movement.
1. The "irresponsible" RCP of Great Britain1 and a powerful and very responsible minority of US Trotskyists claim that the states in Eastern Europe are workers' states. Pablo's2 latest position is indistinguishable from theirs.
2. A great majority now accept Yugoslavia, hitherto denounced as a capitalist, totalitarian police-state, as a workers' state.3
3. The cornerstone of Trotskyist policy for nearly twenty years, that the nationalization of industry alone gave Russia the claim to be a workers' state, is now vigorously denied; though what then makes it a workers' state is impossible to see because the Transitional Program says that politically the Stalinist state does not differ from the Fascist state "save in its more unbridled savagery".4
4. Those who are opposed to the states in Eastern Europe being considered workers' states denounce the theory as based upon exceptional circumstances and say, rightly, that conclusions would have to be drawn for the whole world. When asked to explain how nationalization took place without the proletarian revolution, these bitter opponents of any theory of exceptional circumstances do not hesitate to reply that the nationalizations were due to exceptional circumstances. But one of their number, Germain,5 generalizes the theory of exceptional circumstances, and declares that the property relations can be overturned without permitting us to conclude that what we have is a workers' state.
5. Pablo declares:
(a) Stalinist parties can under exceptional circumstances lead a proletarian revolution. This destroys the historical necessity of the Fourth International.6
(b) We must be prepared to have degenerated workers' states for centuries. This means either that some capitalism (actually American capitalism) will last for that time; or that all proletarian revolutions will be betrayed.
To this pro-Stalinist, liquidationist tendency, now months old, there is no resistance. Under the impact of the events of 1940-50 the theory of the Fourth International is in chaos.
Concretely the Majority and the Minority are now engaged in an unrestrained attempt to establish the closest possible alliance with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). To this "Johnson-Forest" are opposed and attribute the action to the prevalence in the International, implicit and explicit, of the ideas expressed by Pablo.
All tendencies inside world Trotskyism, sharp as the differences may be, have been united in adherence to the fundamental theory of the permanent revolution;7 in maintaining the traditions of Bolshevism; in irreconcilable opposition to all other tendencies in the labor movement. The ideas put forward by "Johnson-Forest" originate in that common heritage and have no other purpose than to bind us together in the achievement of our aims.
"Johnson-Forest" have abstained almost totally from the Yugoslav discussion and now enter it only to the degree that it is a part of the preparation for definitive decisions. We ask that our views, however far-reaching, be considered on their merits. We believe that we have earned the right to such a hearing, and more so because in the death-agony of capitalism, the chief spokesman of the Fourth International has called into question the validity of Marxism for our epoch.
We have to mention this because all positions, even Pablo's, claim, and no doubt sincerely, to be interpreting and bringing up to date the basic ideas of Trotsky. We are not doing that. Our position is that the chaos in the International is due to the fact that Trotsky's method of analysis and system of ideas are wrong, and that the chaos in the International will continue to grow until a new system is substituted for the present one.
We are very conscious of the fact that for this system of ideas which we claim must be discarded, thousands have died, and that by it many now living have shaped their lives. But the class position of the proletariat is involved the moment you reach the question of defensism or defeatism. As long as this was confined to Russia, there was no urgent necessity to draw what was implicit to its conclusions. But today the question involves half of Europe and half of Asia, that is to say, the whole world.
1 The Revolutionary Community Party was a short-lived British Trotskyist Party. It was formed in 1944 and dissolved in 1949. See chapters XI, XII, XIII and XIV of Martin Upham's The History of British Trotskyism to 1949, (1980).
2 Michel Pablo was the pseudonym most often used by Michael Raptis (1911-1996). Pablo was one of the leading Trotskyists in Europe in the 1940s and the played a major role in reconstituting the Fourth International in Europe at the end of the Second World War.
3 On Trotskyists' attitudes towards Yugoslavia after the Second World War see, e.g.: Discussion on Yugoslavia and the Tito-Stalin Split; Socialist Workers' Party (USA) Yugoslav Events and the World Crisis of Stalinism (1948); and the section 'Trotskyist Writings on Yugoslavia', in the Yugoslavia Section of the MIA.
4 The quote is from 'The USSR and Problems of the Transitional Epoch', in Leon Trotsky, The Transitional Program, (1938).
5 Germain was the pseudonym used by Ernest Mandel (1923-1995). Mandel joined the Belgian section of the, (Trotskyist), Fourth International in 1939, aged 16. By the age of 23 he had become a member of the International Secretariat of the Fourth Internationa. He became internationally recognised as a Marxist economist.
6 The Fourth International was founded by Trotskyists at a conference in New York in October 1938. Following the Stalinisation of the Third International (also known as the 'Communist International', often abbreviated to 'Comintern').
7 The term 'permanent revolution' was first used by Marx and Engels in their 'Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, in 1847. Trotsky first used the term following the Russian Revolution of 1905. It was used to explain the relationship between different revolutionary forces in Russia - workers, peasants and bourgeois liberals. Trotsky revived the term in his The Permanent Revolution (1929), which was written as a critical response to the Stalinist idea of 'socialism in one country'.