Third Campism: “If this be Trotskyism then I at least am no Trotskyist”

7/26/2019 Third Campism: If this be Trotskyism then I at least am no Trotskyist

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In Defence of

Trotskyism No 19

1 waged, 50p unwaged/low waged,

1.50

In

Mein ampf

Hitler laid

out the main tenets of his

racist worldview and out-

lined his political goals.

Two of his main objectives

were the racial upbreeding

of the German people and

the conquest of living

space [

Lebensraum

] in

Eastern Europe. Hitler ex-

plained that it was neces-

sary to fight the Jewish

Marxist world conspiracy

and to pursue a merciless

racial war against the Sovi-

et Union. Adolf Hitler, Mein

ampf, Volume 1 1925).

Mistakes on the question

of defence of the USSR

most frequently flow from

an incorrect understanding

of the methods of

defence Defence of the

USSR does not at all mean

rapprochement with the

Kremlin bureaucracy, the

acceptance of its politics,

or a conciliation with the

politics of her allies. In this

question, as in all others,

we remain completely on

the ground of the interna-

tional class struggle. Trot-

sky 25/9/1939).

From left to right, Ribbentrop, Stalin, and Molotov at the

signing of the Molotov

Ribbentrop Pact 23/8/1939).


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Introduction

Trotsky sums up the petty bourgeois op-position as a whole just after the split in

the SWP (US) in April 1940 in his article, Petty-Bourgeois Moralists and the Proletarian Party:

The petty-bourgeois minority of the SWP splitfrom the proletarian majority on the basis of astruggle against revolutionary Marxism. Burn-ham proclaimed dialectical materialism to beincompatible with his moth-eaten science.Shachtman proclaimed revolutionary Marxismto be of no moment fromthe standpoint of practicaltasks. Abern hastened tohook up his little booth withthe anti-Marxism bloc

Only the other day Shacht-man referred to himself inthe press as a Trotskyist. If

this be Trotskyism then I atleast am no Trotskyist. Withthe present ideas of Shacht-man, not to mention Burn-ham, I have nothing in com-mon As for theirorganisational methods andpolitical morality I havenothing but contempt. Hadthe conscious agents of theclass enemy operated through Shachtman, theycould not have advised him to do anythingdifferent from what he himself has perpetrated.He united with anti-Marxists to wage a struggleagainst Marxism. He helped fuse together apetty-bourgeois faction against the workers. Herefrained from utilising internal party democra-cy and from making an honest effort to con-vince the proletarian majority. He engineered asplit under the conditions of a world war. Tocrown it all, he threw over the split the veil of a

petty and dirty scandal, which seems especiallydesigned to provide our enemies with ammuni-tion. Such are these democrats, such are theirmorals! [1]

Workers Libertys Sean Matgamna wants topersuade us all, and his own young membersin particular, that they are the genuine one ofthe two Trotskys and the other, theorthodox, personified by the post-Trotskyleadership of JP Cannon of the US SWP, Ern-est Mandel, Michel Pablo, Gerry Healy, TedGrant, etc. is a bogus one. [2] Trotsky toomade serious errors in the last year of his life(1939-40 see Trotskys USSR in War in thispamphlet), Sean would have us believe, alt-

hough he was comingaround to the way ofthinking represented byMax Shachtman and, hadhe lived long enough, he

would have admitted hewas wrong. Shachtmanwas right and Sean

Matgamna is also rightnow it seems in defendingShachtman up to 1958,

when he dissolved theIndependent SocialistLeague and entered thesmall Socialist Party in anunprincipled adaption tothe Democrats.

After 1958 apparently the mantle fell to theleft Shachtmanites Hal Draper, CLR James,Raya Dunayevskaya, and others until eventual-ly Matgamna shouldered the Shachtman bur-den and raised the flag of genuine Trotskyismafter about 1983. The thesis that we intend toprove is: There is and was only one Leon

Trotsky politically and that heritage is defini-tively not represented be either Max Shacht-

man or Sean Matgamna who was and are rene-gades from Trotskyism. Shachtman could like-

wise said of them, if this be Shachtmanism I

Workers Liberty and the Third Camp:

Reply by Gerry Downing to Workers Liberty; The Two Trotskys,

How the Orthodox in the 1940s buried the spirit of one Trotsky

to save the ghost of another and to other Third Campists

Only the other day Shachtman

referred to himself in the press

as a Trotskyist. If this be

Trotskyism then I at least am

no Trotskyist. With the pre-

sent ideas of Shachtman, notto mention Burnham, I have

nothing in common As for

their organisational methods

and political morality I have

nothing but contempt.


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at least am no Shachtmanite if thats not justtoo ridiculous.

We will therefore make a critical defence ofthe SWP under Cannon and the Fourth In-ternational during WWII up to 1948-9, ac-

knowledging that severe problems wereemerging during WWII which Shachtmanpicked up on. But his attacks on the SWP

was always with a rightist agenda and there-fore ultimately from the right; the trajectoryidentified by Trotsky in his collection of es-says contained in In Defence of Marxism is cor-rect even not all documents are contained init and Shachtman took far longer to get there

than his comrade-in-arms James Burnham.He hared off to the right almost immediatelyto defend American imperialism in such fa-mous publications as The Managerial Revolu-tion, (today it is obviously farcical nonsense) arejection of internationalist class politics andanti-imperialism correctly identified by Trot-sky as the real basis to the 1939-40 SWP op-position. As it is of the AWL today.

The main, central, enemy of theglobal working class is the globalhegemon, US-dominated imperial-ism, its NATO and other allies

The main enemy is ALWAYS at home inimperialist countries, NEVER in semi-colonial Buenos Aires, Damascus, Kabul,

Tripoli, Teheran, Moscow or Beijing. In semi

-colonial and Stalinist countries that also holdtrue even if more emphasis must be put inopposing the local bourgeois or Stalinist lead-ership but in all conflicts with imperialismtrue revolutionaries understand the theory ofPermanent Revolution. They know their tem-porary allies are just that; they are conjecturalopponents of imperialism who will stab con-sistent opponents in the back to broker a

new compromise with imperialism at the firstopportunity. Remember James Connollysfamous quote in 1916 on this which he bril-

liantly foreshadowed Trotskys famous theo-

ry: In the event of victory, hold on to yourrifles, as those with whom we are fightingmay stop before our goal is reached. We areout for economic as well as political liberty.

In 1983 the Workers Socialist League(WSL), which had fused with MatgamnasInternational-Communist League in 1981,split from the old WSL group led by Alan

Thornett and Alan Clinton. The Matgamna

majority refused to call for the defeat of theBritish Expeditionary force to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands in the war of 1982. Theytook a dual defeatist position on the groundsthat Argentina was not a semi-colony of im-perialism but sub-imperialist; a regional im-perialist power. They called for self-determination for the Malvinas islanders. Hesplit his organisation in three on those dis-graceful principles. The WSL minority tooka centrist position, the group around the

WSL international, the Trotskyist Interna-tional Liaison Committee, (TILC) took the

Max Shachtman; 1904-1972. Trotsky: Had

the conscious agents of the class enemy

operated through Shachtman, they could

not have advised him to do anything differ-

ent from what he himself has perpetrated.


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correct line of calling for the defeat of theBritish Expeditionary force.

In 2007 Matgamna made a critical assess-ment of Max Shachtman because it wasnecessary to explain how he ended up in

such a bad place politically if he had beencorrect up to then. He supported the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in1961 and the US wars on Vietnam andCambodia (via opposition to withdrawingUS troops) up to hisdeath in 1972. Headmits:

Max Shachtmandied of a heart at-tack on 4 November1972, as the USAwas preparing tobomb Cambodiainto the Stone Age which it did,leaving the ultra-Stalinist KhmerRouge as murderingkings of the ruins.

The folly of relyingon US imperialismagainst Stalinismcould not have beenmore horribly prov-en. At his endShachtman stood asa negative exampleof the need for thepolitics he had defended for four decades

independent, socialist, working classpolitics. Yet his earlier writings continue tostand as an immensely valuable positiveembodiment of such politics [3]

Wasnt The folly of relying on US imperi-alism against Stalinism the essence of

Third Campism? Well not really for theleft Shachtman and his political heirs, weare neutral and refuse to take sides theyobject. We will see how hollow this claim islater. But you couldnt get away with thaton Vietnam because of the leftism of theage. His earlier writings on the USSR stand

for no such thing, as we shall see but fornow we will examine the following lines byMatgamna because this is essential Shacht-manism, even after the USSR is long gone:

In the post-war world, where the USSR

was the second great global power, recogni-tion that the USA and Western Europe advanced capitalism was the more progressiveof the contending camps, the one which gavericher possibilities, greater freedom, more

for socialists to buildon, was, I believe, anecessary part of therestoration of Marxistbalance to socialistpolitics. It was a pre-requisite for the recon-struction of Marxismafter the systematicdestruction of its con-cepts over a long peri-od. (out emphasis) [4]

In all wars even withsemi-colonial coun-tries it was ALWAYS

true for the AWL thatthe USA and West-ern Europe ad-

vanced capitalism was the more progres-sive of the contendingcamps. This is con-sistent with Shacht-

mans Workers Party whose main concernin splitting from Trotsky and the SWP wasto signal their loyalty to global imperialism;they could not even defend colonised Chi-na against imperialist Japan let alone theirlater refusal to give critical support to Mao

Tse Tung against Chiang Kai-shek in theChinese Revolution. As Barry Shepherdexplains: In addition to maintaining thehands-off, third-camp position regardingthe Nazi-Soviet war, the Workers Party also

took a third-camp position in the war bycolonised China against its Japanese occu-piers. [5]

In the post-war world, wherethe USSR was the second greatglobal power, recognition thatthe USA and Western Europe advanced capitalism wasthe more progressive of the contendingcamps, the one which gave richerpossibilities, greater freedom,more for socialists to build on,was, I believe, a necessary partof the restoration of Marxist

balance to socialist politics. Itwas a pre-requisite for the re-construction of Marxism afterthe systematic destruction of itsconcepts over a long peri-od. (out emphasis) - Matgamna


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In siding with their own ruling class in itswars the AWL reject Marxs and Leninstheory of imperialism outright. Marx andEngels, Trotsky reminds us, supported therevolutionary struggle of the Irish against

Great Britain, of the Poles against the Tsar,even though in these two nationalist warsthe leaders were, for the most part, mem-bers of the bourgeoisie and even at times ofthe feudal aristocracy ... at all events, Catho-lic reactionaries.Trotsky went on to point out that the

Bolsheviks supported Abd El-Krim in Mo-rocco in 1921 against the French (and Span-ish) when he temporarily liberated northernMorocco from Spanish colonial rule. He

was an emir, a Rif from the Berber commu-nity who fought for an independent Rifrepublic, whose name is not allowed to bementioned even today in Morocco.Respectable democrats and Social Demo-crats like Leon Blum spoke with hate of thestruggle of a savage tyrant against thedemocracy as the AWL do today about

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.But, says Trotsky, we, Marxists and Bol-

sheviks, considered the struggle of the Riffi-ans against imperialist domination as a pro-gressive war. And he refers to the recordof Lenin who wrote hundreds of pagesdemonstrating the primary necessity of dis-tinguishing between imperialist nations andthe colonial and semi colonial nations

which comprise the great majority of hu-manity. To speak of revolutionary defeat-ism in general, without distinguishing be-tween exploiter and exploited countries, isto make a miserable caricature of Bolshe-

vism and to put that caricature at the ser-vice of the imperialists. [6]

And of course Trotsky also opposedwrong ultra-left Third Campist phrase mon-gering on Abyssinia in 1936, on China in1937 and Brazil (hypothetically) in 1938.Here he spells out the correct positionagainst imperialism on China:

The only salvation of the workers and peas-ants of China is to struggle independently

against the two armies, against the Chinesearmy in the same manner as against the Japa-nese army (say his ultra-left Third Campistopponents - GD). And Trotsky explains toparticipate actively and consciously in thewar does not mean to serve Chiang Kai-shek but to serve the independence of acolonial country in spite of Chiang Kai-shek.And the words directed against the Kuomin-tang are the means of educating the masses

for the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek. Inparticipating in the military struggle underthe orders of Chiang Kai-shek, since unfor-tunately it is he who has the command in thewar for independenceis to prepare politi-cally the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek...that is the only revolutionary policy. [7]

If there is any historical justification forMatgamnas quote above it is the positiontaken by Marx before his Irish Turn in

1870 when he explained:England, the metropolis of capital, thepower which has up to now ruled the worldmarket, is at present the most importantcountry for the workers revolution, andmoreover the only country in which thematerial conditions for this revolution havereached a certain degree of maturity. It isconsequently the most important object ofthe International Working Mens Associa-

tion to hasten the social revolution in Eng-land. The sole means of hastening it is tomake Ireland independent. Hence it is the

Direct equation of Stalin and Hitler in

Socialist Appeal under Shachtmans edi-

torship; a portent of the split to come.


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task of the International everywhere to put theconflict between England and Ireland in theforeground, and everywhere to side openlywith Ireland. It is the special task of the Cen-tral Council in London to make the Englishworkers realise that for them the national

emancipation of Ireland is not a question ofabstract justice or humanitarian sentiment butthe first condition of their own social emanci-pation. [8]

Previous to that he and Engels had a positionthat the advanced capitalist countries showedbackward nations their own future. Else-

where, in reference of the question of form-ing a revolutionary party, Matgamna suggests

that one is not necessary and before 1848Marx though so too (an early Shachtmanite)and we who rejected this modern idiocy hadnot reached the level of understanding thatMarx had in 1848. It would be helpful ifMatgamna managed to reach the level of un-derstanding of Marxs thinking on Ireland,and the colonial world in general, after 1870.

We have polemicised extensively against thepro-imperialist left, which category the AWL

led from 1983, in the Socialist Fight journaland website. Of course their reactionary onIreland and their pro-Zionism is well knownand can be directly attributed to their Shacht-manism after 1983 in particular. Analysis ofthese issues requires another pamphlet.

The Nature and role orfunction of the Stalinist bureau-

cracy and workers statesBarry Sheppard succinctly sets out the Trot-skyist position on the USSR thus:

The SWP in the United States and the FourthInternational it its majority held to Trotskysanalysis. This view posited that the ruling bu-reaucracy was not a new ruling class in a newform of class society, as the bureaucratic col-lectivists maintained, nor a capitalist class rul-ing through a new form of state capitalism.The bureaucratic counter-revolution had notdestroyed all the gains of the Russian Revolu-tion, especially the property forms the revolu-

tion had established the nationalised andplanned economy and subsidiary aspects suchas the monopoly of foreign trade. Labourpower was no longer a commodity and thereserve army of the unemployed no longer

existed. The bureaucracy did not derive itsprivileges through ownership of the means ofproduction, but through its control over distri-bution. It was a parasite on the nationalisedand planned economy. The new propertyforms that were established by the revolutionwere working-class conquests that remained.

These gains had to be defended both internallyand from imperialist attack, so this currentdefended the USSR against the Nazi invasion.

It also defended China against Japan and allmovements by oppressed countries againstimperialist colonisation and oppression. [9]

This Socialist Appeal (SA) cartoon, on 1 Sep-tember 1939 (not 1 October as it says above),reproduced in AWL publications, clearly indi-cates that it is the aggressive Stalin and not the

terrified victim Hitler who is the threat towestern civilisation. Socialist Appeal wasunder the editorship of Shachtman then andappeared three times a week from 1938 to 1940.


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But the nature and role of Stalinism was apoint of political confusion which causedgreat problems. The nature of Stalinism isalways counter-revolutionary; the role ofStalinism in the USSR and internationally

can be either progressive/revolutionary innational economic and social terms or reac-tionary/counterrevolutionary in global termsdepending on cir-cumstances or theirperceived materialinterests. It is vital tounderstand this dis-tinction. As with thetrade union bureau-cracies Stalinist bu-reaucracies do notand did not have adual or contradicto-ry nature and neitherhas the workersstate, healthy, degen-erated or deformed.In so far as the state

continued to exist itwas bourgeois incharacter to a certaindegree and in a cer-tain sense and there-f o r e c o u n t e r -revolutionary butshould have been continually withering awayas the productive forces developed expo-

nentially as socialism moved on to com-munism where there would be no state andno classes and a superabundance of wealth.But war and isolation made withering awayimpossible and therefore made the rise ofthe bureaucracy inevitable if revolutions

were not successful in the advanced capital-ist countries.

But in the USSR the opposite happened,

the state became a monstrously repressiveorgan of privilege in the midst of universalwant. The state WAS the bureaucracy, its

policemen, because the by-now degeneratedCommunist Party appointed all the func-tionaries of that state and there was no realseparation of powers between government,legislature and judiciary/police. It was a real

dictatorship, a dictatorship of the proletariatwielded by the democratic Soviets in theUSSR when it was a healthy workers state

up to 1923-4 and wieldedby the Stalinist bureaucra-cies in degenerated anddeformed workers statessince, both defending na-tionalised property rela-tions allied with a monop-oly of foreign trade in aplanned economy. But thatStalinist bureaucracy andsta te was counter -revolutionary full stopafter 1923-4 and not with-ering away at all.But we cannot leave thematter there; like the trade

union bureaucracies theyrest on gains of the work-ing class so sometimesthey must defend and evenadvance those gains indefence of their own privi-leges. So they have a con-

tradictory role or function. They must main-tain their trade union or workers state be-

cause that is the source of their privileges sothey must do some progressive things likecall strikes and provide welfare and fight offand sometimes defeat feudalists, fascists,imperialists and their proxies. But they mustnot fight too consistently or mobilise the

working class globally to such an extent thatcapitalism and global imperialism itself isendangered by revolution. This would aban-

don the vital corollary to the fundamentaltheory of socialism in a single country;peaceful co-existence with imperialism.

So they (the bureaucracies) have

a contradictory role or function.

They must maintain their trade

union or workers state because

that is the source of their privi-

leges so they must do some pro-

gressive things like call strikes

and provide welfare and fight

off and sometimes defeat feu-

dalists, fascists, imperialists and

their proxies. But they must not

fight too consistently or mobi-lise the working class globally to

such an extent that capitalism

and global imperialism itself is

endangered by revolution.


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Again and again the Soviet bureaucracy op-posed wars in Korea (not vetoing the UNsupport for the US invasion), [10] in Vietnamand in Cuba only to change their tune whenthe facts on the ground opened up the possi-

bility of putting a bit of extra pressure onimperialism on the understanding that itwould never go as far as advocating worldrevolution that would threaten imperialism inits heartlands.

Because if the working class gets its head itwill not forget all the previous acts of treach-ery and unprincipled compromises they hadmade to enrich themselves. The workersthreaten them from below and the bossesfrom above; hence their contradictory role orfunction. But both the reformist trade unionbureaucrats and their allied bourgeois-

workers parties, Labour of Social Democrat-ic, and the Stalinist workers state functionar-ies are counterrevolutionary themselves; theycannot ever lead a real workers revolutionagainst global capitalism.

Of course we cannot take the trade union

bureaucracy analogy too far. Unlike the TUbureaucrats, who have a direct relationship ofloyalty to their own ruling class, it must beacknowledged that the Stalinist bureaucracy

was the sole ruling cast or stratum in Sovietsociety after 1928 as Trotsky explained in TheRevolution Betrayed:

The state support of the kulak (1923-28)contained a mortal danger for the socialist

future. But then, with the help of the pettybourgeoisie the bureaucracy succeeded inbinding the proletarian vanguard hand andfoot, and suppressing the Bolshevik Opposi-tion. This mistake from the point of view ofsocialism was a pure gain from the point ofview of the bureaucracy. When the kulak be-gan directly to threaten the bureaucracy itself,it turned its weapons against the kulak. Thepanic of aggression against the kulak, spread-ing also to the middle peasant, was no lesscostly to the economy than a foreign invasion(1928-32 GD). But the bureaucracy haddefended its positions. Having barely succeed-ed in exterminating its former ally, it began

with all its power to develop a new aristocracy.Thus undermining socialism? Of course but atthe same time strengthening the commandingcaste. The Soviet bureaucracy is like all rulingclasses in that it is ready to shut its eyes to thecrudest mistakes of its leaders in the sphere of

general politics, provided in return they showan unconditional fidelity in the defence of itsprivileges. The more alarmed becomes themood of the new lords of the situation, thehigher the value they set upon ruthlessnessagainst the least threat to their so justly earnedrights. It is from this point of view that thecaste of parvenus selects its leaders. Thereinlies the secret of Stalins success. [11]

And on occasions like great financial crises

and war revolution is they only thing that willavoid disaster and secure a future for youth,

which neither TU bureaucrats nor Stalinistswill ever lead. Dave Bruce wrote in 1887:

It cannot be over-stressed that, in spite ofwidespread claims to the contrary, Trotskynever referred to the dual nature of the work-ers state, the bureaucracy or anything else. Asa complex of institutions comprising millionsof people, it would be absurd to talk of a dualnature of a bureaucracy. On the contrary, inThe Transitional Programme, he had written:

. . . from genuine Bolshevism (Ignace Reiss)to complete fascism (F. Butenko). The revolu-tionary elements within the bureaucracy, onlya small minority, reflect, passively it is true, thesocialist interests of the proletariat. The fascist,counter-revolutionary elements, growing unin-terruptedly, express with even greater con-

sistency the interests of world imperialism . . .Between these two poles, there are intermedi-ate, diffused Menshevik-S.R.-liberal tendencieswhich gravitate toward bourgeois democracy.

What he did write about was the dual role, thedual function of the workers state and thebureaucracy, more or less interchangeably.And that was no accident: the bureaucracy hadusurped the state, leaving the working class norole or function within it. The Marxist concep-

tion of the workers state assigned the role ofdefence of the state and of control of its bu-reaucracy to the working class, organised inSoviets. The capacity of the class to perform


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this role had been portended by the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 and, to a de-gree, proved by the early experience of post-revolutionary Russia. However, under theappallingly difficult conditions of the first,

backward and isolated workers state, theworking class surrendered the role. By themid-1920s, if Trotsky is to be believed, theThermidorian reaction had occurred and thebureaucracy had become the state. [12]

It was Michel Pablo and nor a genuine Trot-skyist who falsely (almost) claimed that Sta-linism was objectively revolutionary nocentrist groupings claiming the heritage of

Trotskyism defends that line today. In factwhat he referred to was the objectively rev-olutionary significance of these facts in the

following passage in Where Are We Going?in 1952:

Those who think they can respond to theanxiety and the embarrassment of some peo-ple at the so-called victories of Stalinism byminimising the objectively revolutionary sig-nificance of these facts are obliged to takerefuge in a sectarianism, anti-Stalinist at allcosts, which scarcely conceals under its ag-gressive appearance its lack of confidence inthe fundamental revolutionary process of ourepoch. This process is the most certain pledgefor the inevitable final defeat of Stalinism, andit will be realised all the more rapidly, thequicker the overthrow of capitalism and ofimperialism progresses and gains a bigger and

bigger part of the world.

That passage showed a complete descentinto centrist objectivism by the leaders of theFourth International at that point. Howeverthe position of Shachtman and the WorkersParty was worse and to their right even then,as we shall show. But first we must show

why the global working class were obliged todefend the USSR even after the Hitler-Stalin

pact and during WWII up to its final collapsein August 1991.

A Critical Defence of the US SWPagainst Shachtman 1940-1948

The confusion between nature and role isthe ideological source of the mistakes onStalinism and the Red Army that Shacht-man picked up on during the course of the

war. The split of April 1940 severed theStalinophobic right wing of the SWP andnow very clear signs of Stalinophilia began toemerge without that balancing force and

Trotskys guidance.It was wrong to call the Red Army Trot-

skys Red Army. It was simply the armedforces of the Stalinist bureaucracy, all revolu-tionary leadership had been eliminated in theGreat Purges and now only yes men re-mained. Of course the motivation for thatline was to appeal to the US Stalinists whosestrength reached 100,000 before the wars

Dave Bruce: It cannot be over-stressed

that, in spite of widespread claims to thecontrary, Trotsky never referred to the

dual nature of the workers state, the bu-

reaucracy or anything else.


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end. Nevertheless the illusions are clearlywrong and Cannons objections to the de-fence of the revolutionary uprising in War-saw in August 1944 demonstrated that thoseillusions went to the top.

Nonetheless it is wrong to for Shachtmanassert that there was no motivation amongstthe Red Army and the working class to de-fend the gains of the October Revolution.Putting it down simply to fear of the Nazisand fear of Stalins NKVD mopping-upbattalions behind the lines to shoot retreat-ing soldiers is Stalinophobia.

But by continually denying any revolution-ary essence in the leadership of the Red Ar-my and in the bureaucracy itself, correctly,against Cannon, Shachtman dismisses thisrevolutionary impulse in the masses them-selves. Warsaw arose not just because thenationalist leadership wanted to prevent theRed Army taking over from Hitler but be-cause the masses wanted to liberate them-selves and establish socialism and theythought, wrongly, that the Red Army had

come to help them. This happened in practi-cally every major city that was under Nazioccupation. And the mass bombing of the

working class quarters of the German citieswas to prevent just these revolutionary upris-inbgs.The SWP were quite right against Shacht-

man to demand that Stalin appeal to theGerman working class to rise up and over-

throw Hitler because they were coming toliberate them. This was the correct Transi-tional demand to appeal to the ranks of theRed Army. But instead under the leadershipof and on the urgings of Stalin and the Red

Army leaders they raped and slaughteredtheir way into Berlin because they acceptedStalins lies that all Germans were Nazis.

Western imperialism agreed.The advance of the Red Army and the way

it fought inspired the working class of theplanet but the Stalinist bureaucracy betrayedthat in Warsaw, in Czechoslovakia, in North-

ern Italy, in Greece and in Vietnam. And six

communist parties entered European gov-ernments to save capitalism from revolutionat the end of the war, only to be ejectedfrom government when the revolutionary

wave had ebbed and Marshall Aid had re-placed it from April 1947.

But Shachtman only points to the counter-revolutionary acts of the bureaucracy andnot to the revolutionary struggles of the

masses, which the Trotskyists on the grounddid everything they could to advance andinstead he looks to imperialism itself, Stalinsallies in counter-revolution, to assist. Ofcourse the Stalinists overturned propertyrelations in a bureaucratic manner, havingfirst smashed the revolutionary upsurge ofthe masses and then relied on them as a con-trolled stage army to expropriate the capital-ists beginning from the end of 1948.

If Shachtman can point to the shortcom-ings of the SWP leaders in fighting Stalinismit was from the increasingly obvious perspec-

This cartoon in SA on 29-8-1939 works

at a certain level, Stalin was certainly

as brutal as Hitler. But alarm bells

should have rung at the direct equa-

tions that were constantly made.


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tive of siding with democratic imperialismagainst Stalinism.

Bob Pitt recounts:

If Matgamnas tradition-building project re-quires him to tinker with the real history of the

WP/ISL, it also involves a parallel distortionof the politics of the Shachmanites orthodoxTrotskyist opponents in the United States,represented by the SWP and its leader James P.Cannon.

The SWPs applause for the Soviet armedforces during the war as Trotskys Red Armyis made much of in this collection, whichbacks up the Shachtmanites anti-SWP polem-ics with illustrations of the offending articles

and cartoons from the SWPs paper SocialistAppeal. Shachtman himself insisted that thisposition on the Red Army was a necessaryconsequence of the pro-Stalinist politics im-plicit in the SWPs Soviet defencism. But itseems to me that the Cannonites line stemmednot from an intrinsic softness towards Stalin-ism (which they were not inclined to) but ra-ther from an effort to relate to the conscious-ness of US workers (which Cannon in particu-lar certainly was inclined toit was one of his

political strengths).During the war the anti-fascist sentiments ofthe working class took the form of enthusiasticsupport for the Soviet Union in its resistanceto the Nazi invasion. The Communist Partywon widespread popularity for its Stalinistpolitics as a result, and I think that the SWPleadership with its Trotskys Red Army linesought to direct this pro-Soviet response to-wards the October Revolution and away from

its Stalinist degeneration. They may have beenwrong in this, but it hardly stands as conclusiveevidence of a consistent Stalinophile deviation.Post-war, the SWP along with other sectionsof the world Trotskyist movement had to grap-ple with the question of Soviet Stalinismsexpansion into Eastern Europe, along withsuccessful seizures of power by indigenousStalinist forces in Yugoslavia and China. Thesedevelopments ran entirely counter to Trotskys

predictions which had anticipated that theinevitable outcome of the war would be Stalin-isms overthrow either by workers revolutionor by capitalist restoration so it is not sur-

prising that Trotskyists had difficulty in com-prehending the new situation.

Comrade Pitt wrote well in 1990 but I thinkhe was wrong to excuse the SWP leaders tothat extent. We understand the pressures; the

CPUSA had 100,000 members at its highpoint during the war, Trotsky stressed theneed to orientate towards these workers, theShachtmanites really were petty-bourgeoisand not workers themselves and could notnor did not want to orientate towards workersat all. Hence Trotskys insistence onproletarianising the party.

Why the economic base of the

USSR had to be defendedThe economy of the USSR was not simplybased on nationalised property but on na-tionalised property relationstogether with cen-tral planning (however distorted) and the mo-nopoly of foreign trade. The AWL scribescontinually refer to nationalised propertyonly in order to infer that the Trotskyists holdthat the degree of nationalisation determines a

workers state. That became the reformistcriterion for Ted Grant which led him to ac-cept a whole list of third world countries as

workers states beginning with Burma andEgypt when they were simply bourgeois na-tionalist regimes.

But the workers state is not simply the baseof the state or the superstructure but the dia-lectical relationship between the two. Of

course you cannot plan an economy withoutstate ownership of the main means of pro-duction, the commanding heights. Of courseyou must have a revolutionary party or histor-ically a Stalinist party determined to maintaintheir position and privileges to achieve this.

The LTTs The Marxist Theory of the State madejust this point;

according to Trotskys succinct definition,the class character of the state is determinedby its relation to the forms of property in themeans of production and by the character ofthe forms of property and productive relations


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which the given state guards and defends.This implies a dialectical rather than a mechan-ical relationship between base and superstruc-ture: it is not merely a question of the existingforms of property but of those which the state

defends and strives to develop. [13]

Remember Germany under Bismarck andRussia under Stolypin had very big state sec-tors with the state ruling industry on behalfof the capitalists. This is the mistake TedGrant made with third world countries. Notthe degree of nationalisation as Trotsky says:The class nature of the state is, consequent-ly, determined not only by its political formsbut by its social content; i.e., by the character

of the forms of property and productive rela-tions which the givenstate guards and de-fends.And what is the

dictatorship of theproletariat (anotherphrase for a workersstate):

The concept of thedictatorship of theproletariat is not pri-marily an economic butpredominantly a politi-cal category ... Allforms, organs, andinsThtitutions of theclass rule of the prole-tariat are now de-

stroyed, which is to saythat the class rule ofthe proletariat is nowdestroyed. Afterhearing about thedifferent forms (say Burnham andShachtman GD) of the proletarian re-gime, this second contention, taken byitself, appears unexpected. Of course, thedictatorship of the proletariat is not onlypredominantly but wholly and fully apolitical category. However, this verypolitics is only concentrated economics.

The domination of the Social Democracyin the state and in the soviets (Germany191819) had nothing in common withthe dictatorship of the proletariat inas-much as it left bourgeois property inviola-

ble (as the USSR left capitalist propertyrelations intact in Austria and Afghanistanwhen they occupied them, for exampleGD). But the regime which guards theexpropriated and nationalized propertyfrom the imperialists is, independent ofpolitical forms, the dictatorship of theproletariat. [14]

Underlining this approach, Lenin argued

in early 1918 that:No one, I think, instudying the questionof the economicsystem of Russia, hasdenied its transitionalcharacter. Nor, Ithink, has any Com-munist denied thatthe term Socialist

Soviet Republic im-plies the determina-tion of Soviet powerto achieve the transi-tion to socialism, andnot that the neweconomic system isrecognised as a so-cialist order. [15]

M a t g a m n a s

totalitarian econo-mism is simply non-sense, a non-Marxistcategory. And as an

aside where and when did Trotsky and Can-non say the obvious falsehood perpetrated by

Workers Liberty?

When Trotsky (and Cannon after him) saidthe bureaucratic autocracy seized a propor-

tionately greater share of the social product inRussia than the rich in the advanced capitalistcountries. [16]

And of course both currents(Stalinists and Third Campists) abso-lutely oppose the perspective ofworld revolution, the Stalinists from anationalist peaceful co-existence withimperialism perspective of the self-

satisfied bureaucrat, the result of thepressure of imperialism on the firstisolated workers state. The ThirdCamp came from the perspective ofdirect capitulation to the civilisingmission of their own ruling class, theold white mans burden so obviousin the quote in defence of his own

ruling class from Matgamna above;they are the more progressive of the con-tending camps let there be no doubt.


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Third Campism is the oppo-site side of the same coin asStalinisms socialism in asingle country

The AWL conception of the ThirdCamp is false and ahistorical; it con-flates and confuses two distinct con-cepts of Marxism. Of course in orderto make socialist revolutionary the

working class must establish its ownpolitical class independence and it

was in this sense that Trotsky defend-ed the term before the 1939-40 con-flict here:

The attempt of the bourgeoisie during itsinternecine conflict to oblige humanity todivide up into only two camps is motivatedby a desire to prohibit the proletariat fromhaving its own independent ideas. This meth-od is as old as bourgeois society, or moreexactly, as class society in general. No one isobligated to become a Marxist; no one isobligated to swear by Lenins name. But thewhole of the politics of these two titans of

revolutionary thought was directed towardsthis, that the fetishism of two camps wouldgive way to a third, independent, sovereigncamp of the proletariat, that camp uponwhich, in point of fact, the future of humani-ty depends. [17]

But in the 1939-40 conflict in the US SWPShachtman and Burnham attributed a newand opposite meaning to the term ThirdCamp which Trotsky absolutely opposed.

This is that in a conflict between imperialismand the USSR the working class took noside, they were dual-defeatist and that wasthe Third Camp. This cowardly position ofback-handed support for your own imperial-ist ruling class in war was summarised laterby Shachtman in the slogan; Neither Wash-ington nor Moscow but the international

working class. This could not possible es-

tablish the political independence of theworking class but signified their subordina-

tion to their own ruling class. Trotsky clari-fied:

The very first programmatic articles of thepurloined organ (The New International - GD)already reveal completely the light-mindedness and hollowness of this new anti-

Marxist grouping which appears under thelabel of the Third Camp. What is this ani-mal? There is the camp of capitalism; there isthe camp of the proletariat. But is there per-haps a Third Camp a petty-bourgeoissanctuary? In the nature of things, it is noth-ing else. But, as always, the petty bourgeoiscamouflages his camp with the paper flow-ers of rhetoric. Let us lend our ears! Here isone camp: France and England. Theres an-other camp: Hitler and Stalin. And a ThirdCamp: Burnham, with Shachtman. TheFourth International turns out for them to bein Hitlers camp (Stalin made this discoverylong ago). And so, a new great slogan: Mud-dlers and pacifists of the world, all ye suffer-ing from the pin-pricks of fate, rally to thethird camp! ... The schoolboy schema ofthe three camps leaves out a trifling detail: thecolonial world, the greater portion of man-kind! [18]

The final sentence shows the greatest politi-cal weakness of the Third Campers it al-

Nothing to complain about in this SA cartoon on6-10-1939. It ridicules the CPUSAs mind-boggling U-turns before and during the war.


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lows most [19] who gather beneath its bannerto side with their own imperialist ruling classagainst the semi-colonial world as we havepointed out above in relation to the AWL.Third Campism is, in fact, the opposite side

of the same coin as the Stalinist socialism-in-a-single-country. Stalin, with the theoretical as-sistance of Bukharin, abandoned the Leninist-Bolshevik perspective of world revolution in1924. They opted for the defence of their ownbureaucratic privileges then and Shachtmanabandoned it even that in 1939 in favour ofdefence of the petty bourgeoisies privileges inuniversity academic circles in the face of thefurious reaction caused by the signing of theStalin-Hitler pact in August 1939 and Stalinsconsequent invasion of eastern Poland, theBaltic States and Finland.And of course both currents absolutely op-

pose the perspective of world revolution, theStalinists from a nationalist peaceful co-existence with imperialism perspective of theself-satisfied bureaucrat, the result of the pres-sure of imperialism on the first isolated work-

ers state. The Third Camp came from theperspective of direct capitulation to thecivilising mission of their own ruling class, theold white mans burden so obvious in thequote in defence of his own ruling class fromMatgamna above; they are the more progres-sive of the contending camps let there be nodoubt.Trotsky condemned Stalins invasions of

eastern Poland etc. as agreed by Hitler in thesecret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Thisdid great damage to the class consciousness ofthe international proletariat but he acknowl-edged they were acts of self-defence by Stalin,albeit in his own brutal way and with his ownbureaucratic methods. From the standpointof the strategy of the world proletariat Trot-sky insisted was how we had to judge theseevents. Shachtman said they were simply anexample of Soviet imperialist expansionism.And the main political characteristic of

Shachtmanism comes out in the question of

how he saw his Third Camp and how he de-fended his view. Shachtman was a gross

political coward; that was the reason he aban-

doned the theory of the degenerate workersstate and adopting the theory of bureaucraticcollectivism. This was, he said, a new form ofexploiting society that was not capitalist(contrary to the later state capitalism of TonyCliff). But it initially involved defence of theUSSR because it contained some elements ofthe remnants of the gains of the Russian Revo-lution in its property relations. So it seems that

they could have remained in the SWP in 1940and not split at all as the differences weremerely terminological. But there was more to itas Trotsky understood. Not defending theUSSR as a degenerated workers state after theHitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 changedafter June 1941 when Hitler invaded the USSRand now it could not be defended even whenattacked by the worlds most ferocious imperi-alist power, Nazi Germany.

It is noted that when Shachtman abandonedhis line that the USSR was a degenerated afterthe attack on Finland he began calling it

This SA cartoon on 13-10-39 is just wrongpolitically. Although they are different formsof the same capitalist beast bourgeois de-mocracy is NOT the mirror image of Fas-cism. That is a Third Period ultra-left error.


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imperialist, thereby abandoning the Leninistdefinition of imperialism, the domination ofFinance capital allied to transnational corpo-rations, which is still the position of ThirdCampists today. Lenin anticipated them in his

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism:Colonial policy and imperialism existed be-fore this latest stage of capitalism, and evenbefore capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery,pursued colonial policy and achieved imperial-ism. But general arguments about imperial-ism, which ignore, or put into the backgroundthe fundamental difference of social-economicsystems, inevitably degenerate into absolutelyempty banalities, or into grandiloquent com-

parisons like Greater Rome and Greater Brit-ain. Even the colonial policy of capitalism inits previous stages is essentially different fromthe colonial policy of finance capital.

Bob Pitt recounts the sorry tale ofpolitical cringe and cower:

This position that the Soviet Union was anew system of exploitation, a bureaucraticcollectivist society, but that it should neverthe-

less be defended against imperialism was,initially, Max Shachtmans own view. Includedin Matgamnas collection is the article Is Rus-sia a Workers State?, published by Shachtmanin the New International in December 1940,not long after the split with James P. Cannonand the majority of the US Socialist WorkersParty (SWP) had led to the formation of theWorkers Party. In this article Shachtman con-cluded that, even though Russia was no longera workers state but a new form of class socie-ty, if the Soviet Union were to come underattack from the capitalist world it would benecessary for revolutionaries to rally to Rus-sias defence.His argument is worth quoting: Under whatconditions is it conceivable to defend the Sovi-et Union ruled by the Stalinist bureaucracy? Itis possible to give only a generalized answer.For example, should the character of the pre-sent war change from that of a struggle be-

tween the capitalist imperialist camps into astruggle of the imperialists to crush the SovietUnion, the interests of the world revolution

would demand the defence of the Soviet Un-ion by the international proletariat. The aim ofimperialism in that case, whether it were repre-sented in the war by one or many powers,would be to solve the crisis of world capitalism(and thus prolong the agony of the proletariat)

at the cost of reducing the Soviet Union to oneor more colonial possessions or spheres ofinterest.... There is no reason to believe thatvictorious imperialism in the Soviet Unionwould leave its nationalized property intact quite the contrary.... imperialism would seek todestroy all the progress made in the SovietUnion by reducing it to a somewhat moreadvanced India a village continent.... Such atransformation of the Soviet Union as trium-

phant imperialism would undertake, wouldhave a vast and durable reactionary effect up-on world social development, give capitalismand reaction a new lease on life, retard enor-mously the revolutionary movement, and post-pone for we dont know how long the intro-duction of the world socialist society. Fromthis standpoint and under these conditions, thedefence of the Soviet Union, even under Sta-linism, is both possible and necessary.Only six months later, in June 1941, the SovietUnion did indeed come under attack, and notjust from any imperialist power but from themost reactionary imperialist power of all Nazi Germany. Here was a situation where, byShachtmans own analysis, revolutionarieswere obliged to defend the Soviet Union. Onewould therefore have expected him to call onthe WP to adopt a Soviet defencist position.But Shachtman did nothing of the sort. Quitethe contrary, in facthe insisted that defence

of the Soviet Union against Nazi Germanycould not be justified. His argument was thatthe fundamental character of the war had notchanged, that it was still an inter-imperialistconflict, and that the German attack on theSoviet Union was a subordinate part of thatwider conflict, with Stalin in a bloc with onegroup of imperialist powers against another.In a struggle between Stalinist Russia andcapitalist imperialism, on the one side, and

another section of capitalist imperialism on theother, Shachtman asserted, the revolutionaryproletariat takes its position against bothcamps.7


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This argument was, I think,entirely fraudulent, becausethe consequences of imperial-ist conquest and capitalistrestoration, so eloquentlydescribed by Shachtman in the

passage from Is Russia aWorkers State? quotedabove, would surely followirrespective of whether theSoviet Union was in a militaryalliance with another sectionof imperialism.Another article, written twoyears later, underlined theincoherence of Shachtmans

position. The Russian peoplehave shown no signs of want-ing the restoration of capital-ism with its bankers and in-dustrial monopolists, he wrote.That is all to the good, forotherwise they would be thepoor dupes of world reaction.The road to freedom for Russiadoes not lead backward butforward. He explained: Theydo not want their country over-run and ruled by a foreign oppressor. And thisis no ordinary foreigner, but a fascist. For longyears, from Lenins day through Stalins, theRussian people have learned to feel a horrorand hatred of fascism. The record of fascismsconquests in Europe has only deepened thisfeeling. Their feelings in this matter are morethan justified, and correspond with the inter-ests and ideals of the international proletariat.

From which one would presumably concludethat revolutionaries should be in a united frontwith the Russian workers in supporting armedresistance to the Nazi invasion. But Shacht-man evaded this conclusion and took refuge inabstentionist propagandism: The task of therevolutionary Marxists can be fulfilled only bytaking these progressive sentiments into fullaccount, while continuing their patient en-lightenment of the masses as to the imperialist

and reactionary character of the war itself, theharmfulness of political support of the warand the war regimes, the need of breaking withimperialism and the ruling classes, the urgency

of an independent, inter-nationalist road for theproletariat of all coun-tries. Shachtman did latercome round to this point

of view himself, and in1948 the ISL adopted asits official position aversion of bureaucraticcollectivism based onCarters analysis. Whenhe reprinted Is Russia aWorkers State? in the1962 collection of hiswritings The Bureaucrat-

ic Revolution, Shacht-man edited out the partabout defending theSoviet Union. But, in his

introduction to that collec-t ion, he fa i led toacknowledge Carter as theoriginator of the theory ofreactionary-bureaucratic-collectivism.Shachtmans aim, ErnieHaberkern has argued, was

to construct his own bogus theory of continui-ty by presenting himself as the sole author ofthe bureaucratic collectivist position: For thispurpose it was necessary to conceal the factthat there had been two theories of bureau-cratic collectivism. One, espoused by Shacht-man, held that collectivist property forms wereper se progressive, a conquest of the RussianRevolution that had to be defended no matter

what class was the immediate beneficiary (orvictim) of the social relations based on theseforms. The other, originally proposed byCarter, insisted ... against Shachtman that thebureaucracys control of collectivist propertycondemned the working class to a new formof exploitation and represented a step back-wards for modern civilisation. [20]

So for Shachtman in all these conflicts after1939 the main consideration and only con-

sistent platform he stood on to his dying daywas never to oppose the fundamental inter-ests of your own ruling class in the serious

Max Shachtman played a leading

role as a Trotskyist up to 1939 but

lacked the political courage to

continue the struggle after the

Hitler-Stalin pact; he ran away

from the perspective of the world

revolution.


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matter of war. And that is why the AWL ad-mire him so much because it is their positiontoo from that 1982 war on the Malvinas tothe current wars in Syria and the Ukraine.

The AWLs Paul Hampton, in What NextNo.

12 replied to Bob Pitt in No. 11 with the fol-lowing points:

Whose analysis provided the real break-through on Stalinism? As the introduction tothe book explains, Trotsky himself was theinnovator in 1939, in his article on the Stalin-Hitler Pact, The USSR in War. Here heacknowledged the theoretical possibility thatnationalised property might also be the basis ofa new exploiting class, thus effectively cutting

the roots of the theory that Russian Stalinismcould only be a workers state. Using the maskof Rizzi, Trotsky acknowledged that shouldStalinism outlast the war, then he would beforced to re-evaluate his designation of Russiaas a degenerated workers state which shouldbe defended against imperialist attack. In factTrotskys whole approach to Stalinism was tocontinually modify his theory in the light of itsdevelopment: for example on whether reformor revolution was necessary, or on the Thermi-dor and Bonapartism analogy. In 1928, in theletter to Borodai, he argued that the possibilityof reform of the Bolshevik Party was the basison which he still characterised Russia as aworkers state by 1931, when this perspectivewas becoming plainly impossible, he focusedmore narrowly on nationalised property. Hislater positions in 1939-40 went even further(although he drew back somewhat in the de-bate within the SWP): on the slogan for an

independent Soviet Ukraine, on the possibilityof bureaucratic collectivism, and, in the lastdays of his life, on Communist Parties outsidethe USSR. What is clear from Trotskys bodyof work in the thirties as a whole is that hisconcrete analyses of Stalinism were chafingand ultimately undermining the characterisa-tion of Russia as a degenerated workers state.Shachtman and his followers only drew out thelogic of this analysis firstly for the political

conclusions (defencism) and later for theformula (workers state) that Trotsky himselfhad laid bare. [21]

In a note Paul says: Although Trotsky isreferring to the prospect of world war, thequote (by Trotsky - GD) is still sufficientlybroad to include Stalinism as the secondcamp apart from capitalism which is what the

WP/ISL meant by it.Our quote from Trotsky in Petty BourgeoisMoralists above just about scuppers that argu-ment. We ask the reader to study TrotskysThe USSR in War, in this pamphlet, and theother quotes from him on Third Campism andShachtman to assess for themselves if Trotsky

was leaning towards Shachtman in his lastdays. Note again the nationalised property

without the relations after it to imply a trulyidiotic notion by Trotsky.Trotsky was not simply analysing a fixed

category called Stalinism but its evolutionfrom centrism in the period 1923-33 to con-sciously counter-revolutionary thereafter.

And, whilst Stalinism clearly examined thepossibility of defending its privileges by re-storing capitalist property relations in theperiod 1936-39 during the Great Purges it

was forced to defend the national propertyrelations when Hitler attacked in June 1941.

And we all know that it was the Stalinist bu-reaucracies themselves that restored capital-ism in the period 1989-92.And Andy Y (Workers Power), replying to

Tim Nelsons post cited p.20 made the tellingpoint that the third option postulated by

Trotsky was not bureaucratic collectivism or

state capitalism but capitalism itself restoredby the Stalinist bureaucracy, which is whatactually happened. Trotsky quote:

To define the Soviet regime as transitional, orintermediate, means to abandon such finished socialcategories as capitalism (and therewith state capital-ism) and also socialism. But besides being com-pletely inadequate in itself, such a definition is capa-ble of producing the mistaken idea that from thepresent Soviet regime only a transition to socialism is

possible. In reality a back slide to capitalism is

wholly possible. A more complete definitionwill of necessity be complicated and ponder-ous.


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Andy replies:

This quote doesnt indicate that Trotskybelieved there was a third alternative to capi-talism and socialism. He discusses threehypotheses: the workers overthrow thebureaucracy, a bourgeois party overthrowsthe bureaucracy and re-establishes capitalism,and then this third variant, the bureaucracybecomes a ruling class. From everything elsehe has written it is clear he means by this acapitalist ruling class, as the Transitional Pro-gramme (and other writings) make clear andhis writings immediately after the third vari-ant etc.

The new class society/bureaucratic collectiv-ism theories etc. which as an idea ripped apartMarx Engels and Lenins whole conceptionof historical materialism, and the organicrelationship between capitalism and its suc-cessor, socialism, just as Cliffs theory of statecapitalism effectively bins Marxs Capital.

The United Front and the Anti-Imperialist United Front; neverpolitical defence of Stalinism or

bourgeois nationalistsDefence of the USSR does not at all mean

rapprochement with the Kremlin bureaucra-cy, the acceptance of its politics, or a concilia-tion with the politics of her allies. In thisquestion, as in all others, we remain com-pletely on the ground of the internationalclass struggle. (Trotsky)

In late 1939, following the Hitler/Stalin pact,

Stalin, having invaded Poland on 17 Septem-ber, invaded the Baltic States and Finland.The Finns fought and were eventually de-

feated in March 1940. Trotsky defended thesovietisation of Eastern Poland, the estab-lishment of nationalised property relationsand the expropriation of the capitalists, butnot the invasion that preceded it nor the

manner in which it was carried out. GenuineTrotskyists trace the process of degenerationthus:

This measure, revolutionary in character the expropriation of the expropriators isin this case achieved in a military bureaucraticfashion. The appeal to independent activityon the part of the masses in the new territo-ries and without such an appeal, even ifworded with extreme caution it is impossible

to constitute a new regimewill on the mor-row undoubtedly be suppressed by ruthlesspolice measures in order to assure the pre-ponderance of the bureaucracy over theawakened revolutionary masses. This is oneside of the matter.

But there is another. In order to gain thepossibility of occupying Poland through amilitary alliance with Hitler, the Kremlin for along time deceived and continues to deceive

the masses in the USSR and in the wholeworld, and has thereby brought about thecomplete disorganization of the ranks of itsown Communist International.The primary political criterion for us is notthe transformation of property relations inthis or another area, however important thesemay be in themselves, but rather the changein the consciousness and organization of theworld proletariat, the raising of their capacity

for defending former conquests and accom-plishing new ones. From this one, and theonly decisive standpoint, the politics of Mos-cow, taken as a whole, wholly retain their


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reactionary character and remain the chiefobstacle on the road to the world revolu-tion.

Our general appraisal of the Kremlin andComintern does not, however, alter the

particular fact that the statification of prop-erty in the occupied territories is in itself aprogressive measure. We must recognizethis openly. Were Hitler on the morrow tothrow his armies against the East, to restorelaw and order in Eastern Poland, theadvanced workers would defend againstHitler these new property forms establishedby the Bonapartist Soviet bureaucracy. [22]

Notes[1] Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, Petty-Bourgeois Moralists and the Proletarian Party, (April1940), https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/30-pbmoral.htm[2] The two publications that contain this de-fence of Shachtmanism are The Fate of theRussian Revolution, volume 1 (1999). http://www.workersliberty.org/node/11665 and therecent one, The two Trotskyisms confrontStalinism: the fate of the Russian Revolution,

volume 2 (2015) Contents here http://www.workersliberty.org/node/25589[3] Sean Matgamna, The fate of Max Shachtman: acritical assessment, 25 September, 2007, http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2007/09/24/fate-max-shachtman-critical-assessment[4] Ibid.[5] Barry Sheppard: Three theories of the USSR,http://links.org.au/node/3901[6] Leon Trotsky, On the Sino-Japanese War,

(September 1937) https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/10/sino.htm[7] Ibid.[8] Karl Marx, Letter to Sigfrid Meyer and AugustVogt In New York, 1870, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1870/letters/70_04_09.htm[9] Sheppard, Three Theories.[10] The Soviet Union was a permanent mem-ber of the UN Security Council, they had aveto power over any vote taken by the Secu-rity Council. When the Security Council votedin 1950 to introduce UN forces the Sovietswere absent, having walked out a few days pre-

viously over something else, they said. They didnot walk back in again to support their allyNorth Korea because they wished to send themessage to the USA that they did not reallysupport Korea or China because they wereseeking peaceful co-existence.[11] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Whatis the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?, (1936),h t t p s : / / w w w . m a r x i s t s . o r g / a r c h i v e /trotsky/1936/revbet/[12] These arguments are made in greater detailin Dave Brucess Trotsky and the Material Analysisof Stalinism. http://socialistfight.com/2016/01/04/trotsky-and-the-material ist-analysis-of-stalinism-by-dave-bruce/[13] In Defence of Marxism Number 3 (June 1995),

The Marxist Theory of the State and the Collapse ofStalinism, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/ltt/ltt-idom3.htm[14] L. Trotsky, Not a Workers and Not a Bour-geois State? (November 1937), https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/11/wstate.htm[15] W. l. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, Mos-cow, 1965, p.335.[16] The Leningrad delirium, Submitted by AWL on

13 -10-15, http://www.workersliberty.org/node/25716[17] Writings of Leon Trotsky: Supplement 1934-40,1979,pp.868-869.[18] Leon Trotsky, Petty-Bourgeois Moralists[19] The Communist Party of Great Britain(CPGB, Weekly Worker) and the League forthe Revolutionary Party (LRP USA) call them-selves Third Campists who would not defendthe concept to the extent that Shachtman tookit even in 1940.

[20] Bob Pitt review, Max Shachtman, Soviet De-fencism and Unfalsified Marxism What Next?N o . 1 1 , 1 9 9 8 , h t t p : / /www.whatnext journal.org.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext11/Reviews.html#Review2[21] Paul Hampton, What Next No. 12, Work-ers Liberty and the Third Camp.http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext12/Hampton.html[22] Leon Trotsky, The USSR in War,

(September 1939), https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/09/ussr-war.htm.


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Comment by Gerry Downing

Tim Nelson of the InternationalSocialist Network weighs in:

Tim outlines his analysis thus:

The problem which increasingly faced theTrotskyist movement throughout the 1940swas that Trotskys analysis and predictionsdid not fit events. For example, Trotskyargued that the Soviet bureaucratic regimewas a temporary, unstable anomaly, thrownup as a result of the final crisis of capitalismnot producing a workers revolution exceptin an economically backward society. Hewent on to argue that this accident of histo-ry would eventually collapse. Furthermore,unless there was a revolution in the ad-vanced capitalist countries, the bourgeoisdemocracies would be replaced by totalitari-an dictatorships, the beginnings of which

were being witnessed with the increase ofauthoritarianism and state control in thewar time Western democracies. Such totali-tarianism was the only way that capitalismcould maintain itself in a time of such pro-found crisis. It became increasingly evidentthat this analysis was incorrect. Followingthe Second World War, both the Stalinistregime and Western capitalism entered aperiod of extended stability. Anglo-

American imperialism did not descend intototalitarianism, and did not, as many Trot-skyists expected, install dictatorships inthose parts of Western Europe it occupiedafter the defeat of Nazi Germany. Far frombeing in its final crisis, capitalism in the1950s and 1960s experienced a period ofunprecedented boom. Trotsky was wrong.This in itself should neither be surprising,nor especially upsetting. Revolutionarypredictions from Marx onwards usuallyhave been incorrect, and all analyses inMarxist theory are subject to constant revi-sion. However, the Trotskyists of the

1940s, led primarily by Cannon, had begunto treat Trotskys writings as scripture.When it was clear that the Second WorldWar had not brought about the collapseeither of the Stalinist bureaucracy or West-ern democracy, Cannon concluded that,

rather than Trotsky having been wrong, theSecond World War must not have end-ed. [1]

Of course Trotsky was right in 1938 topredict a catastrophe. But he did not say it

was the final crisis of capitalism; he po-lemicised extensively against the Stalinistson just this question when they were intheir Third Period ultra-leftism from 1928-

34. And whilst what he was predictingabout the collapse of the Soviet Union in

Third Campism of the Second Order: the

Ideological Defence of Imperialism Today

The International Socialist Network ISN) and the

League for the Revolutionary Party LRP

US)

The International Socialist Network votedunanimously to dissolve itself at its Na-tional Members Meeting of 26 April 2015.It had split from the SWP two years previ-ously.


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WWII did not happen and revolutions didnot triumph both events almost happened.Trotsky was not a soothsayer predicting

the future but he was analysing the revolu-tionary potential in present and coming

events and attempting to inspire his fol-lowers to lead revolutions armed with thistheoretical understanding. And when thesesituations occurred in Warsaw, Czechoslo-

vakia, northern Italy, Greece and Vietnamleadership was the key but the fascists andthe Stalinists got to them first.After all Trotsky had opined that had the

Tsars police assassinated Lenin beforeOctober 1917 the revolution would havefailed. So its never a question of what

WILL inevitably happen or with the wis-dom of hindsight what DID inevitablyhappen but the understanding what we dois what makes the difference, what leader-ship we can provide to make the revolu-tion is vital, to become the consciousexpression of the unconscious historicalprocess. But we must understand and

analyse the revolutionary potential lodgedin political struggles and favourable situa-tions. And that is what Trotsky did in1938.As for Shachtman the concluding

Stalinophobic remark by Tim Plus, hefucking hated Stalinists. You have to re-spect that and the earlier analysis of

why Stalinists were not part of the work-

ers movement and worse than right wingTU bureaucrats shoots a big hole in thewhole article. All the serious political even-handedness and scholarly analysis (he doesset out the genuine Trotsky stance veryfairly) is destroyed by the realisation thathe is an anti-communist Stalinophobe.

Walter Daum and the LRP, The Lifeand Death of Stalinism (1990)

Another defender of the ShachtmaniteThird Camp is the League for the Revolu-tionary party (LP-US). Walter Daum, The

Life and Death of Stalinism (1990), Introduc-tion. His version of bureaucratic collectiv-ism is somewhat different. The argumentgoes approximately thus:The labour-capital relationship continued

to operate in the USSR but up to 1939 itwas modified by the pressure from thedictatorship of the proletariat and its pres-sure on the ruling bureaucracy. Once thispressure was definitively eliminated duringthe Great Purges of 1936-39 that pressureended and the bureaucracy were able toconvert themselves into a new ruling class

without any opposition. Of course Trotskynever applied a criterion like this to assignit the title of workers state. It is all a bitmoralistic, how bad really are the Stalin-ists? Eliminating all democratic oppositionfrom the left is really beyond-the-beyondsand no reasonable democratic could toler-ate that.

How they converted themselves intocapitalists is not explained, why they hadto do it and in what way it altered the basis

structure of the economy. Everything op-erated in approximately the same way asbefore the war as after the war.The central planning still existed, the law

of value was still suppressed to approxi-mately the same extent, there was no un-employment so no reserve army of labourto regulate its price, there was no abandon-ment of the monopoly of foreign trade

and no stock exchanges operating - therewas, in fact, no actual capitalist class untilYeltsin and his American advisor JeffreySachs set about creating one after August1991, the appalling gangsterist oligarchs.

Joe Stalin could not leave money orproperty to his daughter Svetlana [2] orneither could any other bureaucrat in theUSSRthere were no wills as there wouldnot be in any socialist society. Though hehad great privileges he had no privateproperty.


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Barry Sheppard argued that the collapseof the USSR in 1991 showed the follow-ing:

The fact is that the bureaucracy in its overhalf century of bureaucratic rule had not

amassed anywhere near the capital neces-sary to buy the means of production. Thisfact contradicts the theory of state capital-ism. If the USSR was capitalism of anykind, vast amounts of capital would haveaccrued to the bureaucracy, but this wasnot the case.

As Marx explained in volume one of Capi-tal, the capitalist system is characterised notby the formula of C-M-C, of earlier com-

modity production, whereby independentproducers created commodities (C), soldthem in the market for money (M), whichwas then used to buy other commodities,completing the circuit of C-M-C.

Rather capitalism is characterised by a dif-ferent circuit, M-C-M, that is, the capitalistbrings money into the market and buyscommodities such as raw materials andmachines etc. and one other crucial com-

modity, labour power sold to the capitalistby workers. The capitalist sets these com-modities into motion in capitalist enterpris-es and new commodities are produced,which he then sells on the market for mon-ey. Since the crucial commodity of labourpower has the ability to create new valuegreater than the cost to the capitalist oflabour power, the commodities that theworkers produce but the capitalist owns

have greater value than that of the originalM the capitalist started with and whenthose commodities are sold for money, Mis greater than M. The circuit can then berenewed with M-C-M.

In the Soviet Union there was no such M-C-M circuit and no capital accumulation.That explains why after a half century ofsupposed state capitalism there wasntenough capital in the former USSR to buy

the privatised means of production. If M-C-M had existed, there would have beenenough money capital to do so.

The theory of bureaucratic collectivism didnot face this difficulty. According to thistheory, the economic privileges the bureau-cracy enjoyed stemmed from a non-capitalist mechanism. The fact that thebureaucracy had not amassed enough capi-

tal to buy the means of production in thereturn to capitalism indicated that bureau-cratic collectivism if thats what it was --did not exploit the workers and peasants tothe degree that capitalism does.

If what existed in the USSR was bureau-cratic collectivism, then it was certainlyshort-lived, not long enough to be consid-ered a new historical stage or a new type ofexploitative society as its original theorists

believed. On the scale of history the col-lapse of the USSR makes clear that thechoice remains, capitalism or socialism, nota third way.

It is clear that the social force that carriedthrough the return to capitalism was thebureaucracy itself. It was not the workersor the peasantry. Both Third Camp theo-ries have no explanation why the bureau-cracy would want to do this and excludedthis possibility, unlike Trotsky, who pre-dicted it.

The wonder is that under such exception-ally unfavourable conditions planned econ-omy has managed to demonstrate its insu-perable benefits Trotsky said in his Intro-duction to Capital in 1939. [3]

This is how Daum, like Shachtman andMatgamna, dismisses the post-WWII Trot-

skyists in his Introduction on the basis thatTrotsky did not understand Trotskyismand no post-war Trotskyists understood

Trotskyism either (until he came along). Ihave interspersed the quote with my owncomments and observations in bracketeditalics:

After Trotskys death the majority of Trot-skyists formally maintained his appraisal of

the USSR as a degenerated workers stateheading for either capitalist restoration or anew workers revolution. But when the dust


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of World War II settled,Stalinism had proveditself capable of carryingout revolutions in East-ern Europe, China andelsewhere. To maintain

Trotskys term (butwithout its content Trotsky did not understandits content either Dauhmapparently thinks GD),most neo-Trotskyistsadded the qualification,implied if not stated,that Stalinism was notreally counterrevolu-

tionary (some, like MichelPablo and Ernest Mendeldid, almost all, including theICFI did after 1951 GD). For many yearsthe leading theorist of this position hasbeen Ernest Mandel.

Against the socialist thesis, the workersstatists argue that nationalization of themeans of production does not in itselfmean socialism. But they weaken their case

by insisting that Stalinist nationalization isnot only progressive in itself but alsoenough to make genuine socialization pos-sible, without further transformation of theeconomic base (depending on what you mean bytransformation of the economic base, Trotskyistsheld for the USSR that the restoration of Sovietdemocracy was necessary and the defeat of the bu-reaucracy in a political revolution, they were formaintaining the socialist property relations GD).

Such conclusions stand out as wildly opti-mistic today, in the light of the collapse ofso many Stalinist regimes. Moreover, theywere never drawn by Trotsky, who under-stood that the USSRs backwardness andisolation subjected it to the laws of capitaloperating internationally, and that valuerelations applied internally despite national-ized property (Trotsky never said that valuerelations applied internally despite nationalizedproperty, he understood that central planning in

alliance with a monopoly of foreign trade suppressedthe law of value, even if it could not eliminated it.The full force of the market as unleashed by Yeltsin

after 1991 decimated theeconomy and workers livingstandards and life expectancy.That puts the law of value inperspective GD). Toachieve socialization the

USSR would have toachieve qualitative eco-nomic progress overcapitalism. The back-wardness and crises nowtypical of the Stalinistcountries vitiates theworkers state thesisjus t as much associalism (in fact the

destruction of the workersstate proved it definitively justover a year after the publica-

tion of Daums book GD).

In addition, these theories face an over-whelming contradiction. After World WarII Stalinist rule spread across East Europeby military force (and in several countries,notably China, through armed revolution).These new states in time adopted the Soviet

model, although in most cases they calledthemselves some form of new orpeoples democracy. That is, they claimed(at first GD) to be not proletarian butsimply more democratic versions of capital-ism, leaning towards socialism. Most of theworkers state theorists of the USSR choseto label the new states deformed orbureaucratized workers states. But notonly had these states been established with-

out working-class revolutions; most wereformed only after workers attempts tocontrol factories and set up governingcouncils had been smashed by the Stalinists.Styling such creations proletarian withwhatever modification flies in the face ofhistory (no it doesnt, if it could exist in theUSSR in a degenerated form from 1924 to 1939as Daum accepts than through bureaucratic imposi-tion or my means of a Red Army such relationscan existed in the USSR could be replicated with-

out and against the working class, as WorkersPower and many other left Trotskyists includingSocialist Fight have explained since.GD)


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The proletarian label for the Stalinist statesamounts to a cynical rejection of the Marxistconclusion that a workers state can be estab-lished only through the workers own con-scious activity: the emancipation of the pro-letariat is the task of the proletariat it-

self (then Trotsky was a fool to explain that this iswhat happened in Eastern Poland after Stalin invad-ed in September 1939 GD). The neo-Trotskyist conception also calls into questionLenins teaching that a workers socialist revo-lution requires the guidance of a vanguardparty. The Stalinist parties that seized powerwhile denying that socialism was their inten-tion could hardly be considered vanguards ofproletarian consciousness (no, they did it to

preserve their own privileges in defence of their owninterests, it really is not too difficult to understandthatGD).

Marxs principle of proletarian self-emancipation is no abstract dogma. It derivesfrom his analysis of capitalism: the systemorganically creates a class whose inherentstruggle forces it to try to overthrow it andestablish communism. In granting anotherclass this proletarian characteristic, the de-

formed workers state theorists reject a Marx-

ist understanding of capitalism as well as ofStalinism. In later chapters we will analyse thematerial roots and practical consequences oftheir misconception (and for this observationTrotsky was also wrong in the period 1924-to 39 aswellGD).

Notes[1] Tim Nelson: Max Shachtman and Trotsky-i sm, 4 October 2014, h t tp ://internationalsocialistnetwork.org/index.php/ideas-and-arguments/500-max-shachtman-and-trotskyism[2] See Wikipaedia, Svetlana Alliluyeva, At16, Alliluyeva fell in love with Aleksei

Kapler, a Jewish Soviet filmmaker who was40 years old. Her father vehemently disap-proved of the romance. Later, Kapler wassentenced to ten years in exile in the industri-al city of Vorkuta, near the Arctic Circle.h t t p s : / / e n . w i k i p e d i a . o r g / w i k i /Svetlana_Alliluyeva[3] Leon Trotsky, Marxism in Our Time, April1939, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/marxism.htm


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Mike Macnair claims that he is engaged inan educative process in his reply to my

earlier article [1] criticising third-campist politics.But in fact, his reply [2] contains some logicalinconsistencies that will be anything but educa-tional for those who read it, and will only in-crease confusion. Replying to every one of theunfocussed points in detail would require aninordinate amount of space. So I take up heresome key points that get to the most importantof the differences between us.

Mike claims that my amendment, which at-tempted to introduce a state-capitalist characteri-sation into the Communist Platform, was in thetradition of various lefts who allegedly use theterm state capitalism to take moral distancefrom Stalinism. There is some real irony in thisstatement, since no alternative analysis of thenature of Stalinism is provided in his article. Infact, if anything can be accused of simply seekingto put moral distance and nothing more be-

tween its authors and Stalinism, it is the existingformulation in the Communist Platform (partlyderived from the earlier Socialist Platform): Wereject the idea that the undemocratic regimesthat existed in the former Soviet Union and oth-er countries were socialist, or represented eitherthe political rule of the working class or somekind of step on the road to socialism.

This purely negative assessment contains noanalysis of what the Stalinist regimes were - only

what they were not. But this will not convinceanyone of its proposition. It contains no Marxistanalysis of what the Stalinist regimes were. Whyshould anyone listen to a bare assertion thatpresents no analysis to justify itself? You canreject an idea until eternity, but until you re-place it with a better one, you will not overcomeit.

The mainstream of the CPGB is aware of this,and has the beginning of a theory - of the USSR

as an ectopic society or an evolutionary deadend, but they are not sufficiently confident ofits coherence to put it forward in a broader

context such as the Communist Platform bloc.Hence the agnosticism of the draft as put for-ward, which was subsequently adopted.

Such agnosticism is not strength, but a weak-ness, and belies, for instance, Mike Macnairsfacile equating of a variety of different theories

of Stalinism as state capitalism. Mike notablymakes an exception for Lenins use of the termto describe the early industrial enterprises of theSoviet state, but there is no logical reason forthis, except perhaps deferral to Lenins authority.

There is no Marxist reason to equate the vary-ing uses of the term by Kautsky, Cliff, Raya Du-nayevskaya/CLR James or Walter Daum. Why,in any case, should Kautsky be criticised forseeking to take moral distance from Stalinism,

since he opposed the Bolsheviks before Stalin-ism existed? Kautsky can be justly criticised formany things, but none of them provide any mo-

Throwing babies out with the bathwater

Reply to Mike McNair on state capitalism and Third Campism

By Ian Donovan, from Weekly Worker 1001, 13 March 2014

Mike McNair (before his diet!)


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tive to seek moral distancefrom Stalinism (which didnot exist in 1919, when heformulated these views).Such generalisations are justinattentive.

Cliff vs. DaumThe varying contents thatsuch common terminologyhides can be illustrated in thecase of Tony Cliff and WalterDaum respectively. Cliffstheory of bureaucratic statecapitalism in the USSR is athird system theory in real

terms. This is revealed by hisview that the law of value,which is the historically spe-cific economic law that isfundamental to capitalismand drives its specific form of exploitation - theextraction of surplus-value from the workingclass and its realisation in the market - was absentin the USSR.

Coupled with Cliffs insistence that the compe-tition of the USSR and its satellite states with thewestern capitalist powers was purely of a militarynature, not economic, this pointed to a society inwhich the driving forces in its internal and exter-nal economic relations were something otherthan the law of value. Cliff elided round thisfund

Documents

Third Campism: “If this be Trotskyism then I at least am no Trotskyist”