Trotskyists against Trotsky?

The Revolutionary Workers' League (RWL) was a small, leftist group in the United States that existed from 1935 to circa 1947. It was led by Hugo Oehler, and represented a split within the Trotskyist movement. The "Oehlerites", as they were derisively called by the Trotskyists, rejected Trotsky's so-called French turn, under which Trotskyists were supposed to join the Social Democratic parties in order to create a revolutionary opposition inside them. Thus, the U.S. Trotskyists entered the Socialist Party of Norman Thomas, while the RWL preferred to stay outside, attempting to build a completely independent organization. Due to the split with Oehler, the term "Oehlerite" became a somewhat in-house invective in Trotskyist circles. It means "muddled sectarian" or (sometimes) "pro-Stalinist", since Oehler developed a reputation for being softer on Soviet Stalinism than Trotsky.

Despite their sectarian rhetoric, the RWL were similar in many ways to the Trotskyists, for good or for worse. The best description of Oehlerite activities in the labour movement I've seen is the book "Unrepentant Radical" by Sidney Lens, an ex-member of Oehler's group. These weren't appreciably different from those of the Trotskyists. Thus, the RWL formed CIO-affiliated labour unions, lead or participated in strikes during the Great Depression, etc.

"The Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union" is an actual RWL pamphlet. The edition available on-line is only 15 pages, not 50 pages as stated here. While rejecting Stalin's regime and Stalinism, the RWL nevertheless still regards the Soviet Union as a "workers' state" due to its nationalized property forms, and therefore call for its defence against Nazi Germany. Simultaneously, they call for revolutionary defeatism in all capitalist nations, including those allied with the Soviet Union. This is identical to Trotsky's position before 1940, when the Fourth International adopted the crypto-defencist (or perhaps quasi-defencist) "Proletarian Military Policy".

The RWL takes a muddled position on the Soviet conquests of 1939-40, defending the Soviet occupation of the Baltic republics and the attack on Finland as "defence of the Soviet Union", while condemning the Nazi-Soviet partition of Poland. But surely these events were analogous. All of them were the results of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which the RWL condemns. The RWL takes an unexpected position on how to actually defend the Soviet Union in the event of a war, accusing *Trotsky* of being soft on Stalinism. The RWL believes that a revolution to overthrow Stalin's regime must be carried out during the war itself (!), calling for the immediate creation of soviets and workers' militias, while only giving a kind of tactical or conditional support to the actual Soviet Army. It's unclear whether this was a change of policy, or whether the old charge that Oehler was an egregious Stalinophile is erroneous.

I can't say I liked "The Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union". Despite the criticisms of Trotsky, it sounds like just another Trotskyist publication, a kind of "Trotskyism without Trotsky", if you like. Indeed, much of the analysis in RWL's pamphlet is really taken from Trotsky's writings. It's also marked by the typical apocalyptic perspective, where the world revolution is constantly around the corner.

Due to a number of splits in its ranks, the RWL eventually dwindled to a very small group incapable of meaningful activity. According to rumour, Oehler later became a conspiracy theorist, convinced that he knew who killed President John F Kennedy, but I haven't been able to locate his self-published books or pamphlets on the subject.

With that, I close this somewhat "esoteric" review of a publication perhaps only of interest to left-watchers.