This e-book contains the introduction to the more
voluminous work “The Fate of the Russian Revolution, Vol 2: The Two Trotskyisms
Confront Stalinism”. The introductory text is authored by Sean Matgamna, the
leader of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), a left-wing radical group in
Britain.
The politics of the AWL are Trotskyist only in a loose sense, and actually
sound like a peculiar hybrid between revolutionary socialism and “the decent
left” (the pro-war leftists who supported the U.S. interventions in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Libya). There is an early precedent for this kind of politics.
I'm referring of course to Max Shachtman, who left the official Trotskyist
movement in 1940 and gradually evolved into a pro-American/pro-Western Social
Democrat. “Orthodox” Trotskyists see Shachtman as an arch-renegade, while the
AWL have moved to posthumously rehabilitate him (or most of him – they reject
his latest and most right-wing phase, during which Shachtman supported the U.S.
war in Vietnam).
To this end, the AWL have published “The Fate of the Russian Revolution”, two
volumes of documents from the 1930's and 1940's, detailing the ideological
conflicts between the “Orthodox” Trotskyists and the Shachtmanites (dubbed
“Heterodox Trotskyists” by Matgamna). A third volume still awaits publication.
As already indicated, this e-book is Matgamna's introduction to the second
volume. While I found it relatively interesting, I readily admit that a general
reader probably wouldn't. The text is very “in-house”, and a critical reviewer
actually referred to AWL's entire project as “sectariana” (as in “arcana”).
Even interested left-watchers may find it hard to follow, unless they already
have a good deal of background knowledge (say, a working knowledge of the
Fourth International's history).
Matgamna's main point is that Trotsky, while anti-Stalinist, nevertheless held
a contradictory view of the Soviet Union as a “degenerate workers' state”. On
the one hand, a “political revolution” was needed to overthrow the Stalinist
bureaucracy, which Trotsky sometimes described as worse than the Western
bourgeoisie or even the (pre-war) Nazis. On the other hand, the nationalized
economy was nevertheless a gain for the working class, and therefore the Soviet
Union had to be defended (despite Stalinism) against capitalism. This led
Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement (Matgamna mostly discusses the Socialist
Workers Party in the United States) into confused responses to the Soviet
attacks on Poland, Finland and the Baltic states in 1939-40. Where these
attacks “counter-revolutionary”? Or should they be supported, as part of the
“defense of the Soviet Union”? Trotsky also expected Stalinism (and Western
“bourgeois democracy”) to collapse during World War II. Instead, the Soviet
Union (or “Russia”, as Matgamna insists on calling it) expanded and eventually
took control over half of Europe. Nor did democracy collapse in the Western
nations.
In Matgamna's opinion, the Orthodox Trotskyists of the American SWP vacillated
back and forth on Stalinism, sometimes de facto supporting it, for instance by
insisting on calling Stalin's Red Army “Trotsky's Red Army”, by supporting the
Soviet attacks on Finland and the Baltic republics, or by seeing a political
thaw in the Soviet Union during the war. A clever point made by the AWL leader
is that it was the SWP, rather than the Shachtmanite Workers Party, which
“adapted to petty bourgeois public opinion”, since most “progressives” in the
United States supported Stalin's Soviet Union. The heterodox group around
Shachtman, by contrast, opposed both the Western allies, the Soviet Union and
the Axis, hardly a popular position after Pearl Harbor! Matgamna also believes
that the classical work “In Defense of Marxism”, which contains Trotsky's
polemical articles against the Shachtmanites, was very selectively edited by
the SWP, leaving out Trotsky's most anti-Stalinist remarks. After the war, the
Fourth International continued its political zig zags on Stalinism, often
correctly opposing it, but just as often supporting some “Stalinist” regime or
faction, such as Tito's Yugoslavia, Mao's China or Castro's Cuba.
I happen to think that the author is right on the money in most of his remarks.
However, there is one problem with Matgamna's article. The AWL leader never
explicitly tells us what *his* position on World War II might be. While the
future Cold Warrior Shachtman was so leftist during the war that he denounced
all sides, Matgamna constantly implies that the United States and Britain (or
at least Roosevelt and the British Labour Party) were qualitatively better than
Stalin's Soviet Union (and, of course, the Nazis). Logically, Matgamna should
therefore support the Western allies. But if he does that, what about “Russia”?
From 1941 to 1945, Stalin's Soviet Union was an ally of the West against the
Nazis! Since Matgamna rejects abstract sloganeering in favor of a kind of
left-wing pragmatism, he should logically support the Anglo-American-Soviet
alliance against Hitlerism. But that, ironically, would place him in the same
camp as the SWP (at least on the Eastern Front), and on the opposite side from
Shachtman (the revolutionary Shachtman in his pre-Social Democratic
incarnation)!
I support the Allies in World War II. All of them. That means even the Soviet
Union from 1941 onwards. Yes, FDR and Labour were better than Uncle Joe, but as
long as the war lasted, it's difficult not to tactically side with “Trotsky's
Red Army” against the Third Reich. It will be interesting to see if and when
Sean Matgamna ever draws these conclusions from his criticism of Orthodox
Trotskyism…
