Surprisingly sober

"Left in Form, Right in Essence" is a 32-page pamphlet by Carl Davidson, published by the U.S. Guardian newspaper in 1973. During this period, the Guardian was an independent Marxist-Leninist publication. It had a Maoist orientation.

Davidson's pamphlet is subtitled "A critique of contemporary Trotskyism", and is indeed a polemical attack on Trotskyism in general and the U.S. Socialist Workers' Party in particular. It also mentions the Workers' League, a split from the SWP.

For a Mao-Stalinist attack on Trotskyism, Guardian's pamphlet is surprisingly sober. The historical falsifications are kept to an absolute minimum, and the author even admits that the world Communist movement has made both "rightist" and "leftist" mistakes. It even implies that Trotskyists should be handled politically, rather than physically attacked or assassinated! Well, thank you. The old charge that Trotsky was an agent of fascism only pops up once, in the context of World War II, during which many Trotskyists did indeed call for "revolutionary defeatism" in the Western nations fighting Nazism. Still, as a good Stalinist, Davidson nevertheless has a few blind spots, Stalin's terror being the most obvious (what terror?). The Spanish Civil War is never mentioned either. (What Civil War?)

Guardian attacks Trotsky and the Trotskyists for sectarianism and abstentionism towards national liberation struggles, the Chinese and Vietnamese in particular. Davidson is particularly incensed at the Trotskyist refusal to support the Paris Peace Accords. He also spends some time discussing differences between Mao and Trotsky, and the SWP's later line on China. Davidson attempts to harmonize the "leftist" turns of both Stalin and Mao with their "rightist" turns, downplaying the sharp differences between the Third Period, the People's Front and the Hitler-Stalin pact (which he actually defends as "brilliant"). In Mao's case, the writer wants to square the circle between the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the earlier or later actions of the Chinese leadership. I almost get the impression that Davidson wants to construct a kind of "average Mao-Stalinism".

It's interesting to note that while Davidson sounds "to the right" of the SWP when discussing the Paris accords and the People's Front, his general line seems to be "to the left" of that party. Thus, he attacks the SWP for reformism, an exclusive orientation to the middle class, and uncritical alliances with the trade union apparatus. Davidson has even managed to find quotations from Trotsky himself, in which Trotsky sound very "democratic" and "parliamentarian" when discussing the United States! The SWP is said to support parliamentarianism, structural reforms and a policy not very different from that of the post-Stalin CPUSA. For his part, Davidson wants a more steel hardy, anti-revisionist Communist Party of the old school.

Apparently, Guardian made several failed attempts to create a Marxist-Leninist party in the United States. Later, the newspaper folded. According to Wikipedia, Davidson is now a leftist supporter of Obama. Meanwhile, the SWP has become a quasi-Stalinist sect! Quite a rocade, but I've seen far stranger ones...

I'm not sure who would bother with "Left in Form, Right in Essence" at the present time, when most people couldn't care less about Trotskyism or Maoism, but it could perhaps be of some interest to perennial leftist-watchers as an example of a surprisingly moderate Stalinist critique of contemporary Trotskyism.