The SWP´s break with Trotskyism

"Their Trotsky and Ours" is a book published by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. It contains a sensational speech made by SWP leader Jack Barnes in 1982. The speech was originally published in the magazine New International, together with an article by Cuban Communist Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and two articles on the Irish Easter Rebellion by Lenin and Trotsky. This original edition (from 1983) is long out of print. The new edition apparently only includes Barnes' speech, plus a new introduction.

The U.S. Socialist Workers Party was originally one of the most important Trotskyist groups. It therefore created quite a stir when Barnes announced the SWP's break with Trotskyism as traditionally conceived. In "Their Trotsky and Ours", Barnes argues that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution (the main dividing line between Trotskyism and other Communist currents) is quite simply wrong, and had to be dispensed with.

Needless to say, few if any Trotskyists took heed. Indeed, they still regard Barnes as a nefarious renegade, or even as a Stalinist. One Trotskyist group was particularly upset about Barnes' purported rehabilitation of Gregory Zinoviev as an important Marxist theoretician. Quite the crime. In the end, the SWP broke its ties with the Fourth International, the organization to which most Trotskyists belonged at the time. Instead, the SWP supported the Cuban Communist Party, the Sandinistas, the FMLN and Maurice Bishop's movement in Grenada. They apparently hoped that these forces would bring about some kind of new, international revolutionary regroupment. For various reasons, this failed to materialize. Ironically, the SWP's break with Trotskyism therefore didn't get them anywhere. Today, the group is unimportant even on the "far left", and probably more sectarian and weird than most Trotskyists!

Despite this, "Their Trotsky and Ours" still have some intrinsic interest, at least for those interested in Marxist theory. Barnes explains the main differences between Lenin and Trotsky before 1917, when Trotsky wasn't yet a Bolshevik. He points out that it was Lenin's rather than Trotsky's predictions that came true in 1917. The Russian revolution wasn't a "permanent revolution" but rather followed a course similar to what Lenin had called "the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the workers and the peasantry". Trotsky probably accepted Lenin's position when he joined the Bolshevik Party. After the death of Lenin, however, Trotsky gradually reverted to his old position, "permanent revolution". Barnes' analysis of this is detailed and free of the usual Stalinist distortions. Thus, he points out that Stalin's and Bukharin's position wasn't Leninist, that the United Opposition did have such a position, and that Trotsky often fought ultralefts and sectarians during the 1930's. Nevertheless, Barnes believes, Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is a sectarian distortion of the true Communist position, which he identifies with Lenin. He points to the Cuban Communist Party and FMLN leader Shafik Handal as contemporary examples of revolutionaries who uphold Leninism.

Personally, I'm not a Marxist of any stripe. The October uprising of the Bolsheviks in 1917 certainly didn't lead to "workers' power". Still, in some technical sense, Lenin was nevertheless right against Trotsky, probably because Lenin was a smarter strategist. Lenin understood that the Bolsheviks must create an alliance between the industrial workers and the peasantry *as a whole* against the Czar, the nobility and the liberals. This strategy worked eminently well and permitted the Bolsheviks to take power. Trotsky's strategy implied that the peasantry should be split ASAP, perhaps already before the revolution, and an alliance created only with the poor peasants (a minority in Russia, where most were so-called middle peasants). Indeed, *no* socialist revolution has been carried out according to the Trotskyist schema.

Ironically, however, Lenin's strategy haven't been repeated either. All subsequent victorious socialist revolutions were carried out by middle class cadre based on the peasantry rather than the workers (China), bureaucrats backed by the Soviet Armed Forces (most of Eastern Europe), nationalist groups suddenly turning socialist (Cuba) or military cadre (Burma, Syria etc). This shows that there is nothing particularly "proletarian" about Communism. It's the coming to power of a new, bureaucratic or technocratic class. At best, Communism could be seen as a distorted form of the "bourgeois" revolution, with the revolutionaries playing the role of ersatz Jacobins (and, later, Thermidoreans or Bonapartists).

This, of course, is never touched upon by Jack Barnes, but that's another show.

Nevertheless, "Their Trotsky and Ours" might be of some interest to those who want to be awakened from their dogmatic Trotskyist slumber...