Trotskyism is the theory of
Marxism as advocated by
Leon
Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an
orthodox Marxist and
Bolshevik-
Leninist,
arguing for the establishment of a
vanguard party. His politics differed sharply
from
Stalinism, most prominently in
opposing
socialism in one
country, which he claimed was a break with
proletarian internationalism,
and in what he claimed to be his unwavering support for a true
dictatorship of the
proletariat based on
democratic
principles.
Trotsky's followers maintain that, together with Lenin, Trotsky was
co-leader of the
Russian
Revolution and the international
Communist movement in 1917 and the following
years. Today, numerous groups around the world continue to describe
themselves as Trotskyist, although they have developed Trotsky's
ideas in different ways. A follower of Trotskyist ideas is usually
called a "Trotskyist" or,
pejoratively,
a "Trotskyite" or "Trot".
Definition
American communist organizer
James
P. Cannon in his 1942 book
History of American
Trotskyism wrote that "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a
new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism
as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in
the early days of the Communist International." However, Trotskyism
can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by four key
elements.
On the
political spectrum of
Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on
the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR, opposed
political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a
spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.
Origins of Trotskyism and the 1905 Russian Revolution
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 argues.
Trotsky was elected chairman of the
St. Petersburg Soviet during the
1905 Russian Revolution.
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."
– The elections to the second state Duma by
Pavel Milyukov
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".
Theory of Permanent Revolution
In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the
Trotskyist theory of
Permanent
Revolution. It may be considered one of the defining
characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxists had only shown
how a revolution in a European capitalist society could lead to a
socialist one. But this excluded countries such as Russia. Russia
in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a
capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small,
weak 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, but that the
working class would not stop there. It would seize the moment to go
on to win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class,
establishing a workers' state, and appeal to the working class in
the advanced capitalist countries to come to its aid, so that
socialism could develop in Russia and worldwide.
The capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution
Revolutions in Britain in the 17th Century and in France in 1789
abolished feudalism, establishing the basic requisites for the
development of capitalism. But, contrary to the majority (generally
Menshevik) viewpoint in Russia at that
time, Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated
in Russia.
In
Results and Prospects, written in 1906, in which
Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, he argues: "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 where the
"bourgeoisie", (the French term approximating to "capitalists"),
overthrew feudalism. The bourgeoisie then moved towards
establishing a regime of "democratic" parliamentary institutions.
But while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they
did not generally extend to a universal franchise, let alone to the
freedom for workers to organise unions or to go on strike, without
a considerable struggle by the working class.
But, Trotsky argues, countries like Russia had no "enlightened,
active" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role,
and the working class constituted a very small minority. In fact,
even by the time of the European revolutions of 1848, Trotsky
argued, "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."
Weakness of the capitalists
The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries
which are thought to have not yet completed their
bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the
creation of any revolutionary situation, in the first instance
because 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, in 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, in order to protect their ownership
of their property, in the form of the factories, banks, and so
forth, from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.
According to the theory of Permanent Revolution, therefore, in
economically backward countries the capitalist class are weak and
incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. They are linked
to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Trotsky further
argues that since a majority of branches of industry in Russia were
originated under the direct influence of government measures,
sometimes even with the help of Government subsidies, the
capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. In addition,
the capitalist class were subservient to European capital.
The working class steps in
Instead, Trotsky argued, 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 also, 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. –
Trotsky, Results and Prospects
The
Putilov
Factory
, for instance, numbered 12,000 workers in 1900,
and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917. The theory
of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole
cannot take on this task, because it is dispersed in small holdings
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."
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.
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. But the working class, in order to
improve their own conditions, 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
Yet, 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. But Trotskyists state that
this position was shared by all Marxists only until 1924 when
Stalin began to put forward the slogan of "
Socialism in one country".
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. Socialism until then had always seen capitalism as an
international enemy to be replaced internationally.
Origins of the term
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. – Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the
Communist League
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 organization
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.
– Stalin, Pravda, November 6,
1918
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 however (as did Trotsky
also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a
basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.
But 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 says 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 successfully
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.
– 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 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
The 'legend of Trotskyism'
In
The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that
what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by
Zinoviev and
Kamenev
in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms
Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.
Orlando Figes argues that "The urge to silence
Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a
crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power."
During 1922–24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became
increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin, 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", 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
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 by the party publishing
house, Proletari, in 1923. 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.
– Trotsky, Leon, Revolution Betrayed, p279, Pathfinder
(1972)
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, Nov.
6, 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.
– Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsification,
p87, Pathfinder (1971)
Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were
jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, 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. The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in
secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was eventually exiled to
Turkey. He 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.
Degenerated workers' state
Trotsky developed the theory that the Russian workers' state had
become a "
degenerated
workers' state." Capitalist rule had not been restored, and
nationalized industry and economic planning, instituted under
Lenin, were still in effect. However, Trotskyists claim that the
state was controlled by a bureaucratic caste with interests hostile
to those of the working class. Stalinism was a
counter-revolutionary force.
Trotsky defended the Soviet Union against attack from foreign
powers and against internal
counter-revolution, but called for a
political revolution within the
USSR to bring about his version of socialist democracy: "The
bureaucracy can be removed only by a revolutionary force". He
argued that if the working class did not take power away from the
"Stalinist" bureaucracy, the bureaucracy would restore capitalism
in order to enrich itself. In the view of many Trotskyists, this is
exactly what has happened since the beginning of
Glasnost and
Perestroika
in the USSR.
Some argue that the adoption of market socialism by the People's
Republic of China
has also led to capitalist
counter-revolution. Many of Trotsky's criticisms of
Stalinism were described in his book,
The Revolution Betrayed.
"Trotskyist" has been used by "Stalinists" to mean a traitor; in
the
Spanish Civil War, being
called a "Trot," "Trotskyist" or "Trotskyite" by the USSR-supported
elements implied that the person was some sort of fascist spy or
agent provocateur. For instance,
George Orwell, a prominent
Anti-
Stalinist writer, wrote about this
practice in his book
Homage to
Catalonia and in his essay
Spilling the Spanish
Beans. In his book
Animal
Farm, an allegory for the Russian Revolution, he
represented Trotsky with the character "
Snowball" and Stalin with the
character "
Napoleon."
Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four
has also been linked to Trotsky.
In 1937 Trotsky wrote:
To maintain itself, Stalinism is now forced to conduct
a direct civil war against Bolshevism, under the name of
"Trotskyism," not only in the USSR but also in Spain.
The old Bolshevik Party is dead, but Bolshevism is
raising its head everywhere.
To deduce Stalinism from Bolshevism or from Marxism is
the same as to deduce, in a larger sense, counterrevolution from
revolution.
– Trotsky, Leon, Stalinism and Bolshevism
1937, in Living Marxism, No.
18, April 1990.
Stalin put
out a general call for the assassination of Trotsky , and he was
finally killed with an ice axe in Mexico
in 1940, by
Ramon Mercader, a Spanish supporter
of Stalin, under direct orders from the
GPU.
Founding of the Fourth International
In 1938, Trotsky and the organisations that supported his outlook
established the
Fourth
International. He 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.
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 USSR 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 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 FI'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 an 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 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. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to
reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress which
established the
reunified
Fourth International, the French and British sections
maintained the ICFI. Other groups took different paths and
originated the present complex map of Trotskyist groupings.
Trotskyist movements
Latin America
Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social
upheavals, particularly in Latin America.
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.
Today the
Socialism and
Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its
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.
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. During the 1980s it obtained around 10% of the electorate,
representing 3.5 million 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 Tucuman, 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 Troskyist 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.
Asia
In Indochina during the 1930s,
Vietnamese Trotskyism led by
Ta Thu Thau was a significant current,
particularly in Saigon.
In Sri Lanka, the
Lanka Sama
Samaja Party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940,
becoming a Trotskyist-led party. It was led by
South Asia's pioneer Trotskyist,
Philip Gunawardena and his colleague
NM Perera.
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).
The Indian section of the BLPI later fused with the
Congress Socialist Party. 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 a section of the LSSP split to form the LSSP
(Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International after the LSSP
proper was expelled. The LSSP (R) later split into factions led by
Bala Tampoe and
Edmund Samarakkody. The LSSP joined the
coalition government of
Sirimavo
Bandaranaike, three of its members, NM Perera,
Cholmondely Goonewardena and
Anil Moonesinghe, becoming the
first Trotskyist
cabinet ministers
in history.
In 1974 a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the
Militant Tendency in the UK emerged. In
1977 this faction was expelled and formed the
Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by
Vasudeva Nanayakkara.
Europe
In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling
themselves Trotskyist.
In the UK in the 1980s, the entrist
Militant tendency won three members of
parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in
the Labour Party. Described as "Britain's fifth most important
political party" in 1986 it played a prominent role in the
1989–1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to
have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. Almost all of the large
far left parties in the UK are led by Trotskyists, including the
Socialist Workers
Party , the
Socialist Party ,
Respect – The
Unity Coalition and the
Scottish Socialist Party.
Trotskyism today
There is a wide range of Trotskyist organisations around the world.
These include but are not limited to:
The Fourth International
The
Fourth
International derives from the 1963 reunification of the two
public factions into which Fourth International split in 1953: the
International Secretariat of the
Fourth International (ISFI) and the
ICFI. It
is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth
International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is
widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist
organisation.
[9787],
[9788],
[9789]. Its best known section has been the
Ligue Communiste
Revolutionnaire of France.
In many countries its sections work within working-class parties,
and alliances, in which Trotskyists are a minority.
Committee for a Workers' International
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. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social
democratic parties have moved so far to the right that there is
little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has
adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent
parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class
parties.
International Socialist Tendency
The
International Socialist
Tendency, led by the Socialist Workers Party,
the largest Trotskyist group in Britain
(SWP)
.
Internationalist Communist Union
In France, the LCR is rivalled by
Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French
section of the
Internationalist Communist
Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other
countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or
intervention, within the industrial proletariat.
International Marxist Tendency
The founders of the
Committee for a Marxist
International (CMI) claim they were expelled from the CWI, when
the CWI abandoned
entryism. The CWI claims
they left and no expulsions were carried out. Since 2006, it has
been known as the
International Marxist
Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering
mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties.
Currently,
International
Marxist Tendency (IMT) is headed by
Alan
Woods and
Lal Khan.
Others
The
list of Trotskyist
internationals shows that there are a large number of other
multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon
Trotsky. Some Trotskyist organisations are only organised in one
country.
References
External links
and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers'
states;
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