FOUR DEVELOPMENTS IN BRITAIN IN DISTORTED WAYS COULD REPRESENT RE-EMERGENCE OF BRITISH TROTSKYISM!

FOUR DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN BRITAIN WHICH SHOW OBJECTIVE CONDITIONS FOR THE RE-EMERGENCE OF TROTSKYISM! BY ANTHONY BRAIN


This is a surprising article to appear in the Morning Star. It is one of four developments which have happened in the last week within Britain which shows there are good chances for the objective emergence of Trotskyism domestically and internationally. What’s positive about this John Green article is that it represents an admission after decades of Stalinist slander about Trotsky’s historic role in the Russian Revolution and world revolutionary politics.


There are two major differences I have with Green in that he offers an idealist analysis of why Trotsky lost to Stalin rather than the social forces and as American Trotskyist Tom Kerry argued during the early 1970s (except for Eastern Poland and Finland during 1939-40) until 1943 due to Stalinism there were major defeats of the world revolution which enabled the Bureaucracy to crush the Bolshevik-Leninists (which what Trotskyists called ourselves from 1923 to mid-1930s). The rising Bureaucratic caste approached Trotsky but refused because he did not want to be a prisoner of them. Trotsky explained in his 1930 preface to “My Life why the Soviet Bureaucracy was able to isolate Trotsky and certain human personality characteristics can only socially flourish in certain objective historical circumstances”:

“The very fact of its coming into the world is due to the pause in the author’s active political life. One of the unforeseen, though not accidental, stops in my life has proved to be Constantinople…

… I have dealt in especial detail with the second period of the Soviet revolution, the beginning of which coincided with Lenin’s illness and the opening of the campaign against “Trotskyism.” The struggle of the epigones for power, as I shall try to prove, was not merely a struggle of personalities; it represented a new Political chapter – the reaction against October, and the preparation of the Thermidor. From this the answer to the that I have so often been asked – “How did you lose power?” – follows naturally…


… I cannot deny that my life has not followed quite the ordinary course. The reasons for that are inherent in the conditions of the time, rather than in me. Of course certain personal traits were also necessary for the work, good or bad, that I performed. But under other historical conditions, these personal peculiarities might have remained completely dormant, as is true of so many propensities and passions on which the social environment makes no demands. On the other hand, other qualities today crowded out or suppressed might have come to the fore. Above the subjective there rises the objective, and in the final reckoning it is the objective that decides”.


Trotsky changed his analysis of what he meant by Thermidor in an article he wrote during 1935 entitled “Workers’ State; Thermidor; and Bonapartism” to the dangers of Capitalist restoration, he now defined it as a political counter-revolution of a Bureaucratic caste. Stalin, Trotsky argued was chosen by the Bureaucracy later because his characteristics of being narrow-minded Conservative and contempt for theory best reflected their nature most clearly. Green is fundamentally wrong in drawing a parallel between Trotsky’s and Stalin’s methods. Trotsky represented the defence of the working class and best interests of Soviet Union as a workers’ state and world revolution, whereas Stalin carried out interests of a privileged Bureaucratic caste.


On Thursday of last week there appeared an article by an ex-Stalinist by the name of Seamus Milne on China which in part represented an adaptation to Trotskyism. Milne argued that it was the state-owned banks and nationalized enterprises, which is driving massive economic growth of 8-10% within China annually. He also made criticisms of the Chinese Bureaucracy but argued is subordinate to the socio-economic gains. There was one major problem in his article of confusing the Chinese workers’ state with the mixed economy of Capitalism. It is only by overthrowing Capitalism can there be rapid economic growth today and lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. The Liberal Bourgeoisie and Social Democrats could use Milne’s arguments on the mixed economy to stop revolution by promoting reformist illusions.


The Guardian on Saturday of last week followed with Milne’s article with an editorial saying it was essentially stated owned banks and enterprises which explains their economic growth. They praised John Ross who came out of the British Trotskyist movement (he has broken very much from Trotskyism but contains small elements of it) who correctly argues that the main Chinese state—owned banks will not go bankrupt due to central planning and that with the Chinese workers’ state are mainly developing productive forces within third world countries to offset their decline in trade with the Imperialist countries. In the last few months I came to the same conclusion as Ross on why China is carrying out massive infrastructure projects within Third World countries.


Last Monday John McDonnell a left wing Social Democrat within the British Labour Party in an article within the Morning Star made a scientific analysis of why the material interests of Trade Union Bureaucrats within Britain attempt to sell out their members interests to Capital. McDonnell could have made this move because the Trade Union Bureaucrats are split over whether to compromise with the Tory-LibDem (nicknamed ComDems) over public sector pensions.


Len McCluskey who is general secretary of Britain’s largest union called Unite. There are rank-and-file groups in that union challenging him from the left. An example of this is that Electricians on construction sites are trying to organize strikes because three top building construction companies are trying to reduce their pay by 35%. Due to Bourgeois New Labour faction in a Social Democratic party going in behind a public sector pay freeze and refusing to reverse Com-Dem’s cuts has forced McCluskey to attack them in sharp terms last week’s publically.


Trotskyists should argue in the tradition of the Comintern’s 3rd World Congress in 1921 of calling for a united front with those Social Democrats and Trade Union Bureaucrats who want to fight against attacks on workers in both private and public sectors and want to fight New Labour. Within this framework of several united fronts’ Trotskyists keeps our political independence saying those Bureaucrats and Social Democrats cannot consistently defend workers and show through our Transitional Demands show in practice the need for a revolutionary leadership.


What is the Liberal Bourgeoisie through the Guardian up to in publishing this editorial on China? Their ideological heyday since 1989 is over. They are adapting to the middle class radicalization. By doing this and if the crisis of workers leadership continues to move them rightwards they can turn them against the working class.


These four developments are the opening stages of Trotskyism re-emerging through distorted ways. If consistent Trotskyists play our cards right the 1989-2008 period where ever politics alien to Trotskyism flourished and biggest crisis of cadre since Revolutionary Marxism emerged during 1848 could be dialectically turned into its opposite in the biggest upheavals in a million years of human history where Trotskyism can lead the struggle for world revolution to a successful conclusion.


There may be a calculation that Ross can be used by them again. From 2000 to 2008 Ross under Livingstone’s administration worked with the Capitalists in London closely. Who knows what pressures Ross will come under?

Thornett by adapting to overpopulation theories further breaks with Marxism!

THORNETT DEEPENS HIS BREAK WITH MARXISM! BY ANTHONY BRAIN


Due to the global Capitalist crisis every contradiction is being dramatically magnified. Thornett’s latest article on Socialist Resistance website where he begins to support overpopulation theories is another slide into Bourgeois politics. He has been on this trajectory since 1989 in supporting German re-unification; calling for Imperialism to try Milosevic; backing UN occupation of East Timor after 1999. During 2002 there was a qualitative degeneration when he called for a vote to Chirac. His adaptation to overpopulation theories represents a qualitative degeneration.


Thornett is totally a-historical and does not situate the rise of overpopulation theories in a context of a worse crisis unfolding today in the history of Capitalism. Ian Angus is totally correct in seeing how overpopulation theories can be used now/later to carry out the barbarism of Capitalism. Only by resolving the crisis of working class leadership will prevent the worse aspects of Capitalism coming to the surface. This can only be done by defeating the ruling class’s ideology among the masses.


It is dialectically ironic considering Thornett’s years of Healyite sectarianism to the Feminist movement that he distorts Feminism to falsely claim overpopulation is a ‘Feminist’ issue. The American SWP always challenged overpopulation theories for being anti-Feminist. I have not read much of their literature on this issue. Those more familiar with that material could bring this history to life, which has great contemporary relevance.