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Trotsky began his career as a disrupter of the revolutionary movement during a struggle with Lenin over the character of the proletarian vanguard party.
Today his followers have – in one form or another – continued this role of attacking Leninist parties wherever they actually exist by attempting to substitute petty bourgeois ideas on organization in their place.
In his struggle with the Mensheviks, Lenin put forward the position that the proletarian revolutionary party, in addition to being guided by the most advanced scientific theory, had to be an organization of professional revolutionaries, full-time and trained activists comprised of the best elements of the working class and the revolutionary intellectuals.
This “party of a new type” is seen as the proletariat’s “general staff” in the class struggle with the bourgeoisie. It is not a debating society but an instrument to prepare the masses for smashing the existing state power, establishing and leading the proletarian dictatorship and continuing to wage the class struggle throughout the entire transition period of socialist construction to the classless society of communism.
As a weapon of class struggle, the party requires an iron discipline, subordinating the individual to the collective, and the combination of secret and open work. Decisions and policies are developed and changed through democratic discussion, debate and the process of criticism and self-criticism. Once a majority in the party has agreed, however, any minority must set aside its opinions and act in carrying out the views of the entire party with a monolithic unity in the face of the class enemy.
The party represents the vanguard of the proletariat but not by self-proclamation. It must be thoroughly integrated with the masses, learn from them and win the role of leader, not only of the workers, but of the broad masses of various classes through its revolutionary practice in the actual course of struggle.
Trotsky stood in open and hostile opposition to this view of the party almost to the eve of the October revolution in 1917. He took a centrist position, demanding that the Bolsheviks unite in the same party with the Mensheviks. The only way this could happen, of course, would be for Lenin to dissolve the type of organization he had constructed. Hence the term “liquidationist,” which Lenin applied to Trotsky with a vengeance, defining it as opportunism gone to the extreme of dissolving the proletariat’s key weapon – its organization.
Trotsky agreed with the Menshevik position on organization. He wanted a party without a strict discipline, with contending groups and factions that could be “broad” enough to contain those who proclaimed themselves members by simply stating agreement with general principles. He attacked Lenin viciously:
“Not an accident but a deep ‘omen,’ ” Trotsky wrote in 1904, “is the fact that the leader of the reactionary wing of our party, Comrade Lenin, who is defending the tactical methods of caricature Jacobinism. was psychologically forced to give such a definition of Social- Democracy which represents nothing but a theoretical attempt at destroying the class character of our party.”
This is Trotsky’s classic anti-communist summary of Lenin’s policy: “The barracks regime cannot be the regime of our party, just as the factory cannot be its example. These methods bring about a situation that the party organization will replace the party, the central committee will replace the party organization, and finally the ‘dictator’ will replace the central committee ... The committees will do all the ‘directing’ while ‘the people remain silent.’ ”
Despite the fact that Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks just before October, he never gave up the essence of these views. Although he formally stated he was wrong on the party, his view that it was his particular strategic line of “permanent revolution” that won out over Lenin’s has the clear implication that the issue was not all that important. As Michael Miller points out in the recently published pamphlet, From Trotskyism to Social-Imperialism:
From Trotsky’s paint of view a miracle happened at this propitious moment in history. The revolution joined Trotsky. Trotsky didn’t really join the Bolsheviks. They joined him! 40,000 Bolshevik workers joined Trotsky since he had foreseen everything! ... The problem with Trotsky’s theory is that it requires no party at all ... Trotsky’s theory of October is that the Bolsheviks, having finally come around to the “correct idea,” were able to lead the revolution despite having an incorrect line for 14 years prior to the event.
After Lenin’s death Trotsky reasserted his old ideas on the party in a new form. He now paid lip service to democratic centralism, but demanded “freedom of criticism” within the party in the form of the freedom to organize factional groupings, each with its own leadership structures, platforms, programs and press. As the history of Trotsky’s “left opposition” also demonstrated, in practice he wanted factions with their own internal discipline that could be exercised against the party’s, even to the extent of carrying out actions among the masses expressly forbidden by the party and in opposition to its line.
In 1904 Trotsky had attacked Lenin for “destroying the class character of our party.” In a sense, this was true, although it was not what Trotsky had in mind. Lenin clearly aimed at defeating the petty bourgeois character of the party and it is precisely the petty bourgeois view of both the party and state as an ideal form of radical democratic parliament that Trotsky was never able to abandon.
Trotsky’s perspective comes out mast clearly in his 1935 articles, If America Should Go Communist. Despite the fact that the U.S. bourgeoisie is far more sophisticated in the practice of counter-revolution than their Russian counterparts, Trotsky thinks the revolution will be much easier here. Since the monopoly capitalists are in a minority and “everybody below this group is already economically prepared for communism,” Trotsky claims “there is no reason why these (non-monopoly) groups should oppose determined resistance.” As for the monopolists, “they will cease struggling as soon as they fail to find people to fight for them.”
The non-monopoly capitalists and petty bourgeoisie, inspired by the productivity of a planned economy after “a good long time to think things over,” could be “kept solvent until they were gradually and without compulsion sucked into the socialized business system. Without compulsion! The American soviets would not need to resort to the drastic measures which circumstances have often imposed on the Russians.”
Which drastic measures? While Trotsky admits the monopolists would find no place in U.S. soviets, he adds that “with us the soviets have been bureaucratized as a result of the political monopoly of a single party, which itself has become a bureaucracy.” In contrast, “The American soviets will be full-blooded and vigorous, without need or opportunity for such measures ... A wide struggle between interests, groups and ideas is not only conceivable – it is inevitable ... All of these will arouse controversy, vigorous electoral struggle, and passionate debate in the newspapers and at public meetings.”
In addition to asserting the need for a multiparty electoral system, another “drastic measure” to be thrown out is the proletarian control of the press. Instead, “it might be done on the basis of proportional representation for the votes in each soviet election. Thus the right of each group of citizens to use the power of the press will depend on their numerical strength.”
It is a basic principle of Marxism that different parties represent the interests of different classes and sections of classes. Commenting on this same article by Trotsky, M.J. Olgin wrote in his 1935 book, Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise:
If the Communist party represents the workers, then obviously the other parties must represent the rich farmers, the poor farmers, the middle bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, perhaps the intellectuals. How will these parties function? Naturally by struggle ... A soviet very much resembling a bourgeois parliament. Several parties represented in it with equal rights. Each party fighting the others. Several parties making a coalition to defeat the dangerous common rival. Why not a coalition of all the other parties against the party of the workers? This latter party, in Trotsky’s conception, should be split into a number of legalized groups and factions with their own separate platforms. The population will have its choice of parties, groups, programs. No special discipline is needed for any party; no monolithic unity for the communist party.
Olgin sums up: “How unity can be achieved under these conditions remains a secret of Trotsky’s. But then he does not worry much about unity because his slogan is, ‘Without compulsion!’ ”
In stark contrast stands Lenin’s view. “The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most stubborn, the most acute, the most merciless struggle of the pew class against the more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance has grown tenfold after it has been overthrown. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a stubborn struggle, bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, pedagogical and administrative, against the powers and traditions of the old society.”
The Trotskyist parties today continue to repudiate this line and follow the bankrupt views of their mentor. One consequence, of course, is that they themselves are riddled with factions and comprise a galaxy of competing organizations, all claiming the label, “Trotskyist.”
The direction of some, like the Socialist Workers party, has been in the direction of the modern revisionists, liquidating the leading role of the party into a “revolutionary nucleus” that aims to become a mass party playing simply a “catalytic” role in forming an anti-monopoly coalition.
Others, like the Workers League, emphasize Trotsky’s idealist rationalism and remain ensconsed firmly in “left” sectarianism. As their leader, Tim Wohlforth, put it, “At heart what the party is is its program. It is nothing else. The apparatus, the forces, the people, the equipment, the paper, are all expressions of what? A program ... and a program is an idea. So at its heart you could say that the party is an idea.”
In essence, however, they can all justly claim to be Trotskyists. They are united in their opposition to Marxism-Leninism.
Trotsky’s opposition, his sabotage of the proletarian movement and his wrecking activities in the period of the united front against fascism, eventually cost him his life.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that the danger of Trotskyism could be eliminated in such a manner. Trotskyism is an ideological trend within the petty bourgeoisie and as such a social basis for it exists and will continue to exist as long as there are middle classes.
The struggle against Trotskyism is also bound up with the struggle against modern revisionism, the existence and development of which has added new fuel and created new conditions for a revival of Trotskyism.
The decisive condition for a successful struggle against Trotskyism – and all forms of opportunism – is to be found in the growth of the Marxist-Leninist movement itself, in the development of the proletarian vanguard party and its winning of the masses in their millions to the banner of revolution.
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Last updated on 13.11.2002