DEUTSCHER'S BIOGRAPHY OF TROTSKY
By Joseph Hansen [Continued from last issue. | THE PROPHET OUTCAST by Isaac Deutscher. New York: The Oxford University
Press, 1963. 543 pp. $9.50. '
There is justification in singling out this aspect, in empnasizing Trotsky as prophet. It helps create interest in what he had to offer the world, Nevertheless, a certain amount of reduction occurs, At worst, the image, with its undue connotation of extra-sensory intuitive powers, tends to obscure the image of Trotsky .as scientist. It contributes to an , imbalance in the portrait. Before coming To that, however, it is perhaps advisable to say something about Deutscher's differences | with Trotsky, which come to the fore in this volume.
Throughout the biography Deutscher stresses the continuity of Marxist thought represented by Trotsky, evaluates to the best of his ability what Trotsky added to the body of Marxist literature and offers accurate and readable presentations of Trotsky'ts special contributions. In previous volumes he considered Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, his brilliant work in the field of literary criticism, his outstanding role in the. 1905. and 1917 révolutions, his program for the first workers state as it stood isolated in the twenties, his opening of the struggle against Stalinism. In this volume, Deutscher calls special attention to Trotsky's | analysis of the nature of fascism and how to fight it -- an addition to Marxism that is little appreciated today, primarily because of the unending campaign of slander against Trotsky.
Most of Trotsky's followers would add to this list, and even put it. in the top rank of his achievements, the analysis of ‘the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers! state, particularly Trotsky's estimate of the roots and nature of Stalinism. Deutscher has strong reservations on this, He feels that Trotsky, while making the fundamental contribution, did not see altogether clearly on the subject:
"The Revolution Betrayed occupies a special place in Trotsky's literary work. it is the last book he managed to complete and [constitutes], in a sense, his political testament. In it he gave his final analysis of Soviet society and a survey of its history up to the middle of the Stalin era. His most complex book, it combines all the weakness and the strength of his thought, It contains many new and original reflections on rn on the difficulties with which proletarian revolution has to grapple, and . on the role of a bureaucracy in a workers! state. He also surveyed the international position of the Soviet Union before the Second World War and tried to pierce the future with daring and partly erroneous forecasts, The. book is a profound theoretical treatise and a tract for the time; a crea~ _ tive restatement of classical Marxist views; and the manifesto of the 'new . _Trotskyism! calling for revolution in the Soviet Union. Trotsky appears here in all his capacities; as detached and rigorously objective thinker;
25m
as leader of a defeated Opposition; and as passionate pamphleteer and ‘polemicist. The polemicist!s contribution forms the more esoteric part of the work and tends to overshadow the objective and analytical argument. Because of the wealth of its ideas and its imaginative force, this has been one of the seminal books of this century, as instructive as confusing, and destined to be put to adventitious use more often than any other piece of political writing. Even its title was to become one of the shibboleths of our time," ;
Deutscher. follows with a summary of the book which is quite good | (however "Stalinist state" for "Stalinist. regime" in a "workers! state” is scarcely a happy condensation). He finds himself in.agreement with Trotsky's program against bureaucratism and for proletarian democracy and — considers it still relevant “over a quarter of a century after its formulation." Then he indicates one of his main disagreements with Trotsky:
"From the tenor of The Revolution Betrayed it is clear that he saw no chance. of any reform from above; and there was indeed no chance of it in his lifetime and for the rest of the Stalin era. But. during that time there was no chance in the Soviet Union of any political revolution either. This was a period of deadlock::. it was impossible either to cut or to untie the Gordian kmots of Stalinism. Any programme of change whether revolutionary or reformist, was illusory. This could not prevent a fighter like Trotsky from searching for a way out. But he was searching within a vicious circle, which only world-shaking events began to breach many years later, And when that happened the Soviet Union moved away from Stalinism through reform from above in the first instance, What forced the reform was-precisely the factors on which Trotsky had banked: economic progress, the cultural rise of the masses, and the end of Soviet isolation. The break with Stalinism could only be piecemeal, because at the end of the Stalin .era there existed and could exist: no political force capable and willing to act-in a revolutionary manner. . Moreover, throughout the first. decade after Stalin there did not emerge 'from below! any autonomous and articulate mass movement even for reform. Since Stalinism had become an anachronism, nationally and internationally, and a break with it had become an historic necessity for the Soviet Union, the ruling group itself had to take the initiative of the break, Thus, by an irony of history Stalin's _ epigones began thé” liquidation of Stalinism and thereby carried out, malgré eux memes, parts of Trotsky's political testament,
"But can they continue this work and complete it? Or is a political revolution still necessary? On the face of it, the chances of revolution are still as slender as they were in Trotsky's days, whereas the possibilities of reform are far more real,"
#In connection with this, Deutscher refers in a footnote to an attack on his views’ levelled by James P, Cannon in 1954, Perhaps it is opportune to attempt to clear this-up. Some harsh and even unjustified things were said of Deutscher, At the time, Deutscher's theory about the possibility of the self-reform of the Stalinist. bureaucracy figured in an internal crisis of the Socialist Workers party. A sector of the cadres and leaders were strongly influenced by Deutscher's theory. A split occurred and some of them capitulated to Stalinism. The crisis was not confined to the SWP but
top
In The Prophet Outcast Deutscher still holds that "continuous reform". is more likely than "a revolutionary explosion," However, he agrees that — this. can be only a tentative conclusion. There can be "iittle or no cere. titude, He says finally, "At any rate, the present writer prefers to. leave the final judgement on Trotsky's dea of a political revolution to a historian of the next generation.” mo
It is not my intention to get into a “dispute at ‘this time with Deutscher on "self-reform" or "political revolution," a complicated question. I will only indicate the central issue. The imaodiaey of a politi-
cal revolution is not at stake -- the disagreement is not about that. What: is involved in principle is the character of the ruling caste in the. Soviet Union, In Trotsky'ts view it was not just a bureaucracy but some~: thing more, somewhat like a class in its rapacity and its need to monopolize power but lacking the economic roots and economic stability of:-a true class, Will such a social formation, out of self-volition, eventually offer the masses effective forms of proletarian democracy? Trotsky held the view that the answer was no, since the effective opération of proletarian democracy would signify liquidation of the bureaucracy as a social | formation.enjoying special privileges, A negative answer, in turn, implied that political revolution was the only means left to the masses to inter vene in their own rule, This did not necessarily mean a "violent explo~. sion" although it would certainly signify a thoroughgoing shakeup undertaken at the. initiative of the masses,
None of the concessions granted by Stalin's heirs up to now have | affected the political monopoly held by the bureaucratic caste. Trotsky!s conclusions would. thus seem to have received corroboration from the pattern of the reforms themselves.
From the viewpoint of the world Trotskyist movement, Deutscher's agreement on the validity of Trotsky's program establishes the possibility in principle of practical collaboration with him, even though action, so far as he is concerned, might never go. beyond working for "continuous reform," | Since advocates of "continuous reform ana Nyolitical revolution" have the
affected other sectors of the Trotskyist movement. To many Trotskyists, ~ Deutscher's position appeared as an alternative program which could prove to be a bridge to Stalinism, It was therefore viewed with hostility.. It turned out, however, that Deutscher was not interested in recruiting from the Trotskyist movement or in organizing a sect of his own, still less a. ¢éult. This spoke strongly in his favor, After the Hungarian uprising another phenomenon soon became noticeable to the Trotskyist movement, Many members. of .Comnunist parties, shaken by the events, began reading forbidden literature, Not prepared to touch the works of the devil himself, Déutscher's writings appeared less "“counterrevolutionary" to them, Having . begun dipping into Trotskyism in this way, they thirsted for more, Through Deutscher, some of them eventually found their way to Trotskyism. Deut- © scher's position under these circumstances proved to be a bridge from Stalinism to Trotskyism, Trotskyists could not: be against that Kind of public facility, They therefore began undertaking their own self-reform -in relation to Deutscher,
e
wD Tm
game end in view =- the establishment of proletarian democracy in the workers! states -- a rather wide basis for co-operation exists. To this it can be added that it will doubtless be in the process of seeking to obtain reforms of increasing importance that the Soviet masses will eventually prove in life who saw most clearly and who suffered to some degree from illusions as to the means by which Stalin's alteration of the political structure will eventually be. rectified,
ale
1“
al
x4
x ‘
In addition -to inability to prophesy correctly how the workers! state would be regenerated, Deutscher holds that Trotsky failed to forecast correctly the pattern which the world revolution actually took in the postwar period, I would not deny that there is an element of truth in the latter assertion. The specific pattern of the Chinese Revolution -~ organization of the peasantry into armies and their advance from the countryside to the city .-- offers the most spectacular example of a mode foreseen by no one. The Cuban Revolution offered powerful confirmation.to what could be deduced in the case of China -- that there is much still to be learned about potentialities in the revolutionary process, in particular about. the increasing role of revolutionists of action (foreseen by Trotsky) in contrast to the earlier predominance of the pioneers of theory.
To say that these revolutions: deviated from the pattern forecast by classical Marxism.does not bring us to the heart of the matter, however. The October Revolution in its time likewise deviated from the Forecasts of classical Marxism (Trotsky's. theory of permanent revolution was not yet part of "classical" Marxism), yet in the final balancing of accounts the October Revolution offered the most powerful confirmation of classical Marxism, The problems in theory offered by China and Cuba are not qualitatively different, What they point to is the importance of the method to be used in approaching them. This was already indicated by Trotsky -- At not as prophet, then as scientist.
. In a Postscript, Deutscher offers some contributions in relation to this, What he says is interesting but not exactly new to the Trotskyist movement which has been discussing these questions since the downfall of capitalism in Eastern Europe.
.. -In passing, Deutscher notes certain physical characteristics of Trotsky. The likeness grows to photographic accuracy. (Photography always misses somewhat.) This is all the more notable since Deutscher never happened to meet Trotsky and had to rely on the impressions of others besides, of course, the written record,
“The portrait as a work of art, one must also agree, is quite good. A reservation, however, must be registered, Deutscher'ts preoccupation with accounting for the apparent discrepancies between Trotsky's program of political revolution in the USSR and the actual post-Stalin concessions, Trotsky!s program of socialist revolution in the industrially advanced countries and the actual advance of the world revolution in the colonial. sector, Trotsky's program for rebuilding the revolutionary-socialist move-~
2)
ment and the actual organizational weakness to this day of the Fourth International, lead him, in my opinion, to miss something very important. I am not interested here in debating these questions, but in considering how Deutscher's positions affect his ‘finished portrait.
Trotsky was enormously attractive to not a few intellectuals, His power of prediction, his range of intellect and culture showed his mind without the slightest doubt to be one of the greatest the West has produced,
To follow Trotsky's thought in all its ramifications is an absorbing study, as Deutscher's biography proves. It is a challenge to measure | Trotsky's theory against the historical reality. The temptation can even — it. may seem he went Wrong. This is perfectly legitimate and one cannot quarrel with such ambitions, They can prove to be productive, A trap does exist, however, The very subtlety, range and depth of Trotsky's thought — and the quantity of his productions, which make him so magnetic to intellectuals, can lead one to overlook Trotsky's essential simplicity.
In working closely with Trotsky, one.soon noted an extraordinary combination of qualities: enormous energy, unbelievably quick perception and rapport, extraordinary memory, and the mobilization of these gifts in . a most efficient and businesslike way. Mobilized for what? A very simple task -- the establishment of planned economy in place of the anarchic relations of capitalism, This was the elementary chore which this genius set for himself as a youth when he decided to choose Marxism as his field. It was the job to which he stuck steadily through the years, He was still working at it when he was struck down.
If you wish to question the wisdom of how Trotsky directed his genius, as Deutscher does in the instance of his seeking to'build a new international, it would seem in order to begin by questioning the wisdom of this primary decision,
A case can be made out concerning the abysmal waste of taking humanity's very greatest intellects and compelling them to become occupied with | bringing order into our way of organizing the production and distribution of food, clothing, housing, and taking care of the rest of our basic social needs, *Trotsky!s answer to that is that we do not choose the time we are -born into, Our problem as individuals in finding our niche is to grasp the main tasks facing mankind, and, as members of the human race, do what we can to help accomplish them, From Trotsky's viewpoint this also offers a human being the greatest possible: satisfaction,
All the rest. follows, including the burning importance which Trotsky placed upon organization of the Fourth International.
.But like all great men Trotsky had his foibles! Of course. But having granted this can we in all consistency maintain that the biographers of great men, including the biographer of Trotsky, are free from them? If we concede to Deutscher the saving grace of having his own foibles, perhaps it will not be considered out of order to suggest that one of them was. failure to see the importance of probing deeply into the meaning of the kind of human relations that Trotsky advocated, sought, instigated, enjoyed,
ere
“29—
and participated in organizing, above all at the close of his life, in the light of his enormous experience and when he was at the very height of his intellectual powers. -To bring the inner Trotsky into full light, he must be seen, I would judge, in the setting of his active pursuit of these human relations and as they fitted into his own great guiding purpose in life.
Our biographer's usually keen insight deserts him at this crucial point, and in place of all the threads falling satisfyingly into place to disclose the coherence of Trotsky's intelligence and will, the threads fray out into loose ends. Deutscher shows his prophet with eyes growing dim,
_ How such a clear~sighted genius could fail so lamentably to see things which Deutscher considers obvious remains an. unresolved contradiction in the biography. Deutscher seems to sense this, He grants that Trotsky - pemained unfailingly optimistic about revolutionary perspectives to the very end; yet he suggests that doubts had begun to creep in. He makes much of Trotsky's argument in the factionai struggle that broke out in’ the Socialist Workers party in 1939 that if the working class proved incapable of meeting its historic obligation then Burnham's anti-Marxist theory of. “bureaucratic collectivism" would prove to be the wave of the future, socialism a mere utopia, and all of Marxism wrong. He suggests that *mrot~ _ sky at bottom discounted the movement he had founded: "his real last will ‘' and testament" contains "not a single mention of the Fourth International," " Deutscher bears down rather heavily on the theme:
"Thus at the close of his days Trotsky interrogated himself about : the meaning and the purpose of all his life and struggle and indeed of all the struggles of several generations of fighters, communists, and socialists, Was a whole century of revolutionary endeavour crumbling into dust? Again and again he returned to the fact that the workers had not overthrown. capitalism anywhere outside Russia, Again and again he surveyed the long and dismal sequence of defeats which the revolution had suffered between the two world wars. And he saw himself driven to the conclusion that if major new failures were to be added to this record,. then the whole historic perspective drawn by Marxism would indeed come under question,"
I think that Deutscher is wrong in believing that Trotsky "interrogated himself," He was answering the interrogations of others, and with the most powerful arguments at his command, Trotsky was as hard as diamond and completely flawless in his view of the long-range course of history. What did Trotsky really do "again and again"? . He posed the alternative facing mankind; barbarism or socialism, He did.not hesitate to pick up the-arguments raised by those who had really begun to doubt and to sicken of the struggle, He spun them to logical absurdity and exposed their theoretical bankruptcy ~~ their bankruptcy.
Commenting on the " overemphatic and hyperbolic" argument which Trotsky levelled against Burnham, Deutscher comments: "Perhaps only Marxists could Sense fully the tragic solemnity wnich these words had in Trotsky's: mouth," It is true that this was the way they sounded to some of the leaders of the opposing faction, but they hardly sounded that way to Trotsky or his closest collaborators,
9.
We can perhaps better appreciate Trotsky's meaning by considering the. same basic alternative which he posed as it stands today, almost a quarter. of a century later, If the acuteness of the alternative had grown less, — without the action of the working class, then the founding of the Fourth | | international wou ave turned ou o be a utopian project because its | aim -~- the mobilization of the working class to avert barbarism == provedto be not necessary. Or if we faced the opposite situation -- an actual perspective of centuries of barbarism, the project likewise would have proved to have been utopian. What is the truth? Neither situation holds, The alternative is still posed, but the delay in determining its outcome has enormously increased its acuteness,
The alternative, socialism or barbarism, has become the alternative: socialism or nuclear ruin, Physicists now tell us -- Trotsky's followers only repeat it -=- that war with atomic weapons can signify the suicide of . mankind and even the destruction of all the higher forms of life, Trotsaky'ts picture of the possibility of a barbarism in which mankind would have to crawl painfully forward on all fours is idyllic compared to the "tragic solemnity" of the picture now facing us ~- a barren planet in which life... itself might have to crawl up again from the amoeba or, if lucky, some of the lower vertebrates. —
Does this mean that we must abandon hope or that there is room for more doubt than in Trotsky's last years before the outbreak of World War II? “On the contrary! The need for socialism is posed all the more imperatively.
, This-leads.us directly to-the point of sharpest difference with Deutscher, Who is to be credited with this "success" in intensifying the acuteness of the historic dilemma facing the world? The Second and Third internationals! The life-and-death importance of Trotsky's final efforts’ to construct a new international has received sufficient confirmation we should think, a a
A pure pragmatist will demand "All. right, where are the revolutions in the West?" The question lacks the intended force because it leaves out the great postwar upsurge, especially in Italy and France, a phenomenon which Deutscher does not consider although it is surely relevant in any discus+ © sion of Trotsky's forecasts. Is another upsurge, of even greater potential power, ruled out? In questions relating to the decline of a system and the ‘vise of. a new one, sufficient range must be taken, exactly how much. range is not easily determined even by a genius. like Trotsky. a
Deutscher is so concerned to prove the hopelessness of Trotsky!s pro-~ ject of rebuilding the world-wide revolutionary socialist movement that he puts in question a different thesis which he proffers; namely, that Stalin was much more capable than Trotsky estimated him to be. Stalin, as Deutscher proves, was infinitely afraid of the Fourth International, He displayed an obsession over it. Was this merely paranoia, the counterpart to Trotsky's grotesque foible, or did the capable Stalin have a certain. amowmt of reason in his efforts to.exorcize the phantom? Why Stalin's extraordinary concern over the sectarian squabbles and impotent goings on of Trotsky's. followers? (Other rulers, too, have shown strange disinclination to accept the view that the Trotskyist movement can be dismissed as a "failure,") >
3 l=.
It is hard to know exactly what Deutscher thinks Trotsky and his runof-the-mill followers should have done in the years when they were fighting the spread of fascism, struggling against Stalinism and the reformism of the Social Democracy, warning of the danger of World War II, posing the historic dilemma facing mankind and seeking to build a revolutionary~ socialist leadership. ,
Trotsky!s work in collaboration with the "vulgar" followers who rallied to his program provides one of the best keys to a deeper understand~ ing of his character. Deutscher is grievously blind to this... If you view Trotsky primarily as a prophet, as Deutscher does, this blind spot becomes understandable, It is not easy for a prophet to transfer his gifts; it is even quite a foible to try it. If you look at Trotsky just a bit differently, however, his efforts come into better focus, Let me resort to. analogy. In an epidemic it is necessary for a physician to take a leading part in the community defense, utilizing his special knowledge to-help organize, with whatever means: are available, a campaign to'stem the epidemic and eventually eliminate the possibility of its recurrence, Inhis novel La Peste, Camus offers us the figure of Dr. Bernard Rieux, who finally succeeded in mobilizing his home town against the disease first noticed in-the abnormal behavior of the rat population, The team assembled by Dr, Rieux learned a great deal. about bubonic plague and how to meet it at the risk and even cost of their own lives. Dr. Rieux, a genuine human-_. ist, offers his-highest tribute to these comrades and collaborators. in the fearful work they had to undertake together. -A certain symbolism is evident in this remarkable novel. The perceptiveness displayed by Camus in the case of his main figure is instructive and well worth pondering,
Deutscher condemns the human material Trotsky had to work with, implying that this was one of the basic reasons for the "failure" of the Fourth International, - He feels that the human material which Lenin and Trotsky had’ at their aisposal before the October Revolution was better. 7 the | West, particularly, the quality was poor.
“The question, however, is not that simple. As the ‘Spanish Revolution -- to name an outstanding instance -- proved, the ‘raw human material was adequate to the task at hand, The cadres that came to Trotskyism at: the time were far from being the worst fighters, the least self~sacrificing, or the least intelligent, The Stalinists, anyway, feared them to an uncommon degree and with good cause because they. were of the same rebel type that staffed the ranks of the Communist parties, men and women who were loyal to those parties by mistake, because they had not yet had time or opportunity to understand the difference between the Soviet state and its Stalinist regime.
The tempo of developments, which in general. favored the swift growth of Trotskyism, particularly in relation to the Communist parties, turned against the movement in two supreme instances, the outbreak of war and the victory of the Soviet Union, The first event temporarily deferred every~thing, laying the foundation, of course, for explosive developments later on. The second, a. gompletely progressive outcome, had the contradictory effect of temporarily strengthening Stalinism (as the Trotskyist movement clearly saw at the time) while preparing even more certain conditions Tor : its ultimate liquidation (as the Trotskyist movement predicted),
oem bs)
In any case, on the exceedingly difficult, complex and challenging | problem of building a revolutionary-socialist. movement, Trotsky and: Deutscher are of different schools, Deutscher's deep skepticism was not to be found in Trotsky, not a trace of it. On the other hand, Trotsky was ° thoroughly familiar with the skeptical attitude, considered it without. ae foundation objectively, held it to be a deadly danger . and did his best to + immunize his youthful followers against this disease, RA
“Having said this we can grant that the Trotskyist movement did havemany difficulties, had its share of temperamental personalities who exercized-~ undue weight in the small organization and who no doubt offered. the great teacher: problems of little novelty or intrinsic interest, ‘ Trotsky!'s attitude toward his pupils, for his movement was also a training ground, was one of infinite patience. And, we repéat, while he could be acidly ironic he never displayed skepticism, if we may make exception of his well-known reservations concerning followers of petty-—bourgeois origin, © especially the "intellectual" variety, a subtlety in Trotsky!'s thought which Deutscher does not examine, ‘since he dismisses the whole subject,
The strangest part is that Deutscher shows the highest regard for Trotsky's followers in the Soviet Union who were butchered by Stalin down to the last man and woman he could lay hands on. Deutscher also indicates Trotsky's feelings toward them. But the emotion Trotsky felt for his Russian followers was not qualitatively different from the warmth he displayed toward all who shared the vicissitudes of the struggle with him, his com-rades in China, the rest of Asia, in Latin. America, in: Africa, in Western oy Eurgpe, in Canada and the United States. . me
ae Trotsky's feelings could not be much different towards them besause they, too, to the best of their abilities, were fighting the plagues of | fascism, Stalinism, "democratic" witch-hunting and the approaching war, They. 00 shared “with him the conviction that what is required to right things in this foul time we live in is basically rather simple... In short Trotsky and his followers, many of them at least, understood each other,
‘Instead of this unity, Deutscher presents a grotesqtie mismatch between Trotsky and his followers. And instead of the. unity of Trotskyts Marxist outlook and his-action in founding the Fourth International, Deutscher | presents an irrational contradiction between the lucid vision. of a prophet and the ludicrous bungling of a dabbler in petty sectarian politics, In © studying the finishing touches to the portrait, where we have been led to oxbent a standard worthy of the subject, we suddenly become overly aware
the artist. We notice the brush in his hand and hear him arguing his special points of difference with the subject.
_ dust the same, the portrait is good enough so that looking at Trotsky. — on Deutscher's canvas, we suspect the Old Man of winking at us over the -gesticulating brush, ttwe have always had trouble with our artists. Let us. not ask too much from them, but take gratefully what they can give. no
[the End.] |
Imprimerie: 21 rue d' Aboukir, Paris 2 (imprimé par les soins de Liéditeur). Directeur-Gérant: Pierre FRANK,