Soviet military advisers planning operations during the Angolan Civil War
A proxy war is an armed conflict between two states or non-state actors which act on the instigation or on behalf of other parties that are not directly involved in the hostilities.
In order for a conflict to be considered a proxy war, there must be a
direct, long-term relationship between external actors and the
belligerents involved.The aforementioned relationship usually takes the form of funding,
military training, arms, or other forms of material assistance which
assist a belligerent party in sustaining its war effort.
History
During classical antiquity and the Middle Ages,
many non-state proxies were external parties which were introduced to
an internal conflict and aligned themselves with a belligerent in order
to gain influence and further their own interests in the region.
Proxies could be introduced by an external or local power and most
commonly took the form of irregular armies which were used to achieve
their sponsor's goals in a contested region. Some medieval states such as the Byzantine Empire
used proxy warfare as a foreign policy tool by deliberately cultivating
intrigue among hostile rivals and then backing them when they went to
war with each other. Other states regarded proxy wars as merely a useful extension of a preexisting conflict, such as France and England during the Hundred Years' War, both of which initiated a longstanding practice of supporting piracy which targeted the other's merchant shipping. The Ottoman Empire likewise used the Barbary pirates as proxies to harass Western European powers in the Mediterranean Sea.
Since the early twentieth century, proxy wars have most commonly
taken the form of states assuming the role of sponsors to non-state
proxies, essentially using them as fifth columns to undermine an adversarial power. This type of proxy warfare includes external support for a faction engaged in a civil war, terrorists, national liberation movements, and insurgent groups, or assistance to a national revolt against foreign occupation. For example, the British partly organized and instigated the Arab Revolt to undermine the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Many proxy wars began assuming a distinctive ideological dimension after the Spanish Civil War, which pitted the fascist political ideology of Italy and National Socialist ideology of Nazi Germany against the communist ideology of the Soviet Union without involving these states in open warfare with each other. Sponsors of both sides also used the Spanish conflict as a proving ground for their own weapons and battlefield tactics.
During the Cold War, proxy warfare was motivated by fears that a conventional war between the United States and Soviet Union would result in nuclear holocaust, rendering the use of ideological proxies a safer way of exercising hostilities. The Soviet government found that supporting parties antagonistic to the US and Western nations was a cost-effective way to combat NATO influence in lieu of direct military engagement.
In addition, the proliferation of televised media and its impact on
public perception made the US public especially susceptible to war-weariness and skeptical of risking American life abroad. This encouraged the American practice of arming insurgent forces, such as the funneling of supplies to the mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War.
A significant disparity in the belligerents' conventional military
strength may motivate the weaker party to begin or continue a conflict
through allied nations or non-state actors. Such a situation arose
during the Arab–Israeli conflict, which continued as a series of proxy wars following Israel's decisive defeat of the Arab coalitions in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.
The coalition members, upon failing to achieve military dominance via
direct conventional warfare, have since resorted to funding armed
insurgent and paramilitary organizations, such as Hezbollah, to engage in irregular combat against Israel.
Additionally, the governments of some nations, particularly liberal democracies,
may choose to engage in proxy warfare (despite military superiority)
when a majority of their citizens oppose declaring or entering a
conventional war. This featured prominently in US strategy following the Vietnam War, due to the so-called "Vietnam Syndrome" of extreme war weariness among the American population. This was also a significant factor in motivating the US to enter conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War via proxy actors, after a series of costly, drawn-out direct engagements in the Middle East spurred a recurrence of war weariness, a so-called "War on Terror syndrome".
Nations may also resort to proxy warfare to avoid potential
negative international reactions from allied nations, profitable trading
partners, or intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations.
This is especially significant when standing peace treaties, acts of
alliance, or other international agreements ostensibly forbid direct
warfare: breaking such agreements could lead to a variety of negative
consequences due to either negative international reaction (see above),
punitive provisions listed in the prior agreement, or retaliatory action
by the other parties and their allies.
In some cases, nations may be motivated to engage in proxy warfare
due to financial concerns: supporting irregular troops, insurgents,
non-state actors, or less-advanced allied militaries (often with
obsolete or surplus equipment) can be significantly cheaper than
deploying national armed forces, and the proxies usually bear the brunt
of casualties and economic damage resulting from prolonged conflict.
Another common motivating factor is the existence of a security dilemma. Leaders
that feel threatened by a rival nation's military power may respond
aggressively to perceived efforts by the rival to strengthen their
position, such as military intervention to install a more favorable
government in a third-party state.
They may respond by attempting to undermine such efforts, often by
backing parties favorable to their own interests (such as those directly
or indirectly under their control, sympathetic to their cause, or
ideologically aligned). In this case, if one or both rivals come to
believe that their favored faction is at a disadvantage, they will often
respond by escalating military and/or financial support.
If their counterpart(s), perceiving a material threat or desiring to
avoid the appearance of weakness or defeat, follow suit, a proxy war
ensues between the two powers. This was a major factor in many of the
proxy wars during the Cold War between the US and USSR, as well as in the ongoing series of conflicts between Saudi Arabia and Iran, especially in Yemen and Syria.
Effects
Proxy
wars can have a huge impact, especially on the local area. A proxy war
with significant effects occurred between the United States and the USSR
during the Vietnam War. In particular, the bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder destroyed significant amounts of infrastructure, making life more difficult for North Vietnamese
citizens. In addition, unexploded bombs dropped during the campaign
have killed tens of thousands since the war ended, not only in Vietnam, but also in Cambodia and Laos. Also significant was the Soviet–Afghan War, which cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, bankrupting the Soviet Union and contributing to its collapse.
The proxy war in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and Iran is another example of the destructive impact of proxy wars. This conflict has resulted in, among other things, the Syrian Civil War, the rise of ISIL, the current civil war in Yemen, and the reemergence of the Taliban. Since 2003, more than 800,000 have died in Iraq. Since 2011, more than 220,000 have died in Syria. In Yemen, over 1,000 have died in just one month. In Afghanistan, more than 17,000 have been killed since 2009. In Pakistan, more than 57,000 have been killed since 2003.
In general, the lengths, intensities, and scales of armed
conflicts are often greatly increased when belligerents' capabilities
are augmented by external support. Belligerents are often less likely to
engage in diplomatic negotiations, peace talks are less likely to bear
fruit, and damage to infrastructure can be many times greater.
Trotskyism in Vietnam was represented by those who, in left opposition to the Indochinese Communist Party (PCI) of Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh), identified with the call by Leon Trotsky to re-found "vanguard parties of proletariat" on principles of "proletarian internationalism" and of "permanent revolution".
Active in the 1930s in organising the Saigon waterfront, industry and
transport, Trotskyists presented a significant challenge to the
Moscow-aligned party in Cochinchina.
Following the September 1945 Saigon uprising against the restoration of
the French, Vietnamese Trotskyists were systematically hunted down and
eliminated by both the French Sûreté and the Communist-front Viet Minh.
The Emergence of Left Opposition
An
identifiable Trotskyist tendency among Vietnamese revolutionary circles
emerges first in Paris among the student youth of the Annamite
Independence Party. Following the bloody suppression of the Yên Bái mutiny, their leader Tạ Thu Thâu expressed their view of the revolution in Indochina in the pages of the Left OppositionLa Verité (May and June issues, 1930). The revolution would not follow the precedent the Third International had set in supporting the Kuomintang in China. A commitment to a broad nationalist front ("Sun Yat-sen
ism") would betray the revolutionary interests of the anti-colonial
struggle. For the colonised the choice was no longer between
independence and slavery, but between socialism and nationalism. As "the
social enemy of imperialism." the worker and peasant masses
would free themselves from oppression under the French overseer only
through their own organised action. "Independence is inseparable from
proletarian revolution."
For organising protests against the execution of Yên Bái
insurgent leaders, in May 1930 Tạ Thu Thâu and eighteen of his
compatriots were arrested and deported back to Cochinchina.
In Saigon the deportees found several groups of militants open to the theses of Left Opposition, some within the PCI. In November 1931 dissidents emerging from within the Party formed the October Left Opposition (Ta Doi Lap Thang Moui) around the clandestine journal Thang Muoi
(October). These included Dao Hung Long (alias Anh Gia ) who,
protesting a leadership of "Moscow trainees," months before had formed
the Communist League (Lien Minh Cong San Doan), the Party's first internal opposition group, and Hồ Hữu Tường. Once considered "the theoretician of the Vietnamese contingent in Moscow,"
Tường was calling for a new "mass-based" party arising directly "out of
the struggle of the real struggle of the proletariat of the cities and
countryside."
But in the presence of "the real struggle of the proletariat in
the cities and countryside"--in Saigon-Cholon strikes and protests by
all sectors of labour and a peasant jacquerie in the surrounding
districts--the repression was such that for all factions organisational
activity proved near impossible. Between 1930 and the end of 1932, more
than 12,000 political prisoners were taken in Cochinchina, of whom 7,000
were sent to the penal colonies. The structures of the Party and of the
Left Opposition alike were shattered.
The Struggle and the Internationalist League
In
1933, several factional representatives, including Tạ Thu Thâu, Nguyễn
Văn Tạo of the PCI [later to be labour minister in Hanoi] and the anarchist Trinh Hung Ngau, regrouped around charismatic figure of Nguyễn An Ninh,
and took the initiative of legally opposing the colonial regime in the
Saigon municipal elections of April-May 1933. They put forward a common
"Workers's List" and briefly published a newspaper (in French to get
around the political restrictions on Vietnamese), La Lutte
(The Struggle) to rally support for it. In spite of the restricted
franchise, two of this Struggle group were elected (although denied
their seats), the independent (later Trotskyist) Tran Van Thach and
Nguyễn Văn Tạo.
In 1934 the La Lutte the collaboration was revived on the basis of a formal Party-Oppositionist entente:
"struggle oriented against the colonial power and its constitutionalist
allies, support of the demands of workers and peasants without regard
to which of the two groups they were affiliated with, diffusion of
classic Marxist thought, [and] rejection of all attacks against the USSR
and against either current." In the March 1935 Cochinchina Colonial Council election candidates supported by La Lutte
obtained 17% of the votes, although none were elected. Two months later
in the Saigon municipal elections four of six candidates on a joint
"Workers's Slate," including Tạ Thu Thâu and Nguyễn Văn Tạo, were
elected, although only Tran Van Thach as the ostensible non-communist
was allowed his seat.
Unwilling to enter into a further accommodation with the "Stalinists, " the October Group of Hồ Hữu Tường and of Ngô Văn
(the chronicler of the Trotskyist struggle in later exile) formed the
core of the League of Internationalist Communists for the Construction
of the Fourth International (Chanh Doan Cong San Quoc Te Chu Nghia--Phai Tan Thanh De Tu Quoc). The League maintained a "a complete system of clandestine and legal publications" including its own its own weekly “organ of proletarian defence and Marxist combat,” Le Militant (this carried Lenin's Testament with its warnings and Stalin, and Trotsky's polemics against the Popular Front), topical pamphlets in both French and Vietnamese (including Ngô Văn's denunciation of the Moscow Trials) and an agitational bulletin, Thay Tho (Wage and Salary Workers). After Le Militant was suppressed, from January 1939 the League/the Octobrists began clandestinely publishing Tia Sang (The Spark).
The title, The Spark, may have been a reference to Tia Sang (the Spark) group in Hanoi, and suggests an organisational connection. In 1937-38, this northern group had put out a weekly, Thoi Dam
(Chronicles), with a call to workers and peasants to set up "unified
people's committees in the struggle for rice, freedom and democracy.". Octobrists are reported to have been active in labour organising in Hanoi, Haiphong and Vinh.
In Saigon, with a renewed upsurge culminating in the summer of
1937 in general dock and transport strikes, the tide on the left seemed
to be running in favour of the Trotskyists. Judging by the frequency of
the warnings in the clandestine Communist press against Trotskyism the
influence of the oppositionists in the organised unrest was
"considerable" if not "preponderant."
Tạ Thu Thâu and Nguyễn Văn Tạo came together for the last time in
the April 1937 city council elections, both being elected. Together
with the lengthening shadow of the Moscow Trials (obliging the Party
loyalists to denounce their erstwhile colleagues as "the twin brothers
of fascism"), growing disagreement over the new PCF-supported Popular
Front government in France ensured a split.
The leftward shift in the French national Assembly in Thâu's view had
not brought meaningful change. He and his comrades continued to be
arrested during labour strikes, and preparations for a popular congress
in response to the government's promise of colonial consultation had
been suppressed. Colonial Minister Marius Moutet, a Socialist commented
that he had sought "a wide consultation with all elements of the popular
[will]," but with "Trotskyist-Communists intervening in the villages to
menace and intimidate the peasant part of the population, taking all
authority from the public officials," the necessary "formula" had not
been found.
Thâu's motion attacking the Popular Front for betraying the
promises of reforms in the colonies was rejected by the PCI faction and
in June 1937 the Stalinists withdrew from La Lutte
The Workers vs. the Democratic Platform
In April 1939, together with the Octobrists, the now wholly Trotskyist La Lutte group celebrated what a reviewer of Ngô Văn's later account
describes as "the only instance prior to 1945 in which the politics of
'permanent revolution' oriented to worker and peasant opposition to
colonialism won out, however ephemerally, against Stalinist 'stage
theory' in a public arena."
In elections to the colonial Cochinchina Council a "United Workers and
Peasants" slate, led by Tạ Thu Thâu, triumphed over both the Communist
Party's Democratic Front and the "bourgeois" Constitutionalists with
fully 80 per cent of the vote.
Revolutionary theory had not been the issue for the
income-tax-payer electorate. Rather it had been the colonial defence
levy that the PCI, in the spirit of Franco-Soviet accord, had felt
obliged to support.
Nonetheless the contest illustrated the ideological gulf between the
Party and the left opposition. The Workers and Peasants platform had
been revolutionary (calls for workers control and radical land
re-distribution) and reflected the analysis Tạ Thu Thâu had outlined in La Verité.
The "real, organic liaison between the indigenous bourgeoisie and
French imperialism" was such that the organisation of "the proletarian
and peasant masses" was the only force capable of liberating the
country. The question of independence was "bound up with that of the
proletarian socialist revolution."
The Democratic platform, with its calls for national unity and
relatively modest demands for constitutional change, was presented by a
party whose leading cadres "emphasised much more the exterior
development of capitalism", "used the word 'imperialism' much more often
in their discussions," talked about “nonequivalent exchange,” and of
"the continuing feudal nature of Vietnamese society." It was a party for whom the immediate object of anti-colonial struggle was national, not socialist.
At the same time, the Democratic platform had represented a party
with a much greater national organisation and presence. The Trotskyists
were concentrated in industrial and commercial centres, and in French
direct-rule Cochinchina, where it possible to have a keener sense of
proximities to France. (Ho Huu Thuong's vision was of a revolutionary
general strike coordinated with the French proletariat).
The greater resilience of the PCI--their ability to regroup and
rebuild in the face of repression--was due to its organisation in the
countryside and across Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin in the North.
In these "protectorates" the French, under the titular authority of the Bảo Đại
had retained traditional elements of rural administration. Their rule
had the calculated appearance of being external to a still extant
indigenous culture, and allowed greater play to the idea of a national society that might be mobilised against the foreign overseer.
Such as it was, the political opening against the Communist Party closed with the Hitler-Stalin Pact
of August 23, 1939. Moscow ordered a return to direct confrontation
with the French. In Cochinchina the Party obliged with a disastrous
peasant revolt.
Belatedly, the Luttuers, then numbering then perhaps 3000,
and the smaller number of Octobrists united as the official section of
the newly constituted Fourth International. They formed the International Communist League (Vietnam), or less formally as The Fourth Internationalist Party (Trang Cau De Tu Dang).
But the French law of September 26, 1939, which legally dissolved the
French Communist Party, was applied in Indochina to Stalinists and
Trotskyists aiike. The Indochinese Communist Party and the Fourth
Internationalists were driven underground for the duration of the war.
The North and the Hongai-Camphai Commune
Opportunity
for open political struggle returned with the formal surrender of the
occupying Japanese in August 1945. But events then moved rapidly to
demonstrate the Trotskyists' relative isolation. There was little
intimacy with developments to the north where, in Hanoi on September 2,
1945, Ho Chi Minh and his a new Front for the Independence of Vietnam,
the Viet Minh, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The lack of connection was made "painfully clear" when Ngô Văn
and his comrades found they had "no way of finding out what was
happening" following reports that in the Hongai-Camphai coal region
north of Haiphong 30,000 workers had elected councils to run mines,
public services and transport, and were applying the principle of equal
wages for all types of work, whether manual or intellectual.
Later they were to learn that, after three months of revolutionary
autonomy, the commune had been forcibly integrated into "the
military-police structure" of the new republic.
Tạ Thu Thau had travelled to the (famine-stricken) North with a
small band in April 1945. They were introduced to clandestine meetings
of mine workers and peasants by a "fraternal group" publishing the
bulletin in Hanoi Chien Dau (Combat). Now styling themselves the Socialist Workers Party of Northern Vietnam (Dang Tho Thuyen Xa Hoi Viet Bac),
their call, as in the South, was for workers' control, land
redistribution and for armed resistance to a return of the French.
Whether they, or other Trotskyist groups, played any role in the
Hongai-Camphai events is unclear. On Ho Chi Minh's orders they were
already being rounded up and executed.
Hunted and pursued south by the Viet Minh, Tạ Thu Thâu was captured in early September at Quang Ngai. A year later in Paris, the French socialist Daniel Guerin
recalls that when he asked Ho Chi Minh about Tạ Thu Thâu's fate, Ho
replied, "with unfeigned emotion,“ that "'Thâu was a great patriot and
we mourn him." But he then added, "in a steady voice, 'all those who do
not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.'”
The September 1945 Saigon Uprising
On
August 24 the Viet Minh declared a provisional administration in
Saigon. When, for the declared purpose of disarming the Japanese, the
Viet-Minh accommodated the landing and strategic positioning of their
wartime "democratic allies", the British, rival political groups turned
out in force. The brutality of a French restoration, under the
protection of British guns, triggered a general uprising on September
23.
Under the slogan "Land to the Peasants! Factories to the
workers!," the ICL called on the population to arm themselves and
organise in councils. To co-ordinate these efforts the Internationalists
established a Popular Revolutionary Committee, an "embryonic soviet
that placed its stamp upon the region of Saigon-Cholon, Gia-dinh and
Bien-Hoa."
Delegates issued "a declaration in which they affirmed their
independence from the political parties and resolutely condemned any
attempt to restrict the autonomy of the decisions taken by workers and
peasants."
With other League comrades, Ngô Văn joined in arms with streetcar
workers. In the "internationalist spirit of the League," the workers
had broken with their union, General Confederation of Labour (renamed
by the Viet Minh "Workers for National Salvation"). Refusing the yellow
star of the Viet-Minh, they mustered under the unadorned red flag "of
their own class emancipation."
But the militias were hit hard by the French. Ngô Văn records two
hundred alone being massacred, October 3rd, at the Thi Nghe bridge.
As they fell back into he countryside, they and other independent
formations (armed groups of independent nationalists and of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao syncretic sects) were caught in the crossfire as the Viet-Minh returned to surround the city.
Vietnamese Trotskyism in Exile
Some
may have made a different choice. Renouncing his revolutionary
principles, Hồ Hữu Tường took refuge with the French Bảo Đại puppet
government (later he became a deputy in the "farcical 'opposition'"
under the military regime of Nguyen Van Thieu)).
But "harassed by the Sûreté in the city and denied refuge in a
countryside dominated by the two terrors, the French and the Viet-Minh," most survivors appear to be those who, like Ngô Văn, sought exile in France.
In 1946, as many as 500 exiles were reported to be members of the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste de Vietnam (GCI — Internationalist Communist Group of Vietnam). They published a paper titled, in the tradition of La Lutte, Tranh Dau (Struggle).
In what, presumably, was a still smaller exile publication, Thieng Tho
(Workers' Voice), Ngô Văn wrote an opinion piece under the name Dong Vu
(October 30, 1951) "Prolétaires et paysans, retournez vos fusils!"
[Workers and Peasants, Turn Your Guns in the Other Direction!]. If Ho
Chi Minh won out over the French-puppet Bảo Đại government, workers and
peasants would simply have changed masters. Those with guns in their
hands should fight for their own emancipation, following the example of
the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers who formed soviets in 1917,
or the German worker's and soldiers' councils of 1918-1919. But this clearly, was a minority position.
In line with continued defence of the Soviet Union by Trotskyists
internationally as a "(degenerated) workers' state," Vietnamese
Trotskyists muted their criticism of the Viet Minh regime. The slogan,
adopted as Ngô Văn noted "despite the assassination of almost all their
comrades in Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh's hired thugs," was "Defend the
government of Ho Chi Minh against the attacks of imperialism."
As the Indochinese war intensified in the late 1940s, the French
government began massive deportations of Vietnamese, including about
three-quarters of the Trotskyists. The latter "simply disappeared after
their return to Vietnam, presumably through capitulation to the Viet
Minh Stalinists or liquidation by either the Stalinists or the French."
By 1951-52 there were only about 70 Vietnamese ostensible Trotskyists
left in France. La Lutte and League supporters combined in the
Bolshevik-Leninist Group of Vietnam (BLGV). This continued to exist, at
least in some form, until as late as 1974.
By the early 1980s the history of the Vietnamese Trotskyist
movement, which in the 1930s may been the most important expression of
left opposition in Asia (possibly greater in its scope than in China and
in advance of its emergence in India), had been "all but forgotten by the Trotskyists themselves." Robert Alexander suggests two reasons for this.
First, there was "the very thoroughness of the Stalinist
extermination of the Trotskyist leadership in Vietnam." This "left no
outstanding figure of the movement alive to tell about it outside the
country, and to continue to be active in one or another faction of the
international Trotskyist movement."
Ngô Văn is probably the most commonly cited witness to the story. But
Văn's memoirs are prefaced with a repudiation of
"Bolshevism-Leninism-Trotskyism." In France, experiences shared with
refugees from Spanish Civil War, anarchists and veterans of the POUM (The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), "permanently distanced" Văn from the politics of "so-called 'workers' parties."
The second reason, however, is precisely that which Ngô Văn underscored in his Thieng Tho
article (and in his later memorials for fallen friends and comrades).
It is what Robert Alexander recounts as "the passion, effort and
attention paid by Trotskyists of virtually all countries and all
factions to support of the Stalinist side during the long and cruel
Vietnam War, which in one form or another went on for thirty years, from
1945 to 1975. With such strong commitment to the 'degenerated workers
state' of Ho Chi Minh and his successors any memories of what he had
done to fellow Trotskyists had to be at least a source of discomfort if
not outright embarrassment to the world Trotskyist movement."
Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky were close both ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and some call Trotsky its "co-leader". Trotsky was the paramount leader of the Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period. Trotsky initially opposed some aspects of Leninism, but he concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the revolution.
Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote: "Trotsky long ago said that unification
is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has
been no better Bolshevik."
Under Stalin's orders, Trotsky was removed from power (October 1927), expelled from the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (November 1927), exiled first to Alma-Ata (January 1928), and then from the Soviet Union (February 1929). As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued from exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born NKVD
agent, and died the next day in a hospital. His murder is considered a
political assassination. Almost all of the Trotskyists within the
All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938, effectively removing all of Trotsky's internal influence in the Soviet Union.
Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France in 1938, when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern
or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and
thus incapable of leading the international working class to political
power.
In contemporary English language usage, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas
is often called a "Trotskyist". A Trotskyist can be called a
"Trotskyite" or "Trot", especially by a critic of Trotskyism.
Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features; after 1933 also support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the degenerated workers' states.
Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working-class mass action.
Use of a transitional programme of demands that bridge between daily
struggles of the working class and the maximal ideas of the socialist
transformation of society.
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are usually considered to be towards the left. In the 1920s they called themselves the Left Opposition, although today's left communism is distinct and usually non-Bolshevik. The terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists
consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism
on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right, but given that Stalinism is often labeled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism
leftist, anti-revisionists' idea of left is very different from that of
left communism. Despite being Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War,
Trotsky and Stalin became enemies in the 1920s and thereafter opposed
the legitimacy of each other's forms of Leninism. Trotsky was extremely critical of the Stalinist USSR for suppressing democracy and lack of adequate economic planning.
Theory
In 1905, Trotsky formulated his theory of permanent revolution that later became a defining characteristic of Trotskyism. Until 1905, some revolutionaries claimed that Marx's theory of history
posited that only a revolution in a European capitalist society would
lead to a socialist one. According to this position, it was impossible
for a socialist revolution to occur in a backward, feudal country such
as early 20th century Russia when it had such a small and almost
powerless capitalist class.
The theory of permanent revolution addressed the question of how
such feudal regimes were to be overthrown and how socialism could be
established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued
that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win
the support of the peasantry.
Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop
there. They would win their own revolution against the weak capitalist
class, establish a workers' state in Russia and appeal to the working
class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a
result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid and
socialism could develop worldwide.
Capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution
Revolutions in Britain
in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and
established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism.
Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.
In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky
outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "History does not repeat itself.
However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great
French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition
of the latter." In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a "bourgeois-democratic revolution"—a
regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie overthrew the existing
French feudalistic system. The bourgeoisie then moved towards
establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions. However,
while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were not
generally extended to a universal franchise. The freedom for workers to
organize unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable
struggle.
Passivity of the bourgeoisie
Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary bourgeoisie
which could play the same role and the working class constituted a very
small minority. By the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "the
bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not
want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the
social system that stood in its path to power."
The theory of permanent revolution considers that in many
countries that are thought under Trotskyism to have not yet completed a
bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class opposes the
creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working
class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their
exploitation by capitalism. In Russia, the working class, although a
small minority in a predominantly peasant-based society, were organised
in vast factories owned by the capitalist class and into large
working-class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the
capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements
such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing
Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect their ownership of
their property—factories, banks, etc.—from expropriation by the
revolutionary working class.
Therefore, according to the theory of permanent revolution the
capitalist classes of economically backward countries are weak and
incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they
are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus
Trotsky argues that because a majority of the branches of industry in
Russia were originated under the direct influence of government
measures—sometimes with the help of government subsidies—the capitalist
class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class were
subservient to European capital.
Incapability of the peasantry
The theory of permanent revolution further considers that the peasantry
as a whole cannot take on the task of carrying through the revolution,
because it is dispersed in smallholdings throughout the country and
forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ
rural workers and aspire to landlordism
as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land. Trotsky
argues: "All historical experience [...] shows that the peasantry are
absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role".
The key role of the proletariat
Trotskyists
differ on the extent to which this is true today, but even the most
orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new
development in the revolts of the rural poor, the self-organising
struggles of the landless; and many other struggles which in some ways
reflect the militant united organised struggles of the working class;
and which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions
typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However,
orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town- and city-based
working-class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist
revolution, linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that
the working class learns of necessity to conduct a collective struggle,
for instance in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the
factories and workplaces; and that the collective consciousness it
achieves as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist
reconstruction of society.
Trotsky himself argued that only the proletariat
or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that bourgeois
revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought
together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life,
saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort and the only
means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective
effort and forming workers councils (soviets) in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:
The
factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground [...] The
proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses,
while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist
bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the "people",
half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the
greed for gain.
— Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects
For instance, the Putilov Factory numbered 12,000 workers in 1900 and according to Trotsky 36,000 in July 1917.
Although only a small minority in Russian society, the
proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus
"secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on
whose support it will rely.
However, in order to improve their own conditions the working class
will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would
accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a workers'
state.
International revolution
According to classical Marxism,
revolution in peasant-based countries such as Russia prepares the
ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the
liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders which
leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist
class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the
basis for socialism.
Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a
country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures
of a hostile capitalist world as well as the internal pressures of its
backward economy. The revolution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to
capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which must
spread worldwide. In this way the revolution is "permanent", moving out
of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers’
revolution and from there uninterruptedly to European and worldwide
revolutions.
An internationalist outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of Karl Marx. The term "permanent revolution" is taken from a remark of Marx from his March 1850 Address: "it is our task", Marx said:
[...]
to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied
classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the
proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the
proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but
in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the
proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces
of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers.
— Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
History
Origins
Trotsky in exile in Siberia, 1900
According to Trotsky, the term "Trotskyism" was coined by Pavel Milyukov (sometimes transliterated as Paul Miliukoff), the ideological leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against Trotskyism "as early as 1905".
Trotsky was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He pursued a policy of proletarian revolution
at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a
"bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal
Romanov state. It was during this year that Trotsky developed the theory
of permanent revolution, as it later became known (see below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by Milyukov, The Elections to the Second State Duma, published no later than May 1907:
Those
who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by
organising meetings, against the "revolutionary illusions" of Trotskyism
and the relapse into Blanquism, simply do not understand [...] the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period.
— Pavel Milyukov, The Elections to the Second State Duma
Milyukov suggests that the mood of the "democratic public" was in
support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime
alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of
industry, support for strike action and the establishment of
democratically elected workers' councils or "soviets".
Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution
During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued
that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in
support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed
might of the state in as good an order as possible. In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:
All
practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was
done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of
the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is
indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid
going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient
manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was
organized.
As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory
of permanent revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until
1924.
The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the
relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution, and the 25 October
1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership
of the Petrograd soviet.
Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated
a slogan calling for the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
and the peasantry", but after the February revolution through his April
Theses, Lenin instead called for "all power to the Soviets". Lenin
nevertheless continued to emphasise (as did Trotsky also) the classical
Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development
of capitalism, not socialism.
Also before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the
importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once the February 1917
Russian revolution had broken out, Trotsky admitted the importance of a
Bolshevik organisation and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Despite
the fact that many like Stalin saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917
Russian revolution as central, Trotsky wrote that without Lenin and the
Bolshevik Party, the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken
place.
As a result, since 1917 Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist
party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with
the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had
previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a
dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox
Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was
caused by the failure of the revolution to spread internationally and
the consequent wars, isolation, and imperialist intervention, not the
Bolshevik style of organisation.
Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need
to stimulate a Socialist revolution in Western Europe in order that this
European socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian
revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated:
We have stressed in a good
many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our
statements in the press that [...] the socialist revolution can triumph
only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a
socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries.
— Vladimir Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)
This outlook matched precisely Trotsky's theory of permanent
revolution. Trotsky's permanent revolution had foreseen that the working
class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the
revolution, but proceed towards a workers' state as happened in 1917.
The Polish Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher
maintains that in 1917 Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's theory
of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted
by the Bolsheviks.
Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that:
[...]
up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after
Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a
socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which
"possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came
into anybody’s head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian
proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat,
and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a
democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial
socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses
of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist.
— Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution
"Legend of Trotskyism"
"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Trotsky in a Polish propaganda poster, Polish–Soviet War (1920)
In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924 in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy. Orlando Figes
argues: "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the
Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power".
During 1922–1924, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became
increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, while describing
Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional
abilities—personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present
Central Committee" and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past
should not be held against him", Lenin criticized him for "showing
excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work"
and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General
Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956. Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.
In 1926, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin, who then led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie,
which was re-printed in 1923 by the party publishing house, Proletari.
In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of
permanent revolution, writing: "The Russian proletariat is confronted
more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international
revolution ... The grand total of relationships which have arisen in
Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent
revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian
revolution". Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three
years later in 1926 "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole
theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in
the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."
Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition
grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the
Communist Party, but in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:
During
the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not
abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of
conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not
revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for
any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.
In
1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin
declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to
the Opposition: "Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!" What
was a threat in Stalin’s words became, thanks to a series of defeats of
the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned
into a road of revolution.
— Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, p. 279, Pathfinder
Defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia
and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the
"so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic
reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]". He responded to the one-sided civil war with his Letter to the Bureau of Party History
(1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history
with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused
Stalin of derailing the Chinese revolution and causing the massacre of
the Chinese workers:
In the
year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found
it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:
"All
the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out
under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet,
comrade Trotsky..." (Stalin, Pravda, 6 November 1918)
With
full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the
cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at
its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the
position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the
General Strike of 1926, and, finally, the general weakening of the
position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party
owes principally and above all to Stalin.
— Leon Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification, p. 87, Pathfinder (1971).
Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed.
For instance, Victor Serge first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a
visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in
solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition. However, the Left Opposition continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey and moved from there to France, Norway and finally to Mexico.
After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world
expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the
economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during
the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the Soviet
bureaucracy and what they claim to be the loss of democracy. Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,
had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who
disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.
In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a
political terror against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining
Old Bolsheviks (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917) in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.
Trotsky founded the International Left Opposition in 1930. It was
meant to be an opposition group within the Comintern, but anyone who
joined or was suspected of joining the ILO was immediately expelled from
the Comintern. The ILO, therefore, concluded that opposing Stalinism
from within the communist organizations controlled by Stalin's
supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed.
In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL),
which formed the basis of the Fourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.
Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on
Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution
and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists
and the Stalinists.
Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and
the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of
the Third Period policy of the Communist International
and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the
correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer
capable of reform and a new international organisation of the working
class must be organised. The transitional demand tactic had to be a key element.
At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia.
There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which
included the founding father of the Chinese communist movement, Chen Duxiu,
amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a
priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of
enemies.
The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption
through the Second World War. Isolated from each other and faced with
political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some
Trotskyist organizations decided that the Soviet Union no longer could
be called a degenerated workers' state
and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945, Trotskyism was
smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of
other countries.
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International
(ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946 and then World
Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the
capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third
World War and the tasks for revolutionaries. The Eastern European
Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states". As the Cold War intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo
that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers
considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under
pressure by the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's
manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.
The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct
systematic work inside those Communist Parties which were followed by
the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the
Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951
Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these countries because
of the military and political results of World War II and instituted
nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating
capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of
incursion by the West.
Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did not agree with
his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within
the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the
French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition
to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with the Open Letter to Trotskyists of the World, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.
The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International
(ICFI) was established by several sections of the International as an
alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a
revisionist
faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power and recommitted themselves
to the Lenin-Trotsky Theory of the Party and Trotsky's theory of
Permanent Revolution. From 1960, led by the U.S Socialist Workers Party,
a number of ICFI sections began the reunification process with the IS,
but factions split off and continued their commitment to the ICFI. Today, national parties committed to the ICFI call themselves the Socialist Equality Party.
The Bolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario,
POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early
1950s and together with other groups played a central role during and
immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.
In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the
PT until 1992, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS),
which founded the United Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU) in 1994, saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s. The Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil
(PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the
Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found
PSOL in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.
In Argentina, the Workers' Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, PRT) lay in the merger of two leftist organizations in 1965, the Revolutionary and Popular Amerindian Front (Frente Revolucionario Indoamericano Popular, FRIP) and Worker's Word(Palabra Obrera, PO). In 1968, the PRT adhered to the Fourth International, based in Paris. That same year a related organisation was founded in Argentina, the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) that became the strongest rural guerrilla movement in South America during the 1970s. The PRT left the Fourth International in 1973. Both the PRT and the ERP were suppressed by the Argentine military regime during the Dirty War. ERP commander Roberto Santucho
was killed in July 1976. Owing to the ruthless repression PRT showed no
signs of activity after 1977. During the 1980s in Argentina, the
Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo,
Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist
party" in the world before it broke into a number of different fragments
in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST, PTS, Nuevo MAS, IS,
PRS, FOS, etc. In 1989 in an electoral front with the Communist Party
and Christian nationalists groups, called Izquierda Unida ("United Left"), obtained 3.49% of the vote, representing 580,944 voters. Today, the Workers' Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself; and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucumán, also in the north; and Santa Cruz, in the south.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez
declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing-in of his
cabinet, two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007. Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist and other considering him an honest revolutionary leader who has made major mistakes because he lacks a Marxist analysis.
In China various left opposition groups in the late 1920s sought to
engage Trotsky against the Comintern policy of support for the
Kuomintang.
In 1931, at Trotsky's urging, the various factions united in the
Communist League of China, adopting Trotsky’s document "The Political
Situation in China and the Task of the Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition".
The League and persecuted by the Nationalist government and by the
Chinese Communist Party.
In 1939, Ho Chi Minh,
then a Comintern agent in southern China, reported that "everyone
united to fight the Japanese except the Trotskyists. These traitors . . .
adopted the ‘resolution’: ‘In the war against the Japanese, our
position is clear: those who wanted the war and have illusions about the
Kuomintang government, those concretely have committed treason. The
union between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang is nothing but
conscious treason’. And other ignominies of this kind." The Trotskyists
were to be "crushed." In 1949, the Revolutionary Communist Party of China
(Chinese: 中國革命共產黨; RCP) fled to Hong Kong. Since 1974, the party has
been legally active as October Review, its official publication.
In French Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Tạ Thu Thâu was a significant current, particularly in Saigon, Cochinchina. In 1929, in the French Left Opposition La Vérité,
Ta Thu Thau had condemned the Comintern for leading Chinese Communists
(in 1927) to "the graveyard" through its support for the Kuomintang. The "'Sun Yat-sen-ist'
synthesis of democracy, nationalism and socialism" was "a kind of
nationalist mysticism." In Indochina it could only obscure "the concrete
class relationships, and the real, organic liaison between the
indigenous bourgeoisie and French imperialism," in the light of which
the call for independence is "mechanical and formalistic." "A revolution
based on the organisation of the proletarian and peasant masses is the
only one capable of liberating the colonies ... The question of
independence must be bound up with that of the proletarian socialist
revolution."
For a period in the 1930s Ta Thu Thau's Struggle group, centred around the newspaper La Lutte , was sufficiently strong to induce "Stalinists" (members of the then Indochinese Communist Party)
to collaborate with the Trotskyists in support of labour and peasant
struggles, and in the presentation of a common Workers Slate for Saigon
municipal, and Cochinchina Council, elections. Ta Thu Thau was captured
and executed by the Communist-front Viet Minh in September 1945. Many, if not most, of his fellow luttuers were subsequently killed caught between the Viet Minh and the French effort at colonial reconquest.
In Sri Lanka, a group of Trotskyists (known as the "T Group"), including South Asia's pioneer Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena, who had been active in Trotskyist politics in Europe, and his colleague N. M. Perera, were instrumental in the foundation of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP) in 1935. It expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a
Trotskyist-led party. In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of
the LSSP from a British prison, a unified Bolshevik–Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) was established in India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in the Quit India Movement
as well as the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in
India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed the Bombay Mutiny.
After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party
(BSP). In the general election of 1947, the LSSP became the main
opposition party, winning 10 seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It
joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in
1950 and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.
In 1964, the LSSP joined in a coalition government with Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in which three of its members, NM Perera, Cholmondely Goonewardena and Anil Moonesinghe
were brought into the new cabinet. This led to the expulsion of party
from the Fourth International. A section of the LSSP split to form the
LSSP (Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International after the LSSP
proper was expelled. The LSSP (Revolutionary) later split into factions
led by Bala Tampoe and Edmund Samarakkody. A further faction, the "Sakthi" Group, led by V. Karalasingham, rejoined the LSSP in 1966.
In 1968, a further faction of the LSSP (Revolutionary), led by
Keerthi Balasooriya split, to form the Revolutionary Socialist League -
more commonly known as the "Kamkaru Mawatha Group", after the name of their publication - and joined the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). In 1987, the group changed its name to Socialist Equality Party.
In 1974, a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the Militant group in the United Kingdom emerged. In 1977, this faction was expelled and formed the Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara. In India the BLPI fractured. In 1948, at the request of the Fourth International, the rump of the party dissolved into the Congress Socialist Party as an exercise in entryism.
Europe
LCR protesters marching in a workforce demonstration in favour of public services and against privatization
The French section of the Fourth International was the
Internationalist Communist Party (PCI). In 1952 the party split when the
Fourth International removed its Central Committee, and split again
when in 1953
the Fourth International itself divided. Further divisions occurred over
which independence faction to support in the Algerian War.
In 1967, the rump of the PCI renamed itself the "Internationalist Communist Organisation" (Organisation Communiste Internationaliste,
OCI). It grew rapidly during the May 1968 student demonstrations, but
was banned alongside other far left groups, such as the Gauche
prolétarienne (Proletarian Left). Members temporarily reconstituted the
group as the Trotskyist Organisation, but soon obtained a state order
permitting the reformation of the OCI. By 1970, the OCI was able to
organise a 10,000-strong youth rally. The group also gained a strong
base in trade unions. But further splits and disintegration followed.
In 2016 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, formerly of the ICO, launched the left-wing political platform La France Insoumise' (Unbowed
France) subsequently endorsed by several parties, including his own
Left Party and the French Communist Party. In the 2017 French
Presidential Election he received 19% in the first round.'In the same election,Philippe Poutouof theNew Anticapitalist Party, into which the Revolutionary Communist League (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire) dissolved itself in 2008, won 1.20% of the vote. The only openly Trotskyist candidate, Nathalie Arthaud of Workers' Struggle (Lutte Ouvrière) won 0.64% of the vote.
In Britain during the 1980s, the entryistMilitant group operated within the Labour Party with three Members of Parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council. Described by journalist Michael Crick as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986,
it played a prominent role in the 1989–1991 anti-poll tax movement
which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The most enduring of several Trotskyist parties in Britain has been the Socialist Workers Party, formerly the International Socialists (IS). Its founder Tony Cliff
rejected the orthodox Trotskyist view of the USSR as a "deformed
worker's state." Communist-party regimes were "state capitalist."
The SWP has founded several front organisations through which they have
sought to exert influence over the wider left, such as the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s and the Stop the War Coalition in 2001. It also formed an alliance with George Galloway and Respect
whose dissolution in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more
serious internal crisis, leading to a significant decline in the party's
membership, emerged in 2013. Allegations of rape and sexual assault
made against a leading member of the party, developed into a dispute over the practice of democratic centralism (defended by the party's international secretary Alex Callinicos).
In April 2019, a rival splinter from IS made headlines when three former members of the Revolutionary Communist Party campaigned in the European Parliamentary election as candidates for the Brexit Party, and a fourth, Munira Mirza, was appointed head of the Number 10 [Downing Street] policy unit by the new Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The RCP's rejection of the SWP's critical engagement with the Labour
Party and with trade unions had morphed into an embrace of right-wing
libertarian positions.
In Portugal's October 2015 parliamentary election, the Left Bloc won 550,945 votes, which translated into 10.19% of the expressed votes and the election of 19 (out of 230) deputados (members of parliament).
Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much
of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its former leader, Francisco Louçã.
The Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the two public factions into which the Fourth International split in 1953: the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and some sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International
(ICFI). It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. The USFI
retains sections and sympathizing organizations in over 50 countries,
including the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR) of France, as well as sections in Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan.
The Committee for a Workers' International
(CWI) was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries.
Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an
entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic
parties. The CWI has adopted a range of tactics, including working with
trade unions, but in some cases working within or supporting other
parties, endorsing Bernie Sanders for the 2016 U.S. Democratic Party nomination and encouraging him to run independently.
In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière, the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union
(UCI), with small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses
its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the
industrial proletariat.
The list of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky.
Criticism
Trotskyism has been criticised from various directions. In 1935, Marxist–Leninist
Moissaye J. Olgin argued that Trotskyism was "the enemy of the working
class" and "should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the
revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over." The African American Marxist–Leninist Harry Haywood,
who spent much time in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s,
stated that although he had been somewhat interested in Trotsky’s ideas
when he was young, he came to see it as "a disruptive force on the
fringes of the international revolutionary movement" which eventually
developed into "a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and
the Soviet state". He continued to put forward his following belief:
Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's
control of the Party apparatus—as his partisans and Trotskyite
historians claim. He had his day in court and finally lost because his
whole position flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was
doomed to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and failed to conform
to objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the
Soviet people.
Other figures associated with Marxism-Leninism criticized Trotskyist political theory, including Régis Debray. and Earl Browder.
Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski wrote: "Both Trotsky and Bukharin were emphatic in their assurances that forced labour was an organic part of the new society."
The way Trotskyists organise to promote their beliefs has been
criticised often by ex-members of their organisations. Dennis Tourish, a
former member of the CWI, asserts that these organisations typically
value doctrinal orthodoxy over critical reflection, have illusions in
the absolute correctness of their own party's analysis, a fear of
dissent, the demonising of dissenters and critical opinion, overworking
of members, a sectarian attitude to the rest of the left and the
concentration of power among a small group of leaders.
Some Left Communists such as Paul Mattick claim that the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start and therefore Trotskyism has no real differences from Stalinism either in practice or theory.
In the United States, Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism and anarchism. A similar critique on Trotsky's role on the events around the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman.
In her essay "Trotsky Protests Too Much", she says: "I admit, the
dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not,
however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the
revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes". Trotsky defended the actions of the Red Army in his essay "Hue and Cry over Kronstadt".
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