MOSCOW LEVELS NEW ATTACK AGAINST TROTSKYISM
[Basmanov's article is entitled "Trotskyism in the Service of Anti- Communism," and appeared as pages 227-246 in the pamphlet Anti-Communism ~- Weapon of Imperialist Reaction, prepared by the above-named Academy.
(It serves as an updated and somewhat more sophisticated follow-up to the article by N.P.Mikeshin which appeared in Voprosy_Istorii KPSS in December 1965. (See World Outlook, November 11, 1966, p. 3.)
(The aim of an intensified drive against "Trotskyism" is to hit at the growing revolutionary tendencies throughout the world, but especially in Latin America, where thanks to the impact of the Cuban revolution and the consistent classstruggle line of its leaders, the resurgent revolutionary current is perhaps the strongest.
{For example, Basmanov dismisses as purely "Trotskyist" the position that "the road to revolution lies only through armed insurrection." This fundamental concept of Marx's and Engels', so clearly developed by Lenin in State and Revolution, is supported today not only by Trotskyists but by the Cuban and other adherents of the perspective of “armed struggle." It is, of course, the Kremlin bureaucrats who have revised Marx and Lenin on this basic point.
(The objective of articles like Basmanov's is to try to discredit the protagonists of the revolutionary current by associating them with "Trotskyism," the term of maximum opprobrium in the school of Stalinism and the main charge hurled against most of the victims in the notorious Moscow trials of the 1930s.
(Since young people who are beconing radical-minded in the world of today have no preconceived prejudices on the subject of Trotskyism, use of the term as an epithet tends to prove ineffective if not counterproductive. The word does not kick off a reflex of chills and horror. When the youth meet references to Trotskyism, they are inclined to investigate it like any other political doctrine.
[The Kremlin propagandists thus feel compelled to try to reinvest the term with an invidious content. This is by no Means an easy task in view of the exposure of the Moscow trials as frame-ups, and in view of Khrushchev's admissions concerning the nature of Stalin's rule.
{There are more lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and the like in Basmanov's article than could be dealt with short of a separate book. The best counter to them is nothing less than the actual writings of Lenin and Trotsky and the documents of the Fourth International, as well 5 those of the Third International before 1924.
[George Saunders, the translator, has appended notes to illustrate the flagrancy of Basmanov's lies and his propensity for inventing quotes; in some cases, he has taken Basmanov up on one or another point. (The notes and comments by George Saunders appear at the end of the article.) Our readers will, no doubt, notice many other instances of the "Stalin school of falsification" and be able to provide their own refutations or rectifications.
[One general theme in Basmanov's article, however, deserves further comment.
[His repeated sneers about the insignificance of Trotskyism are belied by the lengths he himself goes to in attack-
ing it. In fact, his very article, together with the many others of recent years in the Soviet and pro-Moscow Communist press, indicate the exact opposite: that the Kremlin fears the organization and program of the Fourth International, and finds it anything but insignificant, despite the fact that at present it: still lacks a mass base and remains a vanguard formation.
. [Basmanov pays more attention to the views and activities of the reunited world Trotskyist movement than did Mikeshin in 1965. Inadvertently, and although in a distorted way, he gives the Soviet reader a fuller picture of the scope and activity of the Fourth International than previous similar articles. And his assertions that Trotskyism exists only because of support by the “big bourgeoisie" wears thin through lack of supporting evidence and constant repetition.
[News of the existence of a growing revolutionary movement in the world outside the frame of the Stalinist parties must already be penetrating the Soviet Union -- not least through articles like those by Basmanov and Mikeshin. A prediction Trotsky made in his pamphlet on The Kirov Assassination is beginning to be realized:
("The growing influence of the unfalsified ideas of Leninism in the working class movement of Europe and America can not long remain a mystery to the workers in the USSR;...when the confluence of events will take on a broader sweep and the revolutionary Marxists, the Leninists, will take a leading part therein, it will no longer be possible to keep quiet about these facts. The enormous danger which flows from this for the Stalinist faction is obvious. The entire structure of lies, calumnies, persecutions, falsifications, and amalgams --— the structure which has been uninterruptedly rising since Lenin's illness and death ~- will crumble upon the very heads of the engineers, that is to say, the calumniators and forgers."
[Basmanov's footnotes have been numbered and kept on the pages they refer to. To avoid confusion, the notes and comments by George Saunders have been listed alphabetically as well as being placed after the translation. After Z, alphabetizing continues with doubled letters. Subheadings appear in the original article.] x * x More than a quarter of a century has gone by since the time of the complete ideological and organizational defeat of Trotskyism in the international Communist and workers movement. In vain have the Trotskyist elements driven out of the Communist parties attempted to regroup into a political force capable of influencing the international workers movement. And if today some numerically insignificant Trotskyist groupings still survive (divided and disarrayed by internal disputes, as they are), this is due in no small measure to the support constantly rendered them by the monopolist bourgeoisie...
Not averse to any means in its effort to halt the spread of Communist ideas, bourgeois propaganda has taken upon itself the role of amplifier for the voice of Trotskyism, and it promotes Trotskyist views more energetically than the Trotskyist grouplets themselves are able to. It long ago recognized in Trotskyism an.ally in the struggle against Communism. In the 1920s imperialist reaction did not hide its hopes that the Trotskyists would be able to destroy the unity in the ranks of the Communist movement. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the Communist parties, the big bourgeoisie began helping Trotskyism with redoubled zeal, hoping it would succeed in forming a broad opposition to the international Communist movement. It is well known how eagerly the bourgeois publishing houses of Germany, France, the USA, and England began putting out Trotsky's books in the 1930s, and in a number of countries Trotskyist materials were distributed free at enterprises.(1)[A]
However, anti-Communist reaction erred in its calculations. Trotskyism not only failed to gain new positions but even lost its old ones. Wherever Trotsky's few followers tried to present their views, they met with a decisive rebuff from the worker audience. Trotskyism as a concept became synonymous with betrayal of the interests of the working class. After all these disappointments, it seemed, bourgeois propaganda began to lose interest in Trotskyism. In the years of World War II and in the first postwar decade very little was written about Trotskyism.[B]
At the end of the 1950s bourgeois propaganda, as though at one command, raised a great uproar about Trotskyisn, which could not be compared even with the propaganda sensation following the expulsion of Trotsky from the Soviet Union in 1929. Trotsky's books again began to be printed and reprinted. More and more, socalled sociologists and specialists on questions of Communism (more correctly, anti-Communism) joined in on the campaign of propagandizing Trotskyist views and revising the history of the international workers movement and world events from openly Trotskyist positions.
This awakening of anti-Communist interest in Trotskyism is not accidental. In the Declaration of the Conference of Repre-
(1) See Kommunisticheskii Internatsional [Communist International, theoretical organ of the Stalintern], 1937, No. 6, p. 104; 1938, No. 1, p. 94.
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sentatives of Communist and Workers parties (November. 1960) it was. noted that "to the degree that the class struggle sharpens, especially with the formation of the world socialist system, anti-Communism becomes more and more malicious and refined."(2)
The basic content of anti-Communisn in our day has: become slander of the socialist order, falsification of the goals and policies of the Communist parties and of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. For each of these aspects of anti-Communist propaganda Trotskyism supplies slanderous fabrications and crude falsifications.
Trotskyism and the Bourgeois Falsifiers
In the unbridled slander campaign that anti~Communist propaganda carries on She bourgeois falsifiers readily turn to Trotskyist sources. By itself this fact is. hardly surprising. Anti-Communism never represented a single unified whole. In anti-Communist ideology, where inhuman, fascistic ideas are often found side by side with all kinds of sanctimonious theories of the love of humanity, there is room as well for Trotskyist fabrications.
Trotskyism is used by the bourgeois falsifiers ina dual way. First, Trotsky's interpretations and propositions serve in anti-Communist writings as an aid to the falsification of the history of the international workers movement. Second, by popularizing both the views of Trotsky and various theories of the present-day Trot-— skyists they try to discredit the strategy and tactics of the present-day Communist and workers movement,[C] to sow dissension in the ranks of those who struggle against imperialisn.
In 1964 in West Germany an anti- Soviet book by one H. Brahm appeared, which contained a curious acknowledgment of the role bourgeois historiography assigns to Trotsky in its "research" devoted to problems of anti-Communism. "All of us," writes the author, "started off from Trotsky; surely this should be acknowledged by a number of historians on the question of what acted as their initial stimulus to do research."(43) The author further states that Trotsky's books are regarded by Western historians as a unique "documentary museum" supposedly reflecting the revolutionary events in Russia and in the international labor movement as a
(2) Dokumenty Soveshchaniya predstavitelei kommunisticheskikh i rabochikh parti p-. 45. [Documents of the November 1960 conference, in Russian. ]
(3) Heinz Brahm. Trotzkijs Kampf um die Nachfolge Lenins ["Trotsky's Struggle Over the Succession to Lenin"]. Koln (Cologne, Germany], 1964, p. 9. whole.
Amid the plethora of anti-Communist literature in the West there are a goodly number of books being published which pretend to be "scientifically grounded," contain masses of references to various sources, and are furnished with long lists of literature recommended for the interested reader. Such books glisten with quotes from Trotsky; in many variations a. single thought runs through them all, on the necessity of studying the works of Trotsky, who is built up as "the truthful chronicler" of many historical. events.
In recent years bourgeois historians have been making a kind of pilgrimage to Harvard University. Specialists in anti- Communist propaganda go there from various cities in the USA, from Fngland, West Germany, France, and even from faraway Austra~ lia. What makes Harvard so attractive? Here, according to the terms of Trotsky's will,[D] all of his personal archives are kept, diligently systematized by members of the university staff. Trotsky's personal materials have been thoroughly pored over by such recognized anti-Communist "sociologists" as Daniels, Deutscher, and Schapiro. Each of these has since come out with a whole row of anti-Communist works. Trotskyist interpretations and fabrications can now be found in almost any pseudoscientific anti-Communist book appearing in the West.
Trotskyism in its time presented "argumentation" on the impossibility of building socialism in one country. Anti- Communist propaganda eagerly seized upon these Trotskyist assertions and added them to its own arsenal.
The bourgeois falsifiers of history often prefer to deceive readers of anti- Communist propaganda, not by giving their own interpretations of one or another process that they describe, but by citing, for the sake of plausibility, an "eyewitness" of the events, Trotsky. Several years ago in London, and later in New York, the book of L. Schapiro, The Communist Party _of the Soviet Union, came out. In this book, which anti-Communist propaganda promotes to this day as "monumental" and "an exceptionally important work" and which has been trans-— lated into several languages, a falsified account of the history of the CPSU from 1903 to the 1960s is given. It is no accident that Schapiro, on means provided by the notorious Ford Foundation, made a trip to Harvard, where for several months he studied the Trotsky archives. For slanderous interpretation of this or that major event in the history of our party Schapiro always finds some sort of statement by Trotsky. And he never grows tired of enthusing over Trotsky's "far-sightedness."
So that references to Trotsky will be more convincing, though only superfi-
cially, bourgeois propaganda gives a false version of the events preceding the ideological and organizational defeat of Trotskyism. The very serious differences that Trotskyism had with Leninism in the 1920s -- whether the Soviet Union should build socialism or passively wait for the coming world revolution and, consequently, subject the very existence of the first workers and peasants state to grave risk -are attributed to all kinds of personal motives. What these anti-Communist ideologues are really driving at in their efforts was revealed by one of the "biographers" of Trotsky, Deutscher, who wrote an entire trilogy with the intriguing titles: The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast.
What bourgeois propaganda finds tempting about Trotskyism is, above all, the variety of anti-Communist arguments in its arsenal. Peculiar to the "works" of present-day bourgeois falsifiers is the effort to depict Trotskyism as a kind of “orthodox Marxism." The American sociologist Daniels, who has long specialized in anti-Communist propaganda, put out a book in 1960 entitled The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, where it is asserted that the Trotskyists were “convinced adherents of the Marxist program." In a work entitled Communism and Revolution, prepared by a group of twelve American anti- Communists in 1964, Trotsky is extolled as a “Marxist theoretician." The Australian Charles Byrne in his book Communism and the U.S.A. [sic], assures the reader that Trotsky was a "convinced Marxist."[E]
Deutscher in his trilogy portrays Trotsky as "the heir of classical Marxism," who everywhere and at all times operated “in accordance with the traditions of classical Marxism." Bourgeois propaganda immediately began to promote Deutscher's books, calling them the outstanding political and publicistic works of recent years. One of the most flagrantly anti-Communist journals in the West, Osteuropa (of West Germany), sees the "value" of Deutscher's books as follows: “Deutscher has destroyed the legend, still encountered in some places, that Trotsky supposedly stood opposed to the Bolshevik system from the very start. In fact, he was one of its founders ."(4)
How explain the surprisingly amicable zeal with which bourgeois historians of various countries try to instill their readers with the opinion that Trotskyism is Marxism? Knowledge of the anti-Communist literature that praises Trotskyism leads one to conclude that the bourgeois falsifiers have the following aims.
Anti-~Communism regards as its main
(4) Osteuropa, 1964, No. 7-8, p. 490. task, as is known, to arouse in the population of the capitalist countries a fear of Communisn, of the fancied threat of “Communist expansion." Anti-Communism, as ever, tries to march under the banner of struggle against "red imperialism" and "the export of revolution by violence." Eagerly citing Trotskyist statements on “instigating revolution," on the need for an offensive against imperialism with the use of armed force, and adducing quotes from Trotsky's works to the effect that the road to revolution lies only through armed insurrection, anti-Communist propaganda blurs the issues and tries to ascribe these Trotskyist positions to Marxisn.
Certain ardent anti-Communist propagandists try to accuse the present-day Communist and workers movement of adopting certain Trotskyist stands. How incongruous such efforts are may be illustrated by the example of a book that came out in the USA in 1964 called The Rise of the Soviet Empire by one Jan Librach, who writes: "When, in 1918, Trotsky coined the phrase 'neither war, nor peace' he revealed a specific state of mind and correctly expressed the Communist maxim of continuous warfare in international relations."[F]
The attempts to portray Trotskyisnmn as Marxism are dictated on the one hand by a desire to discredit Marxist-Leninist strategy and on the other by the wish of anti-Communist propagandists to confuse and bewilder those in capitalist countries who are drawn to scientific socialisn.
In recent times in the West quite a few anti-Communist books have appeared all of which bring out the one idea that there exist many varieties of scientific socialism and that one can choose between Marx, Lenin, Bernstein, Kautsky, and Trotsky. Socalled documentary works on Communism also appear one after another, purporting to be anthologies, but containing, along with quotes tendentiously culled from Marx, Engels, and Lenin, certain statements from Kautsky, Bernstein, and Trotsky. In this business, special preference goes to citing Trotsky and his followers. The two-volume Documentary History of Communism, prepared by the University of Vermont, was composed in this way, for example,[{G] as was the book German Communism, published in West Germany in 1964.
In What Is to Be Done?, V.I.Lenin referred, of course, to Zubatov's recommendation of Bernstein's works.(5) The tsarist police did this to divert at least a small part of the Russian working class away from the struggle against tsarism. Today anti- Communism gives similar promotion to Trotskyism in hope of diverting part of the
(5) See V.I.Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ["Complete Works," Russian edition], Vol. 6, p. 17.
forces from the antimonopoly struggle headed by the Communist parties. Endeavoring to offer the small ideas of Trotskyism in a false Marxist wrapping as a lure, the anti-Communists hope that someone will snap at this bait and come out against the present-day strategy and tactics of the Communist parties. The organizers of anti-Communist propaganda try, in this connection, to use to their own advantage both the circumstance that the petty bourgeoisie that is increasingly drawn into the antimonopoly struggle bears with it a goodly load of petty-bourgeois extremism and that it is inclined to loud phrases not supported by deeds.
The apologists of imperialism have long understood that the ultrarevolutionary phraseology of Trotskyism represents not the slightest danger for the capitalist system, and they have likewise measured at its true worth the "rational kernel" of Trotskyist ideas -- their anti- Communist tenor.
Blowing up a big sensation around the "doctrines" of Trotsky, the bourgeois press does not forget his current followers, eagerly propagandizing their anti- Communist views and theories as well. * * * The Anti-Communist Tenor of Trotskyist Theories on Questions of Revolution, War, and Peace
Speaking at the Third Congress of the Comintern in June 1921, V.I.Lenin quoted a statement by the head of the Russian emigré bourgeoisie, Milyukov, who in the newspaper he edited from Paris, urged that a "hearty welcome" be given to the SR's [Social Revolutionaries] and Mensheorc a the struggle against Soviet power. (6
The same “hearty welcome" by anti- Communism goes to the present-day Trotsky-— ists in the struggle against Marxism- Leninism, against the international Communist and workers movement.
The Trotskyist grouplets as a rule consist of several dozen anti-Communistminded petty-bourgeois intellectuals and some outcasts and renegades expelled from the Communist parties. Trotskyism has long since ceased to be a political tendency within the international workers movement.[H] But it still remains as the system of views of that quite insignificant part of the extremist-minded petty bourgeoisie which tries to struggle against Communism, hiding behind phrases about its devotion to Marxisn.
Sensing their inability to exert
(6) See V.I.Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, Vol. 4, p. 11. re re the slightest influence on the internal political situation in any country where their groups have entrenched themselves, the Trotskyists hope to increase the nunber of their adherents by putting forward various kinds of "programs" on general questions of the international workers’ movement. These "programs" are issued in the name of the so-called Fourth Interna-. tional, as several Trotskyist grouplets pompously titled themselves when, as long’. ago as 1938, they created an ephemeral united movement, in which there was always more mutual backbiting and bickering than even the semblance of unity. In subsequent years the leaders of this Trotskyist "“international" themselves admitted more than once that Trotsky's optimistic hopes for the creation of a broad opposition to the Communist movement had not been realized and that the Fourth International had con-. tinually remained in a state of crisis. Still, the Fourth International, openly encouraged by the big bourgeoisie, continues to this day to publish its anti-Communist. declarations in bourgeois publishing houses, and to bring together outcasts and renegades from various countries at its congresses.
The bourgeois falsifiers pay close attention to the "programmatic" declarations of the Fourth International, recognizing them as quite good sources for their own anti-Communist fabrications. They readily cite these declarations in their "studies," taking every opportunity to stress that those who join the Fourth International are people "disillusioned" with Communism who come out "in defense of Marxism." Bourgeois propaganda operates on the principle: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." It has for a long time seen clearly that the "revolutionariness" of Trotskyism is aimed not at imperialism but at Communisn.
A year before the start of World War II Trotsky put forth the thesis that "the crisis of humanity is the crisis of proletarian leadership." Trotsky's followers, repeating him almost word for word, declare in the program of the Fourth International that "the historical crisis of mankind consists in the crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." Thus, Trotskyism sees as its main task the struggle against the Communist parties.[I] For this, above all, anti-Communist propaganda values Trotskyism and not only does not hinder it in spreading views of this sort but even popularizes them actively itself.
The big bourgeoisie displays serious distress over the program of anti-imperialist activities developed by the international Communist and workers movement. The flexibility of the strategic and tactical positions of the Communist parties, which orient themselves toward the building of a:wnited: anti-imperialist front. and ‘toward the uti~: lization. of. either: peiceful:or nonpeace fulnethods wifi striggte , depending. on Conditions , is reflected!im: the massive: growth of the:
international Communist and workers movement in recent years. [J]
Straining to discredit these positions of the Communist parties, bourgeois propaganda spares no effort in trying to prove that the prerequisites for mass antimonopoly struggle in the capitalist countries are lacking. With this purpose in mind it does not hinder Trotskyism from spreading its fabrications.
Trotskyism has always come out against appeals by the Communist parties for an all-people's anticapitalist struggle, and has done so with no less fury than the propagandist defenders of capitalism themselves. In 1939 Trotsky declared that the popular front was equivalent to “betrayal of the people." Spreading fear with horror stories about the "degeneration" of the Communist parties,(K] he wrote that in any coalition the leadership inevitably comes into the hands of the right wing, i.e., the propertied class.
On the eve of World War II Trotskyism tried to frustrate the building of an antifascist front. In a declaration published by the Fourth International in 1939 it was stated that "the first prerequisite for revolutionary struggle against fascism is the decisive exposure of the theory and practice of the people's front." Trotsky slanderously accused the Communist parties of "yearning for a coalition with the bourgeoisie." At the same time Trotskyism tried to rule out international solidarity in the antifascist struggle. Trotsky stubbornly declared that the struggle against fascism was the business only of the German and Italian working classes and that other peoples should solve their own "national problems." At the same time, Trotskyism opposed the movement in defense of democratic rights which developed in many countries in the 1930s, asserting that "bourgeois democracy is inevitably transformed into fascisn."[(L]
With equal frenzy the present-day Trotskyists attack the idea of building a broad antimonopoly front. The Fourth International proclaimed in November 1964 that it would continue in the future to adhere to the "traditional Trotskyist position against collaboration with the liberal bourgeoisie."{M] The Trotskyists Slander the Communist parties, claiming that they "substitute class collaboration for class struggle," accusing them of carrying out a "strategy of gradual time spans," of "reformisn."
As the saying goes, extremes tend to meet. Bourgeois propaganda attempts in every way to impress upon the petty and middle bourgeoisie the notion that entering into alliance with Communists is a crime. The Trotskyists are determined to prove that alliance of the working class with the petty and middle bourgeoisie in struggle against the monopolies represents "traitorous activity" on the part of the Communist parties. Trotskyism remains true to itself -- it constantly seeks new ways to discredit the international workers movement, to sow capitulationist moods in the ranks of those fighting against imperialisn, to draw a section of the antimonopoly forces away from the solving of fundamental revolutionary problems. Putting forward the theory that supposedly after World War II revolutions have taken place only in "one backward country after another," the Trotskyists have tried to put over the idea of the primary significance of the so-called peripheral revolutions, which will trap the imperialist states in a "revolutionary circle" and thus decide the outcome of the world revolution. The obvious conclusion from all these Trotskyist arguments is that the proletariat of the capitalist countries has only to wait patiently for the moment when the so-called revolutionary circle is closed. ([N]
Trotskyism has proclaimed the national liberation movement the main arena of world revolution. At the Fifth Congress of the Fourth International in 1957 the Trotskyists declared, in a special resolution devoted to the national liberation movement: "From the end of World War II to the present time it represents the most important element of the world revolution." And in 1963 they expressed themselves even more definitely, stating that "the revolutions in the colonial countries now play the main role in the world revolutionary process" and that "at this time they constitute the forces dealing the most serious blows to imperialisn."
Contemporary Trotskyism proclaims the opposite of what Trotsky said in his day. He held in general that under imperialist conditions no serious national liberation movement was possible, and branded utopian the very posing of the question of the right of oppressed nations to selfdetermination as long as the proletariat had not conquered power in the advanced capitalist countries. Prewar Trotskyism looked with scorn upon the movement of colonial peoples for emancipation. In 1940 it proclaimed the following: "The struggle for national independence of the colonies is, from the standpoint of the revolution-— ary proletariat, only a transitional stage toward drawing the backward countries into the international socialist revolution," [0] When fascist Italy invaded Abyssinia, the Trotskyists declared that "for socialists there was nothing to be done here," since to take a position in defense of Abyssinia was to "defend feudalism."([P]
The position of Trotskyism on questions of the national liberation movement is also quite convenient for anti-Communist propaganda. Trotskyism comes out against the very conception of anti-imperialist revolution, declaring it something "dreamed up
by the Communists." In the Trotskyists' opinion, the enemy of the national liberation movement is not the imperialist forces but the national bourgeoisie, and the "only possible way to defeat imperialism is to remove the national bourgeoisie from power." The Fourth International Slanders all countries that have come out on the road of independent development, claiming that the "neocolonialist forces have conquered" them or that "traitors" have come to power in them. [Q]
Trotskyism erects slanders against every contemporary revolutionary current. They accuse socialist countries of "not stimulating the world revolutionary process," not instigating revolution in capitalist countries, and supposedly "“supporting only the national bourgeoisie." They accuse the working class of the capitalist countries of "revolutionary exhaustion," of "carrying on the struggle only within the framework of the capitalist regime," and of not wishing to render effective aid to the national liberation movement. They accuse the Communist parties of the developing countries of pursuing a policy of subordination to the national bourgeoisie. ([R]
Trotskyism, then, pursues its struggle against the creation of an antiimperialist front along two lines. On the one hand, it strives to disrupt the unity of the anti-imperialist forces in each separate country -~ whether Europe, North America, or the Afro-Asian countriés. On the other, it opposes the international consolidation of all anti-imperialist forces.
When the Trotskyists speak of war, peace, and peaceful coexistence, the uncontrolled adventurism of leftist phraseology is revealed more clearly than on any other question, the whole anti-Communist tenor of Trotskyism becomes especially blatant. Trotsky's views were reflected in a manifesto called "The Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution," adopted by a Trotskyist conference on the eve of World War II. In particular it states: "In history war has not. infrequently been the mother of revolution." Proceeding from this, Trotsky subjected the peace-loving aspirations of the Soviet Union to frenzied attacks, accusing it of a "paroxysm of fear in the. face of the war danger," of "turning the struggle for peace into a self-sufficient task," and "sacrificing the interests of the world revolution."[S]
Trotsky's successors likewise continue to glorify war as the road to revolution. Especially zealous in defending such a position are the Latin-American Trotskyists. They openly state that a nuclear war is inevitable and that therefore it is useless to undertake any measures to try to avert it. Moreover, war is desirable since it will bury capitalism and bring with it worldwide revolution. The following is what the Trotskyists' Latin American Bureau has declared about thermonuclear war: "It must be welcomed since it is the necessary means of removing capitalism." The leader of the Latin-American Trotskyists, Posadas, asserts in this connection that "Communist society can be built in a short time even upon ruins." The English Trotskyists, organized in the Socialist Labour League, adhere to analogous views. With the same frenzy that Trotsky displayed in his day, the modern Trotskyists attack the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. The Secretariat of the Trotskyist international declared in October 1964, for example, that the Soviet Union "seeks a global accord with Washington, based mainly on a common defense of the status quo." The Trotskyists attack the policy of peaceful coexistence, claiming that "such a conception destroys the Communist movement, prevents it from struggling along the lines of genuinely revolutionary strategy and tactics."([T]
The Trotskyists think that the socialist countries should pursue a policy tantamount to the atomic blackmailing of humanity. In an editorial in the Fourth International's journal of the same name in November 1964 it was stated: "The choice now is not between socialism and capitalist barbarism but between socialism and atomic death."[U] :
Thus on questions of war and peace the positions of the Trotskyists blend with those of the "madmen" in the imperialist camp, who for a long time have held that war and only war can settle the historic contest between socialism and capitalism.
It is quite natural that in advocating such views the Trotskyists should direct harsh attacks against the movement of fighters for peace. They call this "utopian" and declare that those who favor peace should orient toward "political solutions based on the conquest of power by the working class." Such propositions of the Trotskyists objectively further the end of alienating from the peace movement those numerous supporters who will fight against imperialist aggression, although they do not share Communist views.
The Trotskyists have undertaken at meetings of peace fighters held in capitalist countries to distribute leaflets and pamphlets presenting such views. Thus, at the Helsinki Youth Festival in 1962 the Trotskyists tried to distribute leaflets and pamphlets among the delegates. As was mentioned in the December 1962 magazine Fourth International, "The Trotskyists tried to explain why there cannot be peace in the world without the decisive victory of socialism in the main capitalist countries -- the USA and Britain," and therefore it was necessary "to fight for world revolution as the only solution to the problem of peace."
Here, too, the Trotskyists walk hand in hand with the imperialist forces that for a long time have been seeking ways of bringing disorganization into the ranks of peace supporters. Thus, every Trotskyist theory, no matter what ultrarevolutionary phrases are used to serve it up, in practice turns out to be capitulation to imperialism and open hostility toward Communism, the international workers movement.
Trotskyism in the Role of a "Fifth Column"
The Communist and workers movement in the 1920s and 1930s dealt Trotskyism such a devastating blow that it has been unable thus far to recover. The efforts of the contemporary epigones of Trotskyismn to again reach the front lines of struggle against Communism seem pitiful. In the colorful phrase of Rodney Arismendi, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Uruguayan Communist party, the present-day Trotskyists represent a kind of flotsam and jetsam from yesterday's shipwreck, a filthy foam washing upon the waves of the world socialist revolution.
Trotskyism has tried to work out a new tactic for penetrating the Communist parties. In the early postwar years when many Trotskyist groups in Europe were falling apart and voices could be heard among the Trotskyists themselves on the "crisis of Trotskyism," certain surviving Trotskyist groupings undertook an attempt to make themselves over, to mask their adherence to Trotskyism. In several countries the Trotskyists tried to organize the publication of magazines on whose pages there would be no mention even of the name of Trotsky. Thus, in England a journal called Socialist Outlook began to be published. For a long time it avoided the slightest reference to Trotskyism, although it consistently defended Trotskyist positions. The partisans of this tactic calculated that the propaganda of Trotskyism and the penetration of workers organizations would be easier without calling themselves Trotskyists.
Several years ago the Fourth International put forward a new program for penetrating the Communist and workers parties -- the so-called policy of entrisn, which became a kind of catechism for the subversive activities of the Fourth International in the parties and mass organizations. In the Trotskyist conception "“entrism"(7) means entering, going into the parties and mass organizations. Since in practice the door to such organizations is closed to followers of the Fourth International, they try to penetrate them secret-
(7) Basmanov's note eruditely tells the Russian reader: “From the French verb entrer, meaning 'go into, enter.'" ly, concealing their allegiance to Trotskyisn. [V]
"Entrism" is the penetration of the parties and mass organizations by the "back way" -- with an outward demonstration of loyalty to and agreement with the tasks and perspectives of this or that organization. The goal of "“entrism" is to undermine these organizations from within, to bring disorganization into their work, to seek out people in them who might be recruited to Trotskyism after being worked on properly. The Fourth International hopes that with the aid of the entrism tactic it can put an end to the situation in which, as was admitted at the so-called unity congress of the Trotskyists in 1963, “the Fourth International has not yet achieved durable mass influence in any country."(W] At the congress the Trotskyists came to agreement on how to put the "entrism" policy into practice. In one of the resolutions of the congress it says that Trotskyists "belong to the big organizations of the masses whether they be nationalistic, cultural, or political in character. Insofar as possible, they advance the ideas and program of Trotskyism among the members of these organizations, and seek to recruit from then."[X]
In itself the policy of disguised penetration of the parties and mass organizations does not represent anything new in principle in the arsenal of Trotskyism's subversive activities; the Trotskyists adopted similar tactics even before World War II. After their ideological and organizational defeat in the international Communist and workers' movement the Trotskyists tried to make their way into the parties and mass organizations, either completely concealing their adherence to Trotskyism or even, for appearances' sake, repudiating it.
Trotskyism, which has always and everywhere practiced double-dealing, today, with crude and barefaced cynicism, stakes everything on such double-dealing and turns it into a kind of "political credo." The Trotskyists see "entrism" as their last resort, by whose aid they can hope to prolong their existence and, if they are successful, even expand and strengthen their positions. Trotskyists, it is stated in the resolution of the 1963 congress, “have no choice but to practice ‘entrism'; that is, to participate as an integrated component in the internal life of the mass movement."[Y]
In carrying out "entrism" the Trotskyists strive, above all, to put down roots in those parties and formations whose organizational looseness creates favorable conditions for the circulation of their views and recruiting of new adherents.
In England the Trotskyists succeeded in getting into the Labour party and its affiliated youth organizations. In 1949 the Trotskyists even tried to organize within
the framework of this party the "Socialist Fellowship," which engaged in energetic propagandizing of Trotskyist views among members of the Labour party. The Trotskyists' activity was cut short after two years with the expulsion of the "Socialist Fellowship" from the Labour party. However, the leader of the English Trotskyists, Healy, asserts that a significant section of his supporters continue under new conditions to propagandize Trotskyist views in the Labour party. Frequently the Trotskyists try to fill out their grouplets with fifteen- and sixteen-year-old adolescents, assuring them that "the revolution is just around the corner" and that only the Trotskyists have a "revolutionary program."(8)
It is characteristic of Trotskyist tactics in the advanced capitalist countries, as has been indicated in the organ of the English Communist party, to await the hour when "the situation sharpens at great speed" and when "some workers respond to the 'super-revolutionary' appeal, the slogans promising Socialism on the cheap, through some short cut, some quick single act."¢9) [ZI On the other hand, in
countries carrying on the anti-imperialist struggle, the Trotskyists try openly to impose their recipes of "how to make the revolution." The veteran activist of the Uruguayan labor movement Francisco R. Pintos, in discussing this special feature of Trotskyist tactics, observes that "in the colonial and dependent countries, where agriculture has predominated and the industrial proletariat is still weak, this current most often has concealed itself beneath a mask of left radicalism, in which features of anarcho-syndicalism were plainly discernible."(10)
The Fourth International has tried to work out new forms of "“entrism" in the light of the splitting policies pursued in the international Communist movement by the Mao Tse-tung group. Seeing in many of the statements of Mao Tse-tung a similarity with certain positions of contenporary Trotskyism, the Fourth International as early as 1961 called on its adherents “to actively intervene in the broad discussion within the Communist movement," as much as possible "to stimulate the international discussion further on the basis of all the issues that have been raised in the course of this struggle." In 1963 the Trotskyist congress declared
(8) Marxism Today [British CP "theoretical" journal], 1964, No. 9, p. 280; 1965, No. 3, p- 95.
(9) World News [British CP weekly], 1958, No. 42, p. 616.
(10) Francisco R. Pintos, The Trade Union Movement in Uruguay [in Russian], Moscow, 1964, p. 203. that the situation demands "bolder and more aggressive actions than ever before" and oriented its groups toward carrying out a "tactic of establishing alliances" that would strengthen the positions of Trotskyism. [AA]
Moreover, the Trotskyists openly speak of the fact that favorable conditions have arisen for their carrying out "entrism." One of the leaders of Trotskyism asserted in this regard in 1964: "No major meeting of pro-Chinese Communists is held at which our documents would be missing."
In a number of countries the Trotskyists have given top billing to the views of the Mao Tse-tung group. In Argentina, as Communist party chairman Victorio Codovilla has noted, the Trotskyists have called on the workers to "express support at their meetings for the 25 points of the Chinese program, discuss them and analyze them."(11) [BB] In Brazil the Trotskyists took upon themselves the labor of reprinting the propaganda of local groups of splitters supported by Peking. In Chile the roles changed: statements printed by the group of splitters orienting toward Mao Tse-tung were distributed by the Trotskyists with great zeal.
Thus, contemporary Trotskyism resorts to every kind of device to preserve its role of "fifth column" in the international labor movement. To this end is directed not only the notorious tactic of "entrism" that it has worked out but also the spreading of all kinds of fabrications about the policies of the Communist parties, the efforts to sow attitudes of hostility and mistrust toward the Soviet Union, and lastly, the playing with ultraleft phrases and slogans. Adapting to the times and to conditions in each country, the Trotskyists everywhere behave as provocateurs, as actual accomplices of imperialisn.
The Communist parties of these countries in which Trotskyist grouplets still survive pay close attention to their subversive activity, and orient Communists toward unflagging struggle against Trotskyism. The Communist parties of Latin America are doing especially important work along these lines, inasmuch as Trotskyism tries to take advantage of the anarchist views which have long been in circulation there, as well as of the dispersion of the workers in small enterprises, which often makes the work of overcoming views alien to the working class more difficult. In the statutes of the Chilean Communist party there is a special reference to the necessity for all members to maintain vigilant observation of the subversive activities of the Trotskyists. The Twenty-
(11) Victorio Codovilla. La posicién de los marxistas leninistas frente a los cismaticos trotskisantes del Partido Communista Chino. Buenos Aires, 1963, p. 44.
Second Congress of the Chilean Communist party did not agree with the proposals of several Communists to remove these pas-— sages from the statutes on the basis that the reference to Trotskyists gives them undue importance. Speaking at the congress, Rafael Cortez, one of the leaders of the party, declared:
"Such a posing of the question is false. All we Communists kmow full well what role the Trotskyists played in the course of the Russian Revolution and in all countries fighting for liberation. Their role -- the role of counterrevolutionary adventurists and loyal servants of imperialism -- is clear. It is obvious that in order to expose them before the working class it is necessary not only to keep the passages contained in the statutes but to strengthen them, as has been proposed, calling for strict vigilance over the provocative role of the Trotskyists."(12) An equally active struggle against such activities of the Trotskyists is carried on by the Communist parties of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, and other Latin- American countries.(13) [CC]
(12) XII S'iezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Chili ["L2th Congress of the Communist Party of Chile," in Russian], Moscow, 1963, p. 128.
(13) Cf. Problemy mira i sotsializma [identical Russian edition of World Marx-
The adherents of Trotskyism imagine, as does the bourgeois propaganda that supports them, that enough time has passed since the ideological and organizational defeat of Trotskyism in the 1920s and 1930s for the history of Trotskyism to have been forgotten. As has been noted in the periodical press of a number of Communist parties, the Trotskyists are trying to establish contact above all with representatives of the students and youth whose knowledge of Trotskyism is limited to what they have heard in the institutions of learning from bourgeois professors or read in anti-Communist literature.
; The Communist parties of the capitalist countries devote a good deal of attention to the exposure of Trotskyism and its antiproletarian essence. A series of articles on Trotskyism has been published in recent years, for example, in the theoretical journals of a number of Communist parties of Latin America, and also of England and Australia. In these articles a history of Trotskyism's struggle against Communism is presented; the capitulationist character of the positions of particular Trotskyist groups is brought out; and the attempts of bourgeois propaganda to falsify history with the aid of Trotskyism are exposed.
ist Review], 1964, No. 5, p- 13; 1965, No. 4, p. 42; Kommunist [in Russian], 1964, No. 11, pp. 123-124.
Notes and Comments on the Basmanov Article
[A] (p. 246) It is ludicrous enough that Basmanov should cite as proof of this slander a source as questionable as the organ of the Stalin-dominated Comintern, and not from just any issue of that journal but from one printed at the height of the Stalin purges, from material related to the universally discredited Moscow Trials of 1946-1938.
In fact, issue No. 6 of Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, to which Basmanov directs the reader, contains a special section -- featured often in that magazine in those days -- "The Struggle Against the Trotskyist Agents of Fascism."
This section of the magazine contains two items: The first is an editorial called "Drive the Trotskyist Wreckers out of the Workers Movement!" (pp. 99- 102).(This quotes liberally from a resolution of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which we will describe below.) The second is an article by one I.Stankin called "Trotskyist Reserves in Romania" (pp. 103-105).
Between these two items, taking up half a page in bold capital letters, is a quote from none other than Joseph Stalin. The quote is from a speech by Stalin to the February 1947 plenum of the Soviet party, convened to evaluate the results of the first Great Purge trial, that of 1936.
It is odd that Basmanov didn't quote this "ingenious" authority on Trotskyisn. He certainly noticed the quote. And he has obviously learned about his subject from that authority, as we shall see.
The quote from Stalin states:
"IN CARRYING ON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE TROTSKYIST AGENTS, OUR PARTY COMRADES HAVE NOT NOTICED, HAVE OVERLOOKED THE FACT THAT PRESENT-DAY TROTSKYISM IS NO LONGER WHAT IT WAS, SAY, SEVEN OR EIGHT YEARS AGO, THAT TROTSKYISM AND THE TROTSKYISTS DURING THAT TIME HAVE UNDERGONE A SERIOUS EVOLU- TION, WHICH HAS RADICALLY CHANGED THE FACE OF TROTSKYISM, THAT THEREFORE THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IT SHOULD ALSO BE RADICALLY CHANGED.
"OUR PARTY COMRADES HAVE NOT NOTICED
THAT TROTSKYISM HAS CEASED TO BE A POLIT- ICAL TENDENCY IN THE WORKING CLASS, THAT TROTSKYISM HAS BEEN TRANSFORMED FROM A POLITICAL TENDENCY IN THE WORKING CLASS, WHICH IT WAS SEVEN OR.EIGHT YEARS AGO, INTO AN UNPRINCIPLED AND SHAMELESS BAND OF SABOTEURS, WRECKERS, SPIES, AND MURDER- ERS, OPERATING UNDER THE ORDERS OF THE IN- TELLIGENCE ORGANS OF FOREIGN STATES."
The body of the editorial that preceded this quote explained that in line with the position outlined by "Comrade Stalin" at the February 1937 plenum, the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International proposed:
"1. To urge the sections of the Communist International to develop a systematic struggle both at meetings and in the press against Trotskyism as an agency of fascism, using for this purpose the facts from the trials of the anti-Soviet Zinoviev-Trotskyist and parallel centers. To mobilize the vigilance of the working masses against the provocative activity of the Trotskyists, achieving their expulsion from the ranks of the labor movement as fascist agents." (Emphasis added.)
The editorial also includes the pleasant observation that since the labor movement in the capitalist countries does not have the means of "defending itself against the Trotskyist spies and wreckers that the proletarian state does" and since these "agents" are financed by "Hitler, Mussolini, Hearst and the Comité des Forges [the reactionary and powerful French corporate association of the 1930s]," the Comintern sections will have to fight all the harder.
Aside from the extreme unreliability of his source, Basmanov's reference doesn't even prove what he claims. There's no mention of Trotskyist literature being distributed free at factories on page 104 of Stankin's article or in any other part of it -- although it is filled with charges that Trotskyists are police agents, etc. The nearest thing to Basmanov's claim is where Stankin says: "For all its insignificance Trotskyism represents a danger in Romania too, first of all because it enjoys the support of the entire state apparatus, enjoys the support of the bourgeoisie."
The other issue of Kommunisticheskii Internatsional (No. 1, 1938) also fails to support Basmanov's assertion. Page 94 is in the middle of a "letter from Warsaw" by one "I.Swiencicki" entitled "Provocateurs at Work" -- one of the items under the overall magazine heading "The Struggle Against Counterrevolutionary Trotskyisn."
The general theme of the "letter" is that the Pilsudski regime, the Polish military dictatorship of the late 1920s and 1930s, had filled the Polish Communist party with spies and agents, and that that was the reason for all the internal disputes in the party.
The sentence that Basmanov would seem to be referring to in his footnote states, "It is well known, for example, that along with the foul book of the wellknown agent of the tsarist secret police, Regula, the Polish secret police published books of Trotsky's on its own printing press and tried to distribute them free in the prisons among the prisoners, in order to demoralize the weaker ones among them and recruit them to their network." (Enphasis added.)
Basmanov doesn't even have his information right from his own Stalinist sources. The claim was that the police printed and distributed Trotsky's books in Polish prisons. Not that “Trotskyist materials were distributed free at enterprises," which implies that the bosses had done this at certain plants or workshops. Is Basmanov just a sloppy scholar, or did he figure that he should make the charge sound a little more up-to-date and reasonable? Maybe he felt that the "police spy" bit wouldn't sound any more convincing than the "fascist agent, spy, and saboteur" thesis, which has been reduced over the years, without any explanation, to the lesser charge of "agents of the monopolies."
Incidentally, Basmanov didn't notice the real significance of the "letter from Warsaw." It must have been meant to justify the execution of "virtually all the Polish Communist party leaders" and the dissolving of the Polish CP on Stalin's orders in 1938. Stalin's purges struck not only at ‘all the remnants of the Bolshevik old guard; they hit countless foreign Communists who had fled repression in their own countries to exile in Moscow or who were working for the Comintern there.
Spanish, German, Italian, and many other Communists died or were imprisoned in the purges, but no party suffered like the Polish, whose entire top leadership was wiped out -- many of them had been compatriots of Rosa Luxemburg or active in the Russian Social Democratic party also in the prerevolutionary years. They all perished on charges of being "Trotskyites and fascist agents," and Basmanov -- or rather, his bosses -- do not blink an eye about using such foul frame-up accusations for their factional purposes today.
(B] (p. 246) It may be true that the capitalist "free press" blacked out information about the world Trotskyist movement around the time of World War II. But that was because the "democratic" imperialists made a quite conscious bloc with Stalin. Roosevelt's administration actually encouraged the painting up of the Stalin regime, and promoted the book Mission to Mos-
GQWaptater made into a movie, in which $hesMoscow Trials were justified to American ;audiences. The publishers of Trotsky's biography of Stalin even held up putting the book on the market until after the pwar, out of consideration for the feeliags of the head of the famous "cult of the personality." ~J The imperialists recognized the SORV: ices the Stalinist movement could render ig:the way of sidetracking or stalling revetytiens. They observed this in the cases Of Spain and France in the Popular Froentsera, and again in the immediate postwar " period when the Stalinist parties in France and Italy proved decisive in restabilizing the capitalist regimes in thoge ; sqouninies . 39 (OF- “course , when the alliance with Staliniem -ne-Longer suited their interests.,- wh 168 £6 “proved unable to stop revo- « lution in YugesLavia, China, and elsehere.,,-the."demeeracies" of the U.S. Suddoniy thei e peopaeonalst the Cold War. 5 mpRepagandists rediscovered ad. oppressive features of
ogee nee the uprisings rin East Ber-
lin, Poland, and Hungary, and later the SinenSovjak diepate «: athe Janelesia and pro-
course. these apitaliot capmpanies which. make -: profit -on a fat -+.as with sthose e+ now printing Che -Guevarats werks += dont « realize or don't care that they -are .burt-.. ing the long-range, general interests of theism chess .by: making. nevolutionary. soed aloket, Sages chome sac dessi ble: Onna MASS i *.
‘ange orate ism, of them. pe 1 Pr ws a capitalist. hota Ge same pontifical - ‘ate titudei pervades. the writings of apologists for ‘thes Sovi.et:bureaucracy 's. enn : Everywhere’ Shaye wee: “slander. H 4 S This is. not just a ‘case of paranoia on the: partyof; the bureaucrats and friends, -siner the: workd bourgeoisie. does -generate a constant: anti-Soviet campaign. The excessive: @oncern: that sées such slander in every: Question or criticism does :betray a guilty constience, in a bureaucracy which would: like’ nothing hetter than "peaceful coexistence": and .a ““pepular. front" with this same; ‘world - bourgeoisie... 2 .
This feeling of being persecuted, though, is at bottom a political fear of the masses and possible revolutionary spokesmen and leaders among them. Hence the arrest and imprisonment of Soviet intellectuals who dare voice criticisms.
[D] (p. 247) This is a small sample of Basmanov's fabrications. Trotsky sold his archives to Harvard University, not as is implied, disposing of them in his will. He did this so that they would not be destroyed in the oncoming war, or by Stalinist agents, who had already indicated their special interest in this historical material, which included such items as copies of the correspondence between Lenin and Trotsky.
[E] (p. 248) Another example of Basmanov's tendency to fabricate is the way he uses bourgeois sources. He rarely gives page references, so one cannot always be sure he hasn't invented a quote. In the Daniels book the wording that Basmanov uses is not immediately apparent, although on page 408 Daniels observes that the Left Oppositionists were "committed to the old Marxist vision." (Daniels' thesis is the standard one that the Left Oppositionists adhered to illusory "theory," while the practical man of action, Stalin, stole the power from under their noses.)
On page 40 of Communism and Revolution, a collection of essays on "the strategic use of political violence," edited by C.E.Black and T.P.Thornton (Princeton, 1964), there is a footnote that states: "Although Trotsky was later disavowed by the Soviet leadership, he was, next to Lenin, the foremost strategist of the movement at the time of the October Revolution and many years after, and his influence as a theorist loomed large even after his expulsion from the Soviet Union."
hh Unfortunately, this is one of many cases in which bourgeois sources are more accurate and objective, for their own reasons, than are the Soviet Basmanovs. The Kremlin. bureaucrats simply won't allow their -h?storians to get too objective about the Seviet past because that would threaten their ‘present position and policies. The result. is. writings by hacks like Basmanov, who don't -even:seem qualified to do the dirty work they're supposed to.
How -ekse ‘explain that Basmanov mistranslated ' ‘the title of the book by Charles Byrne . as Communitsm-and the U.S.A. [in Russian, -Kommurnizm i $.Sh.A.]? Actually the title is ‘Communism and Us (not U.S. It is an Australian counterpart to the "What We Should Know About Communism" trash churned out by the U.S. book industry.
What Basmanov tries to ignore is that these vituperative anti-Communists equate Trotskyism and Marxism only to direct their hate-filled vitriol equally
against both. Far from "popularizing" or "promoting" revolutionary socialism, they attack it strenuously, a fact Basmanov would be hard put to explain, so he avoids the question.
Byrne, for example, called Trotsky a "convinced Marxist" in the following context, where the Bolshevik-Menshevik split was being described:
"On the outskirts, adopting a superior position above and not slow to criticize all factions, was the brilliant egotistical Jew, Leo Bronstein, who adopted the name of Trotsky ~- a convinced Marxist, but determined to beat Lenin to the leadership." (p. 12.)
Elsewhere Byrne shows how "favorable" his opinion of Trotsky's views on world revolution is: "The prophecy of Lenin and Trotsky that the workers of the world, fired by the example of Russia, would rise in a world revolution and sweep away capitalism has not been fulfilled. Contrary to Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, the unregenerate workers have preferred their national loyalties to international class loyalties." (p. 19.)
It is interesting that Basmanov's quote from Osteuropa below is on the same order. Far from approving of Trotskyisn, Osteuropa wants to destroy the "legend" that for anti-Communists there could be anything “good" about Trotskyism. That Trotsky was one of the founders of the Soviet state makes him in their eyes, all the more evil. Since Basmanov could never explain this, it is odd that he uses the quote. Probably he just hoped his readers wouldn't notice.
[F] (Cp. 248) The quote is from page 16 of Librach's book, published by the notorious anti-Communist Praeger house (New York, 1964). Librach, though, not only equates Trotskyism with Marxism, he also dismisses any serious differences between Trotsky and Stalin. For him, behind everything lurks the Communist blueprint for world conquest.
Surely Basmanov would agree that this hate-filled ruling class spokesman, disguised by only a thin veneer of scholarship, has distorted both Stalin's and Trotsky's views in the following passage:
"The conviction that Communism would prevail throughout the world was also held by Stalin, both before and after he embarked on his battle with Trotsky over ‘socialism in one country.' Their antagonisms were primarily an expression of the struggle for power, and it has rightly been pointed out that Stalin no more gave up world revolution than Trotsky rejected the chance of building Communism in Russia." (p. 14.)
(G] (p. 248) Here is another small instance of Basmanov's "rough work." A Document History of Communism, edited with an introduction and notes by Robert V. Daniels, whose work on the Left Opposition we have criticized above, was published by Random House (New. York, 1960).
The collection includes excerpts from the writings also of Bukharin, Stalin (e.g., On Inadequacies of Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyist and Other Double-Dealers, March, 1937), Vyshinsky, Malenkov, Zhdanov, Earl Browder, Khrushchev, Mao, Liu Shao-chi, etc., etc. One might contend that it is something of an “amalgam" to include these authors with Lenin and Trotsky, but why go on?
{H] (p. 249) Basmanov here echoes Stalin's 1937 pronouncement (quoted above in Note A) almost word for word. The papal arrogance of this constantly repeated idea is matched only by the magic formula equating "Communist parties" with "international workers movement."
The fitting reply to this kind of arrogance, frequently indulged in by the pro-Moscow Communist parties, was given at the conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity. As one of the Working Committees stated, "No one can proclaim himself vanguard as such."
Or as Fidel Castro declared in his closing speech at that congress:
“We belong not to a small group within the revolutionary movement, but to an organization which comprises all true revolutionaries, and we will not be prejudiced against any revolutionary.
"That is, there is a much wider move~ ment on this continent than that of just the Communist parties of Latin America; we are committed to that wide movement, and we shall not be prejudiced against any revolutionary." (From International Socialist Review, Nov.-Dec., 1967, p. .
[I] (p- 249) It is impossible to sort out what Basmanov used for sources in giving these two different quotes on the question of the crisis of leadership. Neither of them, in Basmanov's Russian wording, corresponds exactly to the Russian wording of Trotsky's famous opening paragraph of the Transitional Program: "The world polit-— ical situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." (See Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of t Fourth International, New York. Pioneer Publishers, 1946, p. 5.)
Nor does either correspond with Trotsky's restatement of the idea in the last sentence of the opening section of the Transition Program: "The historical crisis
of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." (Ibid., p. 6. ;
Of course, this central idea is the rationale for the construction of a new, revolutionary international. It is because of the crisis of leadership that revolutionary parties must be built in country after country where none exist. It is curious that, for Basmanov, the logic of this formulation means neces- . sarily a “struggle against the Communist parties." All that can be said to this is, if the shoe fits, wear it.
[J] (p. 250) The "distress" of the bourgeoisie over the program of the Communist parties is best seen in the support given by the capitalist class to the position of the Latin-American advocates of "peaceful coexistence" as against the revolutionary line of the Cubans. A graphic example was the way: CIA-backed Cuban counterrevolutionaries reprinted and distributed a statement denouncing Fidel Castro and his policies written by the rightist leaders of the Venezuelan CP. —
As for the “massive growth" of Communist parties whose leaders faithfully adhere to the line of "peaceful coexistence" and popular frontism, a good example was the Indonesian Communist party, which mushroomed until it had three million members -- before it ran into a mas- Sive disaster. Some 500,000 were slaughtered by the counterrevolution, which took full advantage of the opening provided by leaders committed to building a popular front with Sukarno instead of making a revolution. Basmanov studiously avoids citing cases, although plenty are available, the Indonesian being but the latest in a long series.:
[K] (p. 250) Were these just "horror stories" or insistent warnings from the coleader of the October Revolution? When Stalin decreed the abolition of the Communist International as a friendship offering to his "democratic" ally Roosevelt in 1943, he confirmed in practice the correctness of Trotsky's observations and warnings.
And since then, despite occasional conferences, twenty-five years have passed in an era filled with crises and revolutionary struggles without any serious attempt by Stalin or his heirs to reconstitute an international. If anything, the splintering of the former Third International into national chauvinist, reformist remnants has carried the process from degeneration toward total fragmentation.
[L] (p. 250) None of the alleged quotes in the preceding paragraph are attributed to a‘specific source. No declaration of the Fourth International that I can locate carries these phrases, although a "Manifesto of the Fourth International Conference to the Workers of the World," in the December 1938 Bulletin of the Left Opposition declared that "neither of the old Internationals has proven capable of organizing the resistance of the proletariat to fascism" and charged that their policies had "facilitated the victory of fascism."
Did Basmanov make up his quotes? Or did he just spice up some actually existing passages, in the same way that he turned "prisons" into "enterprises," and "us" into "U.S.A"?
On the question of Trotsky defending democratic rights, Basmanov deliberately lied. One of the main pillars of the Trotskyist position is defense of democratic rights (which are historically a product of the bourgeois revolution). In fact the December 19438 Manifesto states precisely that, and quite clearly.
The crucial point is that it is fatal to rely on the bourgeoisie to defend democratic rights. Only the proletariat headed by a revolutionary party can be relied on to defend them consistently and to extend and broaden them into proletarian democracy. Trotsky never visualized the struggle against fascism as being merely "national"; and in Germany, of course, his main slogan was for the German Communist and Social Democratic parties to close ranks against the common threat represented by the Nazis. Unfortunately, Basmanov's mentor, Stalin, rejected this, propounding the theory that the Social Democrats were the "main enemy" and "twins" of the Nazis.
(M] (p. 250) The quote appears to have been extracted from the following sentence: "The traditional Trotskyist position against collaboration with the liberal bourgeoisie was again questioned in 1960." This appears in a detailed study by Ernest Germain, "From Wavering to Capitulation," published in the November 1964 issue of Quatriéme Internationale. (An English translation is available in the fall 1964 issue of the International Socialist Review, the sentence in question appearing on page 110.) Germain's analysis deals with the process by which a sector of the Ceylonese Trotskyist leadership grouped around N.M.Perera moved from a revolutionary-socialist position to "popular frontism" and participation in a coalition with the political representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie of Ceylon. Germain vigorously condemns the betrayers, who were lured into the bourgeois trap precisely when a great revolutionary opportunity opened for the socialist movement in their country. In the concrete context of the Ceylonese situation, the article offers an excellent exposition of the Leninist attitude of distrust and nonconfidence in the liberal bourgeoisie and why the Trotskyist movement believes it advisable to adhere to Lenin's position on this question.
Basmanov, of course, favors Pere-ra's adoption of popular frontism but evidently found it difficult to indicate it even to the degree of specifying the source of his quote.-
LN] (p- 250) Basmanov has given the Maoist not the Trotskyist prognosis for world revolution, as seen for example in Lin Piao's famous pamphlet. on People's War. The Trotskyist view is best presented in Dynamics of World Revolution Today, a resolution adopted by the 1964 Reunification Congress of the Fourth International.
The following passage from that resolution gives a somewhat more flexible analysis of the possible course of revolutionary development:
"So far as real perspectives are concerned, it is not. excluded that these countries [the former colonial ones] will become workers states before the political revolution triumphs in the Soviet Union and before the proletarian revolution scores a decisive victory in one or more of the imperialist countries. However, it would be inadvisable for revolutionary socialists to base themselves on this unlikely variant. [Emphasis added.] Such a perspective implies not only the continuation of the process of permanent revolution in the colonial world (which is sure to occur) but also the victorious conclusion of this process in many countries within a specified time limit (before victories elsewhere). [Emphasis in original.] A policy based arbitrarily upon any one of the many possible time sequences in the development of the three main sectors of the world revolution could lead to exceedingly grave political errors." (1964 edition, Workers Vanguard Publishing Association, 81 Queen Street West, Toronto, Canada, p-. 9.)
[0] (p. 250) This quote is from the "Manifesto on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution." (The Manifesto itself is discussed further below.) That 1940 document's analysis of the position of the colonial struggle in the world situation is the opposite of what Basmanov alleges. Here are some other passages from the section entitled "The Colonial Struggle and the War," which he conveniently fails to mention.
"In the colonial and semicolonial countries the struggle for an independent national state, and consequently the 'defense of the fatherland,' is different in principle from that of the imperialist countries. The revolutionary proletariat of the whole world gives unconditional support to the struggle of China or India for national independence, for this struggle, 'by tearing the backward people out of the Asiatic system, particularism and foreign bondage , strikes powerful blows at imperialism.' (War and the Fourth International.)" Here the 1940 manifesto, © quoting from a 1934 declaration, shows the continuity of the Trotskyist -position on the colonial question, something Basmanov naturally wishes to keep from his readers.
‘{P] (p. 250) Again Basmanov lies deliberately. The Trotskyist position on Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), as on the colonial struggle in general, was the exact opposite of what Basmanov claims. In fact, Trotsky polemicized sharply against a neutral attitude on the Ethiopian question. (See his rebuttal of the "feudalism" argument in "On Dictators and the Heights of Oslo," for example, in the June 1936 New International. )
In "Questions of the Italo-Ethiopian War" (New International, October 1935), under the pen name "Parabellum," Trotsky wrote:
"The position of neutrality of the international revolutionary proletariat we dismiss with a wave of the hand: if it is true that the revolutionary proletariat is for the defeat of Italy, [since] it is not neutral, then it is for the victory of Ethiopia. If it desires the victory of Ethiopia, then it must help to produce it. This means that it does not remain 'neutral,' but that it actively intervenes for Ethiopia."
Trotsky quoted Lenin on the question of national liberation wars, in a discussion that could prove enlightening today for those confused on why revolutionaries support the Arab struggle -- not necessarily the Arab leaderships ~- as against the proimperialist Zionist expansion.
On Ethiopia, Trotsky also pointed to the "miserable attitude of the leaders of the Third International" and denounced the Stalinist line as reflected by the Kremlin spokesnan Maxim Litvinov, then president of the Council of the League of Nations. The Stalinists, like the bourgeois League, failed to take any effective action in support of Ethiopia.
Trotsky's revolutionary stand can be seen not only in his call for every possible effort to aid Ethiopia but in his prognosis of what Ethiopian victory could mean: "A defeat of Italy in Africa, a victory of Ethiopia, might deliver the imperialists a terrific blow in Africa. Should Ethiopia's national war be crowned with success, why shouldn't there be repercussions to this victory of the backward country in the form of uprisings in Egypt, in the large French and English colonies of Central and Eastern Africa, in South Africa? And might not victorious uprisings in Africa be implanted, repeated, and extended in Asia?"
Such was the "scorn" with which Trot— skyism in 1940 viewed the national libera~ tion movement.
(Q] (p. 251) In this paragraph Bas~
manov again gives several quotes without any source or reference. We can only conclude that once again he has cooked them up on his own gas burner. {[R] (p. 251) Again Basmanov gives unidentifiable quotes. But his reference to the question of the national bourgeoisie is the giveaway to the real policy he is pushing.
The key to the Stalinists' "peaceful coexistence" policy is their desire to maintain the status quo. Revolutions in other lands can serve to inspire the Soviet people to carry out a political revolution at home and cleanse the workers state of its bureaucratic excrescences. Thus the Kremlin has practical grounds for a bloc with the world bourgeoisie against revolutionary struggles.
But as heads of a "Socialist" state they cannot come out flatly against all revolutionary struggles. They thus speak for revolutions that will first have a national-—democratic, or "bourgeois," stage, the subsequent "socialist" stage being put off for an indefinite future. This provides a presumed basis for a bloc with the "progressive" sectors of the bourgeoisie against the "reactionary" sectors, i.e., those who convert anti-Communism into a political platforn.
If the Stalinists succeed in building a mass following on this basis, it is used for bargaining purposes with any sec-— tor of the bourgeoisie willing to bargain, even the ultrareactionaries. The policy also helps to maintain the status quo by delivering the masses to the bourgeoisie at a time of crisis when revolutionary possibilities open up. This is done by the bourgeois leaders in whom the masses have been told to have confidence. Recent instances were Brazil in 1964 and Indonesia in 1965.
The absurdity of expecting revolutionary action from the national bourgeoisie in the colonial world (and the same goes for the liberal bourgeoisie in advanced countries) was well expressed by Che Guevara in his message to Tricontinental on the eve of the OLAS conference:
",..the indigenous bourgeoisie have lost all capacity to oppose imperialism -~if they ever had any -- and constitute only their last trump.
"No other alternatives exist: it's either a socialist revolution or a caricature of a revolution." (Che Guevara Speaks, New York: Merit Publishers, 1967, p. 149.)
The general declaration of the OLAS Conference, after a careful historical, social, and economic analysis, also stated: "It would be absurd to suppose that, under such conditions, the so-called Latin~ American bourgeoisie could develop polit-— ical action independent of the oligarchies and imperialism in defense of the interests and aspirations of the nation...The impotence of the Latin-American bourgeoisie is absolute." The conclusion was clearly stated: "That the essential content of the Revolution in Latin America is to be found in its confrontation with imperialism and the bourgeois and landowning oligarchies. Consequently, the character of the Revolution is the struggle for national independence, for emancipation from the oligarchies, and for taking the socialist road to its complete economic and social development."
In his closing speech to the OLAS Conference, Fidel Castro added this fillip to the rejection of Stalinist theory of the “national bourgeoisie": "Meaningless phrases are bad, but so are the accepted meanings of certain phrases. Because there are theses that are 40 years old; for example, the famous thesis concerning the role of the national bourgeoisies. How hard it has been to become convinced, finally, that this idea is an absurdity on this continent; how much paper, how many phrases, how much empty talk has been wasted while waiting for a liberal, progressive, anti-imperialist bourgeoisie."
{S] (p. 251) Basmanov's quote from the “Manifesto on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution" cuts Trotsky's sentence short in the middle. The complete sentence reads: "In history war has not infrequently been the mother of revolution precisely because it rocks superannuated regimes to their foundation, weakens the ruling class, and hastens the growth of revolutionary indignation among the oppressed classes."
The general truth of this statement is being confirmed in particular today by developments in the Vietnam war and by the impact of that war upon the United States and the general world situation.
The other three quotes, for which Basmanov typically fails to provide the source, are not to be found in the Manifesto. It is hard to say whether Basmanov took the words out of isolated sentences or just made them up.
As for the Manifesto itself, it is a document of great importance. Adopted at an Emergency Conference of the Fourth International on May 9-16, 1940, in the very early days of World War II, it laid out a general analysis and perspective of the world situation in the context of the new war. The broad outlines of its analysis were strikingly borne out by events. (See Socialist Appeal, June 29, 1941, for the text.
(T] (p. 251) Basmanov's failure to cite his sources in this paragraph facilitates the amalgam he makes of several rather disparate currents, all of which perhaps
call themselves Trotskyist but which differ greatly in program and which have no connection with the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky, however much they may use the label "Fourth International."
In Latin America the ultraleft current headed by J. Posadas, increasingly isolated by its bizarre policies (such as calling for nuclear war and decrying the Fidelista leadership as "petty bourgeois"), has repeatedly been denounced and discredited by the world Trotskyist movement.
As for the ultraleft current in England, grouped around Gerry Healy, it really isn't fair -- for all their own bizarre positions, such as insisting that Cuba is a capitalist state and Fidel Castro another Batista -- to saddle them with Posadas' psychotic vision of a nuclear Armageddon.
{[U] (p. 251) The industrious Basmanov dug this quote out of an editorial in the November 1963 issue of Quatriéme Internationale on the treaty signed by the Kremlin at the time agreeing to make joint cause with Washington in blocking the dissemination of nuclear arms. Basmanov gives the sentence (which he does not translate quite accurately) a meaning that is the exact opposite of the original. This can be seen by reading it in context:
"For all these reasons, the revolutionary Marxists, who have always considered it their duty to speak the truth, the whole truth, to the masses, no matter how disagreeable it may be, broadcast a message to the masses following the signing of the Moscow Treaty, a message not of illusory hope and credulous relief, but of distrust and grave warning. Yes, the danger of a nuclear war that could destroy the entire material base of civilization if not all mankind remains graver than ever. Yes, this danger remains and will remain as long as imperialism retains substantial power, above all American imperialism. Yes, to eliminate this danger fundamentally and definitively, there is no short cut, no easy way out, there is only the struggle of the masses to disarm their own bourgeoisie, to overthrow them and by that to overthrow the only ones guilty of threatening a nuclear holocaust. And, at the present stage, unconditional support must be given the colonial revolution, including its armed form, because it represents today the surest means of weakening the imperialist bourgeoisie, and in that way aiding the proletariat of the imperialist countries to disarm and overthrow them tomorrow.
"No 'pessimist' or 'defeatist' conclusion is to be drawn from this realistic view of things except by those who, at bottom, have abandoned the perspective off proletarian revolution in the imperialisw countries. For us, on the contrary, it omy provides an additional reason for conductt ing the revolutionary struggle for which ° the Communist movement and its legitimate heir, the Fourth International, were founded: The struggle for the world revolution has today become literally a question of life or death for mankind. The choice is no longer between socialism and barbariam; today it is between socialism and atomic death.
In the same issue of Quatriéme Internationale is to be found the text of a report made by E. Germain at the world congress of the Fourth International in June 1963, "Political Situation and Tasks of the Trotskyists." The subheading on a key part of the report reads: "II. To Prevent a World Nuclear War." The theme of this section is stated as follows: "To continue to declare that a world war is inevitable would mean under these conditions affirming that humanity is condemned to suicide....The new consequences of a war, the fact of the development of arms of massive destruction, imposes an important modification in the revolutionary strategy of meeting the threat of a counterrevolutionary world war unleashed by imperialism. This strategy must aim at preventing a war. And, historically, only revolution can prevent war." (Emphasis in original.
[V] (p. 252) It is instructive to consider the tactic of "“entrism" -- which Basmanov views with such horror -- from the angle of Lenin's prescription on how revolutionaries should proceed in winning workers away from reformist or reactionary ideology and leadership. The following passage from Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder illustrates Lenin's views on this question. Ironically, in some countries, especially in Western Europe, those who call themselves Communists today, and who close the door on "Trotskyists" in mass organizations, best fit Lenin's characterization of "the ‘leaders' of opportunism."
"There need be no doubt that...the ‘leaders' of opportunism, will resort to every trick of bourgeois diplomacy, to the aid of bourgeois governments, the priests, the police and the courts, to prevent Communists joining the trade unions, to force them out by every means, to make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as pos-— sible, to insult, bait and persecute then. We must be able to withstand all this, to agree to all and every sacrifice, and even -- if need be -- to resort to various stratagems, artifices, illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on Communist work inside them at all aren (Progress Publishers, Moscow, p. 37.
[W] (p. 252) This quote is taken from the document Dynamics of World Revolution:
Today (see Note N). It appears in the opening of a section on the organization-— al situation, problems, and prospects of the Fourth International. This part of the document deals fundamentally with the general question of how to build revolutionary parties and a revolutionary international, the prime need of our age. It is a pity Basmanov quoted no further from the passage; his readers could have benefited from it.
The following is a sampling, but the entire discussion deserves to be read and studied by those concerned with this general problen.
"To assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Fourth International ina more reasonable way, it is well to conpare it with its predecessors. The First International, established under the direct leadership of Marx and Engels never achieved great organizational strength, no matter how stupendous its theoretical accomplishments were in the history of mankind. The Second International added to the theory of Marxism and built huge organizations. But these all ended in the debacle of 1914. To achieve victory in Russia, the left wing found it necessary to split from the parent organization. The Third International moved ahead rapidly under the beneficent guidance of the Bolsheviks only to succumb to Stalinism and end finally in shameful dissolution as a wartime gift from the Kremlin to Roosevelt, the political chief of Allied imperialism. Obviously it is not easy to construct a revolutionary-socialist International and bring it to successful accon-— plishment of its aims." (pp. 36-37.)
[X] (p- 252) The space Basmanov devotes to the question of “entrism" can probably best be explained by the growing penetration of "Trotskyist" ideas in certain Communist parties, including many where the Trotskyists have not utilized the famous "entrist" tactic.
The full paragraph in Dynamics of World Revolution Today, from which Basmanov tore out his quote, is as follows:
"The world Trotskyist movement has given much consideration to the problem of setting out with small forces to win the working class and organize it into a party capable of challenging the rule of the capitalist class. The over-all principle on which it has proceeded on the orgamizational level is the Leninist dic-— tum that a revolutionist must not permit himself to be separated from his class under any circumstances. It is thus the norm for Trotskyists to belong to the union of their trade or industry and to play an active role in union affairs no matter how reactionary the union bureaucracy may be. They likewise belong to the big organizations of the masses whether they be nationalistic, cultural, or political in character. Insofar as possible, they advance the ideas and program of Trotskyism among the members of these organizations and seék to recruit from them." (p.41.)
(Y] (p. 252) This quote is also fron Dynamics of World Revolution Today, pp.41-42.
(Z] (p. 253) The quote is from an article called "Anti-Socialists in a 'left' dress," by one Dennis Goodwin, mainly aimed at a "National Rank and File Conference" on "Unity in Action" sponsored by the Newsletter of the Socialist Labour League. The following quote from Goodwin gives a taste of his general anti-Trotskyist arguments.
"Ever since 1917 [!] the Trotskyites rejected the policy of peaceful coexistence {such as Kerensky's? ~- G.S.], denied the possibility of building socialism in one country. Had their policy been adopted, there would have been no USSR, no People's China, and no People's Democracies today."
[AA] (p. 253) It is strange that the quotes in the two preceding paragraphs are not identified. Why should Basmanov be so cautious in this instance? -- unless he feels that here he is dealing with the crime of crimes of Trotskyism, i.e., seeking to stimulate discussion among the rank and file of the Communist parties on world political questions. The “international discussion" evidently refers to the Moscow-Peking dispute.
[BB] (p. 253) Evidently our scholar is here quoting from publications of the Posadas group. Among other illusions, Posadas came to believe that his utterances were read and absorbed by top Maoist circles. Basmanov's concern about tipping off Mao on the unholy activities of "Trotskyists" is touching proof of the Kremlin's comradely attitude toward the Peking "helmsman," despite the differences on various other points.
[CC] (p. 254) Space is required to deal with Basmanov's final footnote. The sources he mentions supposedly illustrate the "active struggle" by Latin-American CPs against Trotskyist "provocations."
Let's take a look. In World Marxist Review, 1964, No. 5 (pp. 11-18), we find an article by Jorge del Prado, member of the Political Commission of the Communist party of Peru, entitled "Mass Struggle -- the Key to Victory."
After an impressive summation of Leninist theory on tactics, Del Prado concludes, "We uphold the tactic of actively gathering strength." He then proceeds to explain the CP's electoral tactic of having supported the capitalist politician Belaande Terry in the 1963 elections. The CP had apparently come under fire from what Del Prado calls "the Trotskyite groups and
the so-called 'new left.'"
Del Prado argues that the Belatnde coalition's program "contained many democratic and progressive points slightly nationalist in coloring." (Slightly nationalist?!) He himself acknowledges that Belainde's party "includes spokesmen of the latifundistas, and the big bourgeoisie," as well as many “who represent the national bourgeoisie. The latter predominate in the leadership." Again, at the heart of the matter, we find the attrac-— tiveness to the Stalinists of the "national bourgeoisie" as possible allies.
Continuing his "active struggle" against Trotskyism, Del Prado gives the standard lesser-evil rationalization for supporting bourgeois candidates:
"Our task was to bar the road to the direct [!] candidates of the oligarchy and at the same time to oust the military junta." This is neat parliamentary magic. By voting in elections sponsored by the military, they "oust" the junta like rabbits out of a hat.
Unfortunately, after Belatinde was elected, he betrayed a "tendency to capit-— ulate to the reactionaries," says Del Prado. This tendency went as far as a witchhunt in which hundreds of Communists, among others, were rounded up. But to Del Prado this was all a mistake. "He [Belaande] could have followed another course ----he could have taken the way of establishing trade relations with the socialist camp, and first of all with the Soviet Union. Instead of relying solely on the High Command of the armed forces, Belaande could have relied more on the people."
Del Prado further shows his understanding of the Marxist-Leninist analysis of the state (how the ruling class uses the state, particularly its armed forces, to serve its own interests) by arguing that a little more pressure from the masses (under CP leadership, of course) might have pushed Belainde along that preferable course.
Del Prado considers Trotskyism in following passage: "The masses are not ready for armed struggle, as the failure of the recent attempt to develop it has shown. We have in mind the series of ill-starred bank raids carried out in most cases by Trotskyite groups. the yet
"Large-scale armed actions were launched in the Cuzco Department by the movement headed by the Trotskyite Hugo Blanco; attempts were made to get into the country through Puerto Maldonado. These weak, isolated actions likewise ended in failure and the loss of precious lives." (p. 14.)
In World Marxist Review, 1965, No.4 (pp- 40-42), appears a curious article by an unidentified advocate of the Moscow line, one A. Tzul. It is entitled "The Revolutionary Struggle in Guatemala: Its Achievements and Prospects."
Tzul first explains "the complexity of the situation" under the military dictatorship which seized power in March 196% and which was answered by revolutionary armed struggle, especially by the guerrilla movement. The "complexity" for Tzul flows from the possibility of upcoming elections. (They were finally held in early 1967.) There are "differences" over the tactics which "the progressive and patriotic forces" should adopt toward the elections, he explains.
"The point at issue is the character of the Guatemalan revolution and its immediate aims. We Communists maintain that the present revolutionary struggle bears a national-democratic character and that all who aim at freeing the country from the rule of the semifeudal oligarchy and the U.S. imperialists should join in it.
"We believe that the national bourgeoisie, the radical small bourgeoisie, and the middie classes generally can and should play a progressive role and contribute to the liberation struggle of our people. Those comrades who think differently and have evidently fallen for Trotskyist provocation hold that our revolution must be a socialist revolution, and that the regime to be established immediately after its victory must be a workers and peasants government, that is, one debarring all other social strata from the revolutionary bloc."
(The traditional view of revolutionary Marxists on the question of the middle classes, of course, is that because of their position in society, they always vacillate between the two major classes. An effective struggle by the working class may draw the middle classes along in its wake, and it is essential to win the middle class over in this way, that is, by waging a fight that causes them to believe in the possibility of a proletarian victory. But to leave the leadership in their hands is to abandon it to constant wavering and surrender to the big bourgeoisie. )
"In line with this ['Trotskyist' view]," continues Tzul, "they call on the workers everywhere to seize the factories and on the peasants to take over the landed estates and set up ‘organs of state power.' Since the political struggle has not yet attained a state at which these appeals can be carried into practice, they are utopian, and worse still, objectively provocative." (p. 41.)
A recent statement by the Guatemalan Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, denouncing the rightist leadership of the Guatemalan Communists, fittingly characterizes leaders like Tzul, whose "active struggle" Basmanov
finds so attractive. They are nothing more than the most radical wing of the democratic petty bourgeoisie.
Finally, in Kommunist 1964, No. 11 (pp. 121-130), we find an article entitled "The Liberation Movement in Latin America" by two Soviet experts, M. Kudachkin, and N. Mostovets. On pages 123-124, in a passage arguing for the perspective of an anti-imperialist national-democratic front . these experts mention the armed peasant movement in Peru in 1963, echoing Del Prado.
They say that since it was prema-
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