Paul Le Blanc’s Trotsky is understated, but the influence of Isaac Deutscher’s tragic hero brought down by cruel circumstances can be detected in his defence of Trotsky as an honest fighter for traditional Marxist values. He asserts that “Trotsky who in order to remain true to the ideals that animated his entire life, followed a trajectory that took him out of the centre of power.” [1] This sidesteps Trotsky’s politics when he was at the centre of power. Instead, we have the image of Trotsky as a true Bolshevik- Leninist in his long-term intentions. So the main focus is on his failed attempt to create the Fourth International. It should go without saying that Trotsky was not pulled out of power by Marxist principles: he was pushed out of power by the old Bolshevik-Leninists and their ruling faction.
Paul Le Blanc’s claim that Trotsky was the first of the Bolshevik chiefs to turn against the machine of dictatorship when it began to devour the Socialist dream is also a hollow one.[2] It would be more accurate to say the machine turned against Trotsky. He was one of the most prominent architects of the state dictatorship over workers. Trotsky advocated a principle which was later taken up and developed by Stalin: ” the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state.” [3] Another of Trotsky’s policies, which Stalin made his own, was the complete subordination of the trade unions to the state: the role of trade unions was to increase productivity, not defend trade unionists against the state.
After the October Revolution, Trotsky repudiated his past criticism of the excessive centralism of the old Bolsheviks. Trotsky became the personification of bureaucratic centralism. His “red army” revived and copied the old Tsarist military apparatus with conventional discipline and hierarchy. Trotsky’s concept of the army was a structure of specialised military skills, separated from wider social relations: a class neutral instrument to be utilised for proletarian ends. In the opinion of Bolshevik dissidents, it was very much a bourgeois model of a standing army in which elected officers and rank and file committees were unthinkable. The Bolshevik promise of a people’s militia was quickly forgotten.
From early 1918 Trotsky adopted authoritarian attitudes, rather than confidence in the class creativity of the workers themselves. [4] At the 8th party Congress, in 1919, Ossinsky challenged the excessive top-down centralism in the party: the bureaucratic structure was the problem, not the solution. In 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, the Workers Opposition called for a return to grass-roots initiative and creativity. Trotsky denounced them as a dangerous deviation.The historic right of the party dictatorship came before the passing moods of workers democracy. In 1923, in the New Course, Trotsky considered party factions to be an expression of hostile class forces. As late as the Thirteenth Party Congress, in 1924, he expressed loyalty to the party- right or wrong. This became the hallmark of Stalin: the party as an infallible instrument of history.
Where there is historical continuity in Trotsky’s views, it is from Second International Marxism. In 1905, he did not theorise Soviet Power as a revolution against the state. Trotsky saw the State as a class-neutral instrument. In Results and Prospects, he wrote: “every political party worthy of the name strives to capture political power and thus place the state at the service of the class whose interests it represents.” [5] The state was a neutral machine that could be a powerful lever for revolution or reaction. Furthermore, the state had played a greater role in Russian history that it had in the west. This helped shape his concept of uninterrupted revolution in Russia. In the state socialist tradition, he predicted that” the proletariat on taking power, must by the very logic of position, inevitably be urged towards the introduction of state management of industry.” [6]
Trotsky’s concept of uninterrupted revolution, which later became known as Permanent Revolution, did not advocate simply waiting for the European revolution rather than make a start on building a state economy in Russia, as alleged by Gregory Zinoviev, in a crude and dishonest Bolshevik polemic in 1915. [7] For Trotsky, as for “most Bolsheviks, state power, state control over the economy and increasing productivity in state industry became synonymous with the struggle for Socialism.”[8] As in the ideology of the Second International, the economy was understood to be about technology. Bolshevik politics was about developing the productive forces, extending state industry and productivity, not workers democratic decision-making in production. As Paul Le Blanc explains, in Trotsky’s perspective: “a development of the productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise of Communism.” [9]
In Trotsky’s own words:” Marxism sets out from the development of technique as the fundamental spring of progress, and constructs the communist programme upon the dynamic of the productive forces.” [10] But this metaphysical theory is more Plekhanov’s mechanical materialism than Marx’s critique of political economy. Marx did not view the economy as a technological machine. Social relations are fundamental to production, particularly those which structure the work of the direct producers: “Production treated in isolation from social relations of production is an empty abstraction.” [11] Trotsky, in The Revolution Betrayed, among other inconsistencies, did see workers as the greatest productive force, which does imply social relations, but during the period of War Communism, when he relied on the resources of the Soviet Union, he saw workers as instruments of production to be directed and commanded by the state to any role or place. This approach anticipated the theory of Socialism in One Country and Stalin’s dictatorial methods.
Paul Le Blanc repeats Trotsky’s polemic against Stalinist claims that the USSR was a fully fledged Socialist Society: “Socialism could not be reduced to a state-owned economy with a top-down Socialist planning in a single country.”[12] Yes, but this abstract comparison, just like Trotsky’s contrast of Stalin’s dictatorship with the Marxist concept of the withering way of the state, in the Revolution Betrayed, misses the question of why Trotsky defined the USSR as some kind of workers state because there was nationalisation of the means of production. [13] This limited critique of Stalinism, which assumed that, Stalin, as the head of the state economy, was an indirect representative of working class gains, reflects the fact that dictatorship from above, independent of the working class, was also – to a lesser extent – a characteristic of Lenin and Trotsky’s regime.[14]
However, it is not simply about formal state property: “the real owners of the means of production are those who can decide what to produce, for whom to produce, and how to produce.” [15] How could the Stalinist dictatorship be rooted in distribution and the poverty of objects of consumption? The separation of production and distribution was an aspect of bourgeois political economy criticised by Marx. Trotsky’s insight that “the means of production belong to the state, but the state, so to speak, belongs to the bureaucracy.” [16] called into question his own fixation on a nationalised state economy as proletarian. The thinking of the young Trotsky about productive forces had been more subtle and flexible. In, Results and Prospects, he argued against any direct political expression of economic relations: the dictatorship of the proletariat was not automatically dependent on technical development. [17]
Trotsky’s mature political outlook was strongly influenced by his experience of the Bolshevik dictatorship over workers in 1918-23.He was unable to get to the bottom of Stalinism. As Paul Le Blanc observes, ” the tyranny with which he was most familiar was the one he seriously misjudged”.[18] In Trotsky’s 1905, in Our Differences, there was a warning against using a historical analogy, rather than a creative response to new historical realities. The older Trotsky was less perceptive. His analogy of the French Revolution with the degeneration of the Russian Revolution served to obscure, rather than clarify, the unfolding historical process. Trotsky’s role as a labour dictator distorted his understanding of events and his political thought did not identify, or keep up with, the unfolding counter-revolution based on party and state.
The spectre of Thermidor in the party and state apparatus was raised by Bolshevik oppositionists in 1923. Trotsky dismissed their concern. Ten years later he still insisted that “only the peasants can become a force for Thermidor.”[19] The counter-revolutionary danger could only come from the party’s right, representing the peasants and private property. When events proved him wrong, he then redefined Thermidor and applied it retrospectively to the events of 1923. The analogy rationalised a notion of counter-revolution on the basis of the state property established by the October Revolution. So Stalin was still seen as a centrist, standing between the working class, represented by Trotsky, and the alternative of the private property represented by Bukharin. Yet the historical reality was that “The Stalinist road was a path of its own and it was this specific and historical role Trotsky did not understand.” [20]
Paul Le Blanc skips over Trotsky’s reluctance to challenge Stalin when he held positions of power. In 1923, he agreed with Stalin that Lenin’s political testament should not be openly published. Nor did Trotsky explode Lenin’s bombshell at the Twelfth Congress. Instead, Trotsky concentrated on his proposals to make state industry more efficient and profitable. Again in 1923, Trotsky preferred a deal with Stalin, to allow more criticism and less bureaucracy, rather than fight for rank and file democracy for party members. As late as 1925 he told Kamenev he was against any attempt to remove Stalin.[21] “Stalin first enunciated the doctrine of Socialism in one country at the end of 1924.Trotsky did not reply until late in 1926, almost two years later.” [22] As Trotsky explained, in 1920, it had already become clear to him that there would be no proletarian help from the west for a long period and meanwhile the focus was the Soviet Union. [23]
Paul le Blanc is proud of Trotsky’s internationalism, yet the prophet armed was an inconsistent internationalist. As a leader of the Soviet state, he put the national interests of the Soviet state before international class interests. Like other Bolshevik leaders, he was in favour of prioritising the consolidation of Bolshevik power in the USSR. The most famous instance is his signing of the Rapallo Treaty in 1922. This conventional secret treaty allowed the training and arming of the German army in Russia at a time when the Versailles treaty prevented this in Europe. This was the same army which attacked German workers a year later. Trotsky was also worried that revolution in Afghanistan might create difficulties for the Soviet state, and the killing of the leaders the Turkish Communist Party did not prevent his support for conventional diplomatic ties with the Turkish Government. [24] At the Third Congress of the Comintern, Trotsky was the hammer on delegates who asked for the independence of the organisation from the Russian State.
Exaggerating the differences with Stalin and minimising the differences with Lenin has raised questions about Trotsky’s political integrity. Now, Paul Le Blanc has a rose-tinted view of Trotsky’s political integrity when he claims that “an essential quality of Trotsky’s revolutionary character was a commitment not to lie.” [25] But Trotsky’s conscience was not clear when it came to a debate with Victor Serge, and others, about the Kronstadt revolt over fifteen years after the event. Paul le Blanc does has sympathy with the insurgents. In contrast, Trotsky sneers at them as a grey mass with big revolutionary pretensions. Even the Communist sailors involved were dismissed as well fed dandies! Was this deliberate misrepresentation or simply bad temper from the older Trotsky? The fact is the Kronstadt garrison had a proud revolutionary history. The sailors were in the vanguard of the revolutions in 1905 and 1917. [26] And Rank and file Bolsheviks in Kronstadt joined the revolt.
It was misleading of Trotsky to claim the Kronstadt Sailors in 1921 were new casual elements and dominated by the petty bourgeois. Many of the old revolutionary militants who had long service records were prominent in the insurrection. And behind Trotsky’s political rhetoric about the class composition of Kronstadt was the changing class composition of the Bolshevik Party itself. Only a tiny number of party members remained at the workbench in the factory. Nor was Trotsky telling the truth when he claimed, “the Kronstadters demanded privileges.” [27] They did not demand privileged food rations: they demanded equal food rations with exceptions for those working in hazardous conditions. This had also been the demand of striking workers in Petrograd, in February 1921, before Bolshevik military and police repression ended their strikes. There was widespread anger about extra rations for Bolshevik officials. And not just extra rations. Top Bolshevik officials were receiving, in addition to special rations: extravagant use of cars, luxury apartments and holiday villa’s. [28]
The Kronstadt revolt did raise petty bourgeois demands to end grain requisition. Yet Trotsky himself had put forward proposals to the Politburo one year earlier to bring back market relation to phase out grain seizure. But, unlike the Kronstadt Rebels he did not raise this demand in public, he just left it on the politburo table. Whatever the subjective politics of the rebels, Trotsky still regarded them as objectively counter-revolutionary because their actions were a threat to the Bolshevik dictatorship, which he identified in an abstract way with the dictatorship of the proletariat. Although, what had been highlighted by the uprising was the habitual Bolshevik resort to coercion as a solution to any political difficulties and their lack of any significant working class support. Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders had not made any attempt since the end of the civil war to revive the Soviets or working class democracy. [29]
Trotsky put a bureaucratic gloss on the repression of the Kronstadt sailors. He was keen to stress that Zinoviev was the party boss for the area of the revolt: it was not his responsibility. However, as the head of the red army he did issue the ultimatum: surrender or be crushed. Trotsky also spread government propaganda that the uprising was simply a conspiracy against the Soviet regime. On March 7th, the London Daily Herald printed his opinion that the Russian counter-revolutionary organisers had good timing for the mutiny. [30] However, a simple conspiracy would have started the rebellion when the ice had already melted and the battleships could then have converged on Petrograd. When Victor Serge raised the issue of the pointless killings of hundreds of Kronstadt prisoners months after the rebellion had been put down, Trotsky gave a bureaucratic view: this was Dzerzhinsky’s department, not his. [31]
Trotskyist influenced writers, including those from who ironically claim to be from a tradition which values workers self-activity and Socialism from below, argue that the Kronstadt demand for freely elected Soviets and freedom for working class parties, which echoed the February demands of Petrograd workers, could only mean counter-Revolution. [32] “In this situation the role of maintaining the cohesion of the party and state apparatus became central.” [33] The only way forward for these writers was Bolshevik coercion: a different form of counter-Revolution, hidden under the banner of Communism. These views contain a strange mixture of crude materialism and naive idealism. It was all about bad circumstances and good leaders. In Chris Harman’s view, “the state, the body of armed men that controlled and policed society was in the hands of a party that was motivated by Socialist intentions.” [34]
The good intentions of Trotsky and a small revolutionary elite somehow promised a Socialist future, which appears to be Paul Le Blanc’s underlying view as well. Hence his focus on the Fourth International. His book is dedicated to George Breitman whose history of the Fourth International shares Paul Le Blanc’s view that the FI “would have to be created by those gathered around Trotsky himself and the Bolshevik-Leninist ideas and perspectives he symbolised.”[35] On Breitman’s view, Trotsky is seen as the sole voice of genuine revolutionary experience. Other experienced comrades such as Victor Serge, and Sneevliet, leader of the Dutch section, are regarded in terms of extreme factionalism, as centrists, formalists, schematists, routinists and petit bourgeois. This imitates the political intolerance of Bolshevik- Leninism prior to 1917.
Trotsky gave himself the hopeless task of recreating an idealised Leninism. Loyalty to the leader and his correct policies was the main organisational principle. Breitman tends to assume Trotsky’s critics were petit bourgeois and against discipline. [36] Breitman uncritically regards Trotsky as the FI’s main asset. Yet Trotsky remained faithful to his mistaken dogma of the Soviet Union as a workers state, which made him a liability. When Stalin’s army invaded Poland, and nationalised industry, Trotsky’s theory of the USSR as a workers state became incoherent. He concluded the state ownership was a progressive measure.” But its progressiveness; its specific weight, depends on the sum total of all other factors.” [37]Trotsky could not develop anti-Stalinist unity because anyone who disagreed with his unconvincing view of the nature of the Soviet Union was not a true Marxist.
Paul Le Blanc excuses Trotsky’s abandonment of the revolutionary ideals of 1917, by referring to the need for emergencies measures. He lamely asserts that it was more circumstances than ideology. But this does not explain why Bolshevik values and convictions remained constant through different circumstances. For example, state centralism, top-down discipline, and reliance on conventional methods. For Trotsky, whatever the political policy choices and their consequences, there was the orthodox philosophy of dialectical materialism at work. There was a natural class logic expressing historical necessity. [38] Trotsky’s dialectic was in things or objective categories so that even the miniscule forces of Trotskyism could become a powerful factor in world politics.
Strictly speaking, Trotsky did not have a theory of political economy for the Fourth International.[39] He believed that there was already an objective movement of economic collapse in the interwar years: the productive forces were stagnating. In this catastrophic context, immediate demands would be infused with revolutionary potential. The consciousness of the working class was secondary to this primary objective movement. While the consciousness of the masses lagged behind the objective ripeness of capitalism for revolution there was a crisis of leadership. The tiny forces of Trotskyism would have the correct programme, expose misleaders, and bring the consciousness of the working class into conformity with the objective base. However, these leadership politics were not correct: there was no mechanical economic collapse or absolute decline of the capitalist economy.
Paul le Blanc does present the views of those Bolsheviks disappointed in their leadership. There was a common critical theme: the leadership’s fear of the self-activity of the masses and the failure to give a chance to the creativity and initiative of the working class. Paul Le Blanc regrets the fact that the opposition groups such as Democratic Centralists, Workers Opposition, and Workers Group were not allowed to challenge the growing Party-State bureaucracy. Yet he seems to regard the rising power of the party apparatus as some kind of natural phenomenon which had crept up on the virtuous leaders. Paul Le Blanc does not tell us how Stalin accumulated such powerful positions in the party apparatus.
Trotsky in, My life, states that for Lenin, Stalin’s appointment as General Secretary was not a political appointment, but a technical decision. [40] Later in his Diary in Exile he admitted that he had noticed that Lenin promoted Stalin. Moreover, “Lenin created the apparatus. The apparatus created Stalin.” [41] Stalin was one of the original Bolshevik-Leninists. He was Initially co-opted by Lenin to the Bolshevik leadership, rather than elected. Trotsky’s late self-identification with Bolshevik- Leninism was self-defeating. Despite his loyal defence of Trotsky, Paul Le Blanc does quote John Marot’s opinion that “Trotsky and most of the top leadership believed that the road to Socialism involved substituting the political dictatorship of the Communist Party for the democratic self-organisation of the working class.” [41]
Paul Le Blanc’s Trotsky might have had good intentions, but Trotsky’s theoretical inconsistencies meant his intentions were unpredictable. [43] For Trotsky, democracy inside and outside the party was not a goal in itself, the question for him was an instrumental one: democracy for what? [44] Post 1917, Trotsky did not, in principle, stand for the fullest and most developed democracy for workers: mass participation and decision-making was not considered essential. Rosa Luxemburg was an early critic of Trotsky’s theory of dictatorship: workers democracy was not some kind of Christmas present following a period of loyally supporting the policies of a handful of socialist dictators on the bourgeois model. [45] Where Trotsky was consistent was in his stubborn loyalty to the infallible leadership politics of Bolshevism and its lack of a firm commitment to workers freedom.
Reviewed by Barry Biddulph.
Notes:
[1] Paul Le Blanc, Trotsky. (Reaction Books 2015) p.11. Later Trotsky’s Bolshevik- Leninism did not return to Socialism from below but was conditioned by the undemocratic and elitist methods of the 1918-21 period.
[2] Paul Le Blanc, as above, p.45
[3] Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, ( New Park Publications,1975) p.77 Although he was a scapegoat for Lenin and his faction at the Tenth Congress, due to his authoritarian politics, they all shared his general political approach.
[4] Ossinsky: “We stand for the point of view of the construction of Society by the class creativity of the workers themselves.” Communist, No 2, April 1918. The word retreat is often used in relation to the Bolshevik leaders, but how do you get back from the road that takes you away from the values of 1917. Ossinsky made the crucial point which Trotsky never really understood or would not accept: Bolshevik coercion against the workers would create a new social force over workers.
[5] Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, in Permanent Revolution, ( London: New Park Publications,1982 ) p.194. The State as an essential aspect of bourgeois society and social relations was not part of Trotsky’s political perspective.
[6] Leon Trotsky, as above, p. 199. His use of the word inevitable betrays a fatalistic evolutionism from the philosophy of the Second International. A situation of striking and locked-out workers in the coming Russian Revolution would logically lead a working class party to intervene in the economy to defend workers interests. Hence, Permanent Revolution or going beyond the minimum programme. This assumed the Bolshevik party would be representative of a significant section of the workers and not a substitute for them.
[7] John Riddle ( edited ) Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, ( Pathfinder Press 1986 ) p.391. Zinoviev argued that since Trotsky rejected the Bolshevik perspective of a democratic republic or a national revolution, then he only stood for international revolution. Lenin mocked Trotsky, writing that if Trotsky was right, that the revolution would not be national and democratic, then Russia was heading for a socialist revolution. This proved that Trotsky was muddle-headed. p. 394. Trotsky explained his real point of view: the perspective of a national democratic revolution was illusory. However, this was not an argument against a revolution in Russia, but an extension of its historic basis and class aims. p.391. His objection was about the political inadequacy of the term bourgeois revolution. A workers government would have objective bourgeois revolutionary tasks, but to retain workers support would intervene in the economy and thus place collectivism on the agenda. He did not argue that the coming revolution would be Socialist. Hence, permanent revolution or moving beyond the bourgeois revolution.
[8] Simon Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24, ( London and New York: Routledge, 2008) p.9. Kautsky and Plekhanov developed a theory of the economy from Marx’s 1859 preface, and the German Ideology, which Marx wrote under the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment. Even in the State and Revolution, Lenin did not envisage workers control in production: the model was the German Post Office with the Bolsheviks in charge of administration and accounting.
[9] Paul Le Blanc, as above, p.106
[10] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed,( London: New Park Publications,1989 ) p.45
[11] Alex Callinicos, Is There a Future for Marxism? (London: Macmillan 1981), quoted in, S H Rigby, Marxism and History ( Manchester University Press) 1998, p.149. See also Lucio Colletti, From Lenin to Rousseau ( New York and London : Monthly Review Press, 1972 ) Geoff Hodgson, Trotsky and Fatalistic Marxism, (Spokesman Books 1975) And Philip Corrigan, Harvey Ramsay, and Derek Sayer, Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory, ( New York and London : Monthly Review press,1978) Charles Bettelheim,Class Struggles in the USSR,1917-23,(Sussex: Harvester Press,1976) Alex Callinicos,the Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx,(Chicago and London: Bookmarks,1996) And Peter Beilharz, Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism, (London: Coomhelm)1987.
[12] Paul Le Blanc as above,p.106
[13] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, (London: New park publications, 1989)p.248. “the nationalisation of the land, the means of industrial production, transport and exchange, together with the monopoly of foreign trade, constitute the basis of the Soviet social structure. Through these relations, established by the proletarian revolution, the nature of the soviet as a proletarian state is for us basically defined.” Despite this dogma, the book is theoretically inconsistent, so nationalisation is proletarian, yet nationalisation and state ownership only changed the situation of the workers juridically.
[14] Baruch Knei- Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) p.431
[15] Guglielmo Carchedi, Behind the Crisis (Haymarket Books 2011) p.9
[16] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, ( London: New Park Publications 1989)p.249
[17] Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects, in Permanent Revolution,( London: New Park Publications, 1982.) p.195-197
[18] Paul le Blanc, as above, p.84
[19] Leon Trotsky, The writings of Leon Trotsky,1932-33. (London: New park publications,1972 )p.77
[20] Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky’s Political and Economic analysis of the USSR, in, The Ideas of Leon Trotsky, edited by Hillel Ticktin and Micheal Cox, p.67
[21] Leon Trotsky, My Life,(New York: Pathfinder Press,1970) p.483
[22] Richard B Day, Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Economic Isolation, (Cambridge University Press,1973 ) p.3. For the period when Trotsky was at the pinnacle of his power, he was the central theorist of economic isolation. Trotsky was not against socialism in one country, he was against Socialism in a separate country. Also see, Alex Nove, Socialist Economics and Development, (London: Allen and Unwin,1986) p.91. “After his exile Trotsky became more emphatic in denouncing the principle of Socialism in One country.”
[23] Leon Trotsky, Tasks before the Twelfth Congress of The Russian Communist Party, ( London: New park Publications,1975)p.5. Until 1925, his focus was on the internal resources of the Soviet Union.
[24] E.H Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-23 vol,3 (Penguin Books,1966 ) p.303. See also Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions?(Chicago: Haymarket Books,2012) p.246. Trotsky was acting as a national statesman: worried about the prospect of a revolution in Afghanistan as causing difficulties for the USSR.
[25] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.45. See also Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) p. 170.
[26]David Cotterill, ( Edited) The Serge-Trotsky Papers, ( London: Pluto Press,1994 ) Lenin threatened to go to the sailors when he found himself isolated by his Bolshevik moderates in 1917.In 1921, Bolshevik propaganda repeated the polemical exaggerations of Lenin that, the working class as an organised force had disappeared. Recent research has shown that working class were still significant in terms of organisation and numbers. For example, see Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24.
[27] The Serge-Trotsky Papers edited by David Cotterill, (London: Pluto Press, 1994 ) p.162.
[28] Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-24,( London: Routledge, 2008) p.58 At the tenth congress, a secret report of corruption of Bolshevik leaders involving: cars, multiple rations, and luxurious accommodation, was hidden from the delegates. Simon deals with the period following the civil war to demonstrate the Bolsheviks lack of commitment to workers democracy did not simply flow from the circumstances of the civil war.
[29] Gabriel Miasnikov, the future leader of the workers group, was in Petrograd when the revolt broke out. He strongly criticised the Bolshevik resort to weapons as a knee-jerk response to the rebellion, instead of dialogue between communists.
[30] See also, Leon Trotsky, Military Writings, vol 4 1921-23.
[31] The Serge-Trotsky Papers, Edited by, David Cotterill, (London: Pluto Press,1994)
[32] Duncan Hallas, Trotsky’s Marxism. ( London: Pluto Press,1979)p. 32
[33] Chris Harman, How the Revolution was Lost, in Russia from Workers State to State Capitalism, Peter Binns, Tony Cliff and Chris Harman.(London: Bookmarks, 1987 )p.30 See also, Samuel Farber, In defence of Democratic Revolutionary Socialism, International Socialism 55, June 1992. The IS tradition greatly underestimated the political and ideological sides. And David Rousset, The Legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, Alison and Busby, London, New York 1982. And John Rees, In defence of October, International Socialism, October 1991,p.62-64. The IS/SWP tradition is supposed to stand for Socialism from below, yet Russia was considered to be a Workers State, without workers power from below, until 1928.
[34] Chris Harman, as above,p.22
[35] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.99. George Breitman, The Rocky Road to the Fourth International 1933-38, Pathfinder, Education for Socialists, 1979.
[36] Mike Jones, New Interventions, Vol 9 Number 1, 1998-99 winter.p.30. The young Trotsky(1904) had described Iskra as a paper for the intelligentsia and the Bolshevik leadership were hardly proletarian.
[37] Leon Trotsky, In Defence of Marxism, quoted in Alfred Rosmer, Trotsky and the origins of Trotskyism,(London: Francis Boutle publishers,2002) p.218
[38] Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours, (New York: Pathfinder Press,1972)
[39] Hillel Ticktin, Trotsky’s Political Economy of Capitalism in, The Trotsky Reappraisal, edited by Terry Brotherstone and Paul Dukes(Edinburgh 1992)p.217
[40] Leon Trotsky, My Life,( New York, Pathfinder Press,1970) p. 467, “under Lenin the post of General Secretary, established by the Tenth congress could only have a technical character, never political.” Stalin used his position to deal with dissidents following the ban on Factions at this congress. Trotsky supported the ban. Lenin defended Stalin’s many positions when, in 1919, Prebrazensky challenged the dubious practice of multiple positions and the accumulation of power in a Stalin’s hands. If Stalin was a man of authority then he had been given authority with Lenin’s support. Even in his last testament Lenin was not against the powerful position of a General Secretary.
[41] Trotsky’s Notebooks 1933-35, Introduction, Philip Pomper,(Columbia University Press,1986)p.27. In his, Stalin., The Revolutionary in Power, vol, 2 Trotsky had written something similar, “the Bolshevik party was created by Lenin. Stalin grew out of its political machine.” This suggests a looser connection. But the prominence of Stalin and Lenin’s role in providing him with positions in the party did worry Trotsky. It’s a thought which must have undermined confidence in his pure Leninist project.
[42] Paul Le Blanc, as above,p.119.
[43] Leon Trotsky, Our Political Tasks (1904) New Park Publications, undated.
[44]Leon Trotsky, Their morals and Ours, (New York: Pathfinder Press,1972)p.44-45. Trotsky polemic with Victor Serge is appalling. So demands for freedom from Serge are just his demands for freedom from discipline. The points Victor serge makes about excessive centralism, mistrust of debate and lack of confidence in the masses are points specific to the Bolshevik party following the October revolution. Trotsky prefers to think they are just abstractions.
[45] Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution, Leninism or Marxism, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, The university of Michigan Press, 1961, p.76-79.
Originally posted on 
recent comments