*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Guest Book Reviews

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
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Reviews

Albert Glotzer, Trotsky: Memoir and Critique, Prometheus Books, New York, 1989, pp343, $24.95
This book is full of fascinating information. Albert Glotzer witnessed Trotsky at work on his famous History at Kadiköy (pp.38ff.), and defending himself before the Dewey commission in Coyoacan (pp.255-74); his own experiences took in the deliberations of the International Secretariat in Paris (pp.29-33, 181ff), including encounters with Maria Reese, Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow, the International Youth Conference in Brussels (pp.195ff.) and a visit to Germany shortly before Hitler assumed power (pp.75-8). Of especial interest to British readers is his account of his visit to Britain to make contact with oppositionists here (pp.80-2), his description of Trotsky’s correspondence with Ridley’s and Groves’ groups (pp.55-6), and his insider’s view of the negotiations between Ridley’s group and the International Secretariat (p.p30-1).

But for all the gems contained in it, this is an unsatisfying book. Glotzer’s descriptions of his childhood, and of his encounters with Trotsky and his movement in Kadiköy, France, Britain and Mexico are vivid, revealing and worthwhile. But these are used as a peg upon which to hang a vapid Cold War analysis. Five pages of embarrassing irrelevancy are devoted to an intemperate attack upon Gorbachev (pp.l37-41), and the supposed critique of Trotsky shows the political level of American Social Democracy to be surprisingly low, even by normal Social Democratic standards. Who, for example, among the labour intelligentsia of Western Europe, would base his view of Trotsky’s thought upon Knei Paz’s dull grey book (p.102), or describe that of Leonard Schapiro as “the now more frequently accepted view” (p.108), or a “celebrated study” (p.246)? The utilisation of such material, and even of better secondary works such as those of Medvedev and Bertram D. Wolfe, is inexcusable in one whose first-hand acquaintance with the primary sources goes back so far. Even the Second Congress of the RSDLP, whose deliberations are available in full in English translation, is dealt with exclusively by means of secondary reporting (pp.92ff.).



It is not entirely accurate. When we consider how deeply involved the leadership of the Bolsheviks had been in Western European Social Democracy before the war, such remarks as that Lenin “cared little about those traditions” (p.95), or that the Bolsheviks were “isolated from European or Western societies and reflected the backward culture of the Tsarist centuries” (p.148) can only strike the reader as absurd. It is simply not true to say that Our Political Tasks has “never been fully translated into other languages”, or that it has never been reprinted by Trotskyist organisations (p.102). Lenin did not call Trotsky “the best Bolshevik” (pp.124-5) but said that since he had joined them there had been “no better Bolshevik”. Nor is there any truth in the remark that Bruno Rizzi’s concept of bureaucratic collectivism “was unknown in the SWP” (p.305, n2).

The sheer polemical overkill not infrequently teeters on the absurd. Stalin, apparently “never changed a single principle of state and Party organisation as enunciated by Lenin” (p.133), and the book closes with the solemn affirmation that “Trotsky must share responsibility with Lenin for the rise of Stalin and Stalinism” (p.323). When we remember how democratic America refused him entry, democratic Britain both interned him and refused him entry, democratic France placed him under what amounted to house arrest, and democratic Norway put him under real arrest, we can only greet with hilarity the statement that “a man of Trotsky’s innate feelings of social justice and a utopian overview of mankind and its future could have thrived best only in democratic society” (p.322).

I much prefer the sort of careful first hand scholarship contributed by a ‘comrade Gates’ to Shirley Waller’s History of the International Marxist Youth Movement. What a shame that he did not write this book, instead of Albert Glotzer.

Al Richardson

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This is an entry from the American Left History blog 

Saturday, August 11, 2007


*ANOTHER SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC LOOK AT LEON TROTSKY-Albert Glotzer's View

Click on title to link to the Albert Glotzer Internet Archive for samples of his writing while was in the Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s and later after he split from that party in the famous Shachtman-led exit in 1940 over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. That was the touchstone issue for his, and later generations, and one can see in the later writing the slip-slide into the defense of "democratic" imperialism. A cautionary tale, for sure.

BOOK REVIEW

TROTSKY-MEMOIR AND CRITIQUE, ALBERT GLOTZER, PROMETHEUS BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1989

THIS MONTH MARKS THE 67TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF LEON TROTSKY BY A STALINIST AGENT-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY

As readers of this space may know I make no bones about being an admirer of the work of Leon Trotsky (see archives). I have noted elsewhere that I believe that the definitive biography of the man is Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume set. Nevertheless, others have written biographies, or in this a case a memoir and critique (naturally-the memoir alone in this case would not sustain a book) on Trotsky that are either less balanced than Deutscher’s or come at it from a different angle with a different ax to grind. Mr. Glotzer’s take on Trotsky’s legacy is a classic post World War II social democratic one driven by the effect of the ravages of American imperialism during the Cold War on the right wing of that international political tendency. The post war period was not kind to those who fell away from the politics that sparked their communist youth, but more on that at another time.

Despite our extreme politic differences Mr. Glotzer’s reminiscences of how he became a communist are welcome. I am always fascinated by how those who came to political maturity a couple of generations before me and who are the real living links to the Russian Revolution felt about that event. Moreover, Mr. Glotzer is no mere chronicler of Trotsky’s life. During the 1930’s before the political temperature in the American left intellectual milieu got too hot for some of them Mr. Glotzer was part of the leadership of the American Trotskyist movement and was a key lieutenant, factional operative and personal friend of a central founder- one Max Shachtman. That these two, along with another “Young Turk” one Martin Abern, spent as much time plotting for organizational control of the movement against the wily ‘bureaucratic’ old timer and founder James P. Cannon during that time as in constructive political work is a separate issue. Needless to say only a few cryptic references to that experience surface in this work- a very selective memoir, as is usually the case. For more on that political struggle read Cannon’s The Struggle for a Proletarian Party and Trotsky’s In Defense of Marxism and make up your own mind.

As always the critique of Trotsky, or more correctly, Bolshevism is centered on the question of the organizational principles of that party. That is democratic- centralism or as the critics would have it bureaucratic-centralism-long on the bureaucratic, short on the democratic. Trotsky is seen here to have escaped that bad practice until he linked up with the Bolsheviks in 1917. This is his 'original sin' in the eyes of liberals and social democrats like Glotzer. The reduction of an organizational principle of a political party to the decisive reason for the degeneration of a revolution defies belief.

The model for all European social democratic parties, including both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in Russia, at the turn of the 20th century was the German party. One does not have to read to far into the history of that party to know that even without state power to buttress its organizational practice that party was as bureaucratically run as any Stalinist party cell. The real question then is not the principle of democratic centralism but the question of a ‘vanguard party’ versus a ‘party of the whole class’. In the end that was what the dispute in the Russian social democracy turned on. And later on the international movement, as well. History has demonstrated, if it has demonstrated anything on this question, that a ‘party of the whole class’ with its implication of inclusiveness toward socially backward workers can never take state power, if that was the idea of those who argued for this type of party in the first place. All of the above said, the question of bureaucracy in the process of transforming society from capitalism to socialism is one that has, in the light of the history of Stalinism, has to be taken as a real question. There are no a priori guarantees on the bumpy road to socialism but that is hardly the decisive question for now.

The rest of Glotzer’s critique is a more or less quick gloss on his politics and a rather annoying gloating over what proved to be the incorrectness of some of Trotsky’s predictions. The central argument Glotzer presents here is that capitalism rather than being in its death throes as Trotsky (and before him, Lenin) suggested still had, and has, a life and is not ready to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Unfortunately, those social democrats, like Glotzer, did more than their fair share of ideological work of behalf of preserving the imperialist status quo. Perhaps he would have been better off if he had ended his memoirs in his Communist youth in the 1930’s when he helped to try to create an international Trotskyist youth movement -that is the Glotzer who interests me. The rest I have heard a million times before.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Albert Glotzer, Trotsky: Memoir and Critique- A Book Review

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "International Socialist Organization" Website

Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.

ISR Issue 72, July–August 2010


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Economic crisis and class struggle
Are recessions better for the left or right, asks Phil Gasper?

The most fundamental argument in favor of socialism is that capitalism is an irrational system that over the long term cannot meet the basic needs of the majority of the population because of its tendency to go into economic crisis. But what if economic crisis leads not to the growth of the left but to the rise of the far right? This is the argument of the radical economist Doug Henwood in a short article published in May on the MRzine Web site.

Henwood begins by criticizing “radicals [who] have fantasized that a serious recession—or depression—would lead to mass radicalization,” and he goes on to argue that there is empirical support for the opposite view—that economic crisis actually benefits the far right not the radical left. The evidence he cites is recent research by the economists Markus Brükner and Hans Peter Grüner. Brükner and Grüner studied sixteen European countries and discovered that between 1970 and 2002, every 1 percent decline in economic growth in these countries was associated with an increase in the vote share of far right and nationalist parties of between 1 and 2 percent.

By contrast, Brükner and Grüner found no corresponding increase in electoral support for communist parties during the same periods of economic decline. Henwood concludes that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right,” and that Brükner and Grüner’s research “helps explain the rise of the Tea Partiers and other strange life forms on the right.”

The first thing to note is that this is an incredibly narrow study on which to base the sweeping conclusion that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right.” In fact Henwood himself immediately notes one “major exception,” namely the United States during the Great Depression, when economic crisis led to a series of mass strikes, the birth of industrial unions, and the growth of the Communist Party to about 80,000 members. However, he adds that this was only because the scale of the crisis was so severe, with unemployment rates reaching 25 percent and, additionally, the “Great Depression didn’t do much for the left in Europe.”

In fact that last claim is not accurate. While the far right obviously grew as a result of the Depression, eventually seizing power in Germany, Spain, and Austria, the left also grew in many European countries, and there was nothing inevitable about its ultimate defeat. In Germany, the Social Democratic and Communist Parties had millions of supporters, and in the election of November 1932, the last genuinely free vote before Hitler took power, their combined support was several percentage points ahead of the Nazis. The tragedy was that the two left-wing parties were fatally divided and unable to agree on a common strategy to defeat the far right in the streets as well as at the ballot box. Similarly in Spain the left grew significantly. It eventually lost the civil war as a result of major conflicts between the different left-wing parties and outside support for Franco’s fascists.

Second, economic crises are a fact of life under capitalism, and one of the main arguments in favor of a different kind of economic system. Henwood instructs the left to “stop hoping for the worst,” but our hopes either way are irrelevant to how the economy actually performs, and severe recessions will periodically take place no matter what we think about them. If it were true that in such circumstances the right will grow and the left will not, there would be grounds for thoroughgoing political pessimism. During periods of economic growth and stability, the radical transformation of society would seem unnecessary, while during periods of economic crisis it would be impossible.

Henwood is certainly right about one thing—there is no automatic relationship between economic crisis and “mass radicalization.” But it is equally wrong to think that there is an automatic connection between crisis and the growth of the right. Whether or not an economic slump results in an increase in class struggle and gains for the left depends on a whole set of complex factors, including the nature of the crisis and the constellation of political forces going into it.

Perhaps no one has written about the relationship between economic booms, slumps, and political consciousness with more insight than the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who addressed these issues several times in the 1920s and the 1930s. In a report he wrote for the Communist International in 1921, Trotsky noted that, “there is no automatic dependence of the proletarian revolutionary movement upon a crisis. There is only a dialectical interaction. It is essential to understand this.” The example that Trotksy used to illustrate this point is worth quoting at length:

Let us look at the relations in Russia. The 1905 revolution was defeated. The workers bore great sacrifices. In 1906 and 1907 the last revolutionary flare-ups occurred and by the autumn of 1907 a great world crisis broke out. The signal for it was given by Wall Street’s Black Friday. Throughout 1907 and 1908 and 1909 the most terrible crisis reigned in Russia too. It killed the movement completely, because the workers had suffered so greatly during the struggle that this depression could act only to dishearten them. There were many disputes among us over what would lead to the revolution: a crisis or a favorable conjuncture?
At that time many of us defended the viewpoint that the Russian revolutionary movement could be regenerated only by a favorable economic conjuncture. And that is what took place. In 1910, 1911 and 1912, there was an improvement in our economic situation and a favorable conjuncture which acted to reassemble the demoralized and devitalized workers who had lost their courage. They realized again how important they were in production; and they passed over to an offensive, first in the economic field and later in the political field as well. On the eve of the war [in 1914] the working class had become so consolidated, thanks to this period of prosperity, that it was able to pass to a direct assault.

This period of class militancy was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War, when a wave of patriotism swept over the country, engulfing all but the most class-conscious workers. But as the war dragged on and Russia suffered massive casualties, patriotism gave way to cynicism and then anger, which eventually culminated in the successful revolutions of 1917.
One conclusion that Trotsky drew from examples like these was that class struggle was not simply the result of economic slump or of economic boom, but was often the result of the rapid shift from slump to boom and back again. Slumps can show the necessity for change, but they can also weaken the power of the working class as some lose their jobs and others become desperate to hang on to theirs. A return to economic growth can give workers renewed confidence to make significant demands, but if the new expansion is long-lived, the possibility for radical change will be lost until a new crisis begins. Here is Trotsky again:

Many of you will recall that Marx and Engels wrote in 1851—when the boom was at its peak—that it was necessary at that time to recognize that the Revolution of 1848 had terminated, or, at any rate, had been interrupted until the next crisis. Engels wrote that while the crisis of 1847 was the mother of revolution, the boom of 1849–51 was the mother of triumphant counter-revolution. It would, however, be very one-sided and utterly false to interpret these judgments in the sense that a crisis invariably engenders revolutionary action while a boom, on the contrary, pacifies the working class…
The irresolute and half-way Revolution of 1848 did, however, sweep away the remnants of the regime of guilds and serfdom and thereby extended the framework of capitalist development. Under these conditions and these conditions alone, the boom of 1851 marked the beginning of an entire epoch of capitalist prosperity which lasted till 1873. In citing Engels it is very dangerous to overlook these basic facts…. At issue here is not whether an improvement in the conjuncture is possible, but whether the fluctuations of the conjuncture are proceeding along an ascending or descending curve. This is the most important aspect of the whole question.

So it was the long period of capitalist expansion in the 1850s and 1860s that stabilized the system and led to a relatively low level of class struggle. By contrast, the period after the First World War, according to Trotsky, was one of long-term instability and decline, during which “upswings can only be of a superficial…character, while crises become more and more prolonged and deeper going.”
The effect of booms and slumps will thus depend in part on the underlying state of the economy—whether it is in a period of sustained expansion in which recessions are relatively minor interruptions, or whether it is in a period of decline in which the booms are short-lived and sustained growth cannot be achieved.

Today we find ourselves in a period of long-term economic instability, in which a return to sustained growth seems unlikely any time in the near future. During the past decade the U.S. economy has experienced two recessions—the most recent, the worst since the Great Depression—and low growth. Even when the economy was growing in the middle of the decade real wages continued to decline. Now the economy is growing again, but unemployment remains high (the real figure is around 15 percent) and there is a strong chance that there will soon be another recession.

Will the current period prove more favorable to the left or to the right? Over the past eighteen months we have certainly seen the growth of the right, including vicious scapegoating of immigrants and the emergence of the Tea Party, with its attacks on “big government” and the supposed socialism of the Obama administration, and its strong undercurrent of racism. Some commentators, including Noam Chomsky, are convinced that there is a real threat of fascism, with parallels to the decline of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis.

There is certainly no reason to be complacent about these developments, but the comparison with Germany in the 1930s makes little sense. Far from being a mass movement, the journalists Anthony DiMaggio and Paul Street describe the Tea Party as “a top-down interest group led by national and local political officials and financed by corporate America” and “fundamentally dependent upon the Republican Party.”

While the Tea Party has been able to mobilize a few thousand people and demonstrations around the country, these have been dwarfed by recent progressive mobilizations, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating for LGBT and immigrant rights. But progressive demonstrations generally receive very little media attention, while the cable channels—particularly, of course, Fox News—have given Tea Party events a level of exposure totally disproportionate to the numbers involved.

DiMaggio and Street argue that, despite some impressive recent mobilizations, much of the left has been “significantly pacified and demobilized by Obama and the corporate Democrats, has surely failed to capitalize on the recent economic downturn, and has generally failed to establish a progressive movement in the short term.” But they also point out that “the Tea Party represents a concession from Republican Party elites that they (along with their Democratic counterparts) no longer enjoy much legitimacy among the American people. Their only way of appealing to voters is to appear as if they are not political leaders, but ‘average people’ taking part in a populist uprising against a corrupt political system.”

Opinion polls show that there has been a significant shift to the left in terms of political attitudes over the past few years. In May, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of people under the age of thirty in the United States view socialism favorably, exactly the same percentage as those with a favorable view of capitalism. That figure alone shows that there is a remarkable opportunity for the left to grow in the current period. We have to honestly acknowledge that organizations to the left of the Democratic Party are tiny and that the labor movement in this country is at a low ebb. But if we are serious about changing the world, now is the time to get involved and rebuild them. The left can grow in a period of economic crisis.

Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.

*From The "Max Shachtman Internet Archives"- "The Genesis Of Trotskyism" (1933)

Click on the headline to line to a "Max Shachtman Internet Archive" online copy of his 1933 work, "The Genesis Of Trotskyism".



Markin comment:

In his prime, under the guidance of James P. Cannon in the American Communist Party, especially in their work in the International Labor Defense, and later as a leader of what became the Trotskyist party in the United States, the Socialist Workers Party, Max Shachtman, knew how to "speak" Marxism. Later, after he turned the task of 'socialism' over to the U.S. State Department and kindred forces, he was still facile as a writer but the politics became ugly, very ugly, except perhaps to the late American Federation Of Teachers President, Albert Shanker. Here is an example of "high" Shachtman.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- "In Defense Of Dialectical Materalism" -A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to the "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" online copy of his 1939 polemic written during the faction fight inside the American Socialist Workers party over the question of defense of the Soviet Union, "The ABC Of Materialist Dialectics".


Workers Vanguard No. 954
12 March 2010

In Defense of Dialectical Materialism

(Young Spartacus pages)

We print below a class given by Spartacist League Central Committee member Don Alexander to the New York Spartacus Youth Club in June 2009. It has been edited for publication.

This class is just to get our feet wet, to begin to absorb the history of Marxism—it wasn’t born in a vacuum. The purpose of the class is to uphold dialectical and historical materialism against all forms of subjective idealism.

Now, I’ll make some basic assertions, just so we’re all on the same page, as they say. Idealism proceeds from the premise that the material world is dependent on the spiritual. It asserts that the spirit, our mind and our ideas can and do exist in separation from matter. The most extreme form of this assertion is subjective idealism. Subjective idealism asserts that matter does not exist at all, but is pure illusion. Idealism asserts that there exists a realm of the mysterious and unknowable that’s above or behind what can be ascertained and known by perception, experience and science. Science is thrown out the window.

Materialism, in direct contradiction, states that the world is, by its very nature, composed of matter, and that everything that exists comes into being on the basis of material causes. Everything arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter. Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality, existing outside of and independent of ideas, and that, far from the mental existing in separation from the material, ideas, including spiritual ones, are a product of material processes. Materialism also teaches that the world and its laws are knowable and that, while much in the material world might not be known, there is no unknowable sphere that lies outside of the material world.

Our social consciousness reflects and is determined by our social being. I want to start with that because it’s not a commonplace, particularly in a period of great religiosity. That’s why the quote from the German Marxist Franz Mehring in the current Workers Vanguard is so timely [see “Franz Mehring: On Historical Materialism,” WV No. 938, 5 June 2009]. Mehring proceeds from the understanding that material economic conditions are primary in shaping any given society. In his pamphlet On Historical Materialism (1893), he also remarks that “the human mind is not the father of the mode of production, but the mode of production is the mother of the human mind.” I think this is a really good quote because it says what is.

Our discussions do not take place in a vacuum. Nothing exists in isolation, either in nature or in society. Contradiction, the unity and struggle of mutually opposed forces and tendencies, is inherent within things. Change and movement operate on the basis of contradictions. Contradictions constitute the foundation of movement. In Anti-Dühring [Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (1877-78)], Engels succinctly remarked, “Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be.” So in other words, comrades, there is no supreme being, there is no god setting in motion the eternal universe. I don’t have to tell people here that.

Climbing Out of Obscurantism

The dialectical materialist conception is that all processes of nature and society are in a constant and uninterrupted process of change and development, of eternal becoming. Marx referred to this as “a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up” (“Afterword to the Second German Edition,” Capital, Vol. I [1873]). It’s not the case that Marx is saying that all previous philosophical inquiries were rubbish. He just makes the point that the materiality of the world is demonstrated by the long and laborious development of the natural sciences.

The ancient materialists anticipated modern materialism, asserting the priority of nature over consciousness and ideas. The mechanical materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries directed their fire against the medieval theologians, and they maintained that material particles in the universe are constantly bombarding each other somewhat at random. They basically viewed human beings as machines. This was materialist, but it was also mechanical. Human consciousness includes one’s sensations and ideas as active factors in molding one’s environment to procure the means of subsistence. (The actual conditions and methods through which this occurs vary, of course, throughout the course of history.)

You’re familiar with René Descartes, the early 17th-century rationalist who believed that there are certain indubitable, self-evident propositions, for instance, the famous one, cogito ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” He figured out that you couldn’t doubt your existence if you didn’t exist. So, that almost exhausts my Latin.

Another profound statement of subjective idealism was from Bishop George Berkeley, who remarked—it was in the 18th century—esse is percipi—“to be is to be perceived.” So if you didn’t see a man slipping on a piece of ice in Central Park during a day in the winter, or if you weren’t present when somebody turned off the light to go to sleep, then it didn’t happen. Now, I’m going to let Berkeley speak for himself, because unlike most of the professional philosophers defending idealism, he rarely beat around the bush. In his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) he alleged that:

“All the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind...that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.”

As you can see, we have been climbing our way out of obscurantism and idealist flights of fancy for a long time.

The Dialectical Method

The 1939-40 factional struggle within the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is documented in Trotsky’s In Defense of Marxism. Trotsky wrote powerfully against the cliquist, anti-Soviet opposition of Max Shachtman, James Burnham and Martin Abern. He characterized them as a petty-bourgeois opposition. They maintained that dialectical materialism didn’t have anything to do with working out a concrete political position. I want to read you the opening to “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party”:

“It is necessary to call things by their right names. Now that the positions of both factions in the struggle have become determined with complete clearness, it must be said that the minority of the National Committee is leading a typical petty-bourgeois tendency. Like any petty-bourgeois group inside the socialist movement, the present opposition is characterized by the following features: a disdainful attitude toward theory and an inclination toward eclecticism; disrespect for the tradition of their own organization; anxiety for personal ‘independence’ at the expense of anxiety for objective truth; nervousness instead of consistency; readiness to jump from one position to another; lack of understanding of revolutionary centralism and hostility toward it; and finally, inclination to substitute clique ties and personal relationships for party discipline. Not all the members of the opposition of course manifest these features with identical strength. Nevertheless, as always in a variegated bloc the tinge is given by those who are most distant from Marxism and proletarian policy. A prolonged and serious struggle is obviously before us.”

Following Engels, Trotsky pointed out that, just as Darwin revealed the laws of development of living species of organic matter, so Marx revealed the laws of development of human history. (Darwin was not a conscious dialectician.) The economic forces of production play an indispensable role: they are the ultimate determining factor in social and economic life. The relationships between human beings producing their means of material survival determine the actual relations of production. See—you have to be able to eat and have clothing and shelter, to cooperate in some form or fashion, in order to be able to wrest a living from nature. Upon this rests the entire superstructure of society—the art and the politics and religion and the philosophy and the morality.

This doesn’t rule out, of course, the effects of the superstructure upon the economic base. The father of Russian Marxism, Georgi Plekhanov, had the highest praise for Antonio Labriola, the Italian Marxist, a great materialist thinker. But in The Materialist Conception of History (1897), Plekhanov pointed out that one of the weaknesses of Labriola was his tendency to isolate racial factors, explaining the development of human societies in terms of their norms of beauty and their rituals, etc. It’s not that these things shouldn’t be studied. Plekhanov gives the example of why women among the Ishavs in the Caucasus cut off their braids on the death of a brother, but not on the death of their husbands—what does this mean? Well, this stuff is interesting, but ultimately you have to look at how people procure their means of subsistence. That’s what’s dominant.

Comrades, the dialectical method is not merely a question of development in the abstract. There’s a bourgeois-liberal doctrine of development, of gradualness, that ignores the fact that there are leaps in nature and society, that one form of matter transforms into another through a sudden change. The dialectical method posits that everything in nature and society can only be understood in its fundamental connections with everything else and in its constant movement from simpler forms to higher forms, from quantity into quality.

Trotsky gave many examples about formal logic and its use and its limitations in this superb book, In Defense of Marxism. You know:

“The Aristotelian logic of the simple syllogism starts from the proposition that ‘A’ is equal to ‘A.’ This postulate is accepted as an axiom for a multitude of practical human actions and elementary generalizations. But in reality ‘A’ is not equal to ‘A.’ This is easy to prove if we observe these two letters under a lens—they are quite different from each other. But, one can object, the question is not of the size or the form of the letters, since they are only symbols for equal quantities, for instance, a pound of sugar. The objection is beside the point; in reality a pound of sugar is never equal to a pound of sugar—a more delicate scale always discloses a difference. Again one can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this true—all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, color, etc….

“Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects. In the elaboration of bearing-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are considered as being equal. (‘A’ is equal to ‘A.’) When the tolerance is exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings become inferior or completely worthless.”

Trotsky succinctly describes dialectical thought as the following:

“Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion....

“We call our dialectic, materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our ‘free will,’ but in objective reality, in nature.”

Successive Approximations

The German philosopher Georg Hegel was an absolute idealist who was very critically assimilated by Marxists, Lenin especially, and many others. He viewed history as the unfolding of the absolute idea. However, he also recognized that everything that exists changes uninterruptedly; everything comes into being and then passes out of existence. Marx and Engels stood his dialectical idealism, as they said, right side up and extracted its rational kernel from its mystical shell. In the aftermath of the defeat of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, Lenin had to fight for dialectical materialism against those known as the “god seekers” of his party, the Lunacharskys and the Bogdanovs. He forcefully defended the materialist dialectic against its detractors.

The article “Lenin as Philosopher” (Labour Review, September-October 1957) by Peter Fryer is just incredibly good, and I’ll get back to that. The Healyites, pseudo-Trotskyist political bandits who in 1959 formed the British Socialist Labour League, threw away a very valuable cadre. With characteristic modesty, Fryer wanted to know why we had such praise of him in the issue of Spartacist with our article “Healyism Implodes” (Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 36-37, Winter 1985-86). He didn’t think what he wrote was such a big deal, but he was certainly happy about the truthful account we gave of life in the Healyite jungle. That organization abused dialectics very regularly in the service of opportunist politics. As we explained in “Healyism Implodes,” they resolved the contradiction between a formally correct program and a corrupt internal “regime”:

“by sharp programmatic departures from Trotskyism: principally, their embrace of the Maoist ‘Cultural Revolution,’ which was at bottom nothing but an unusually degrading and violent falling out between sections of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy; and their line on the 1967 Arab-Israeli ‘Six Day War’ when, in the name of fighting Zionist racism and expansionism, they embraced a totally classless concept of an ‘Arab Revolution’ consisting of the despotic nationalist regimes which have cravenly colluded with imperialism and Zionism to dismember the Palestinian nation.”

Now, in “Lenin as Philosopher,” Peter Fryer writes about E.P. Thompson, who was a preeminent British Marxoid historian. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963) is still worth the read—I learned a lot from that. But Thompson claims—and Fryer refutes him—that Marxism is a form of economic reductionism that negates the subjective factor, or what he calls the human agency. In other words, Marxism ignores, allegedly, the role of human consciousness as an active factor. Thompson accuses Lenin of viewing consciousness as nothing but a passive mirror reflection of social reality. That is just exactly the opposite of the truth.

Fryer uses two really wonderful quotes from Lenin—these come from Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks (1914)—which sum up dialectical knowledge as “an endless process of the deepening of men’s knowledge of things, phenomena, processes, etc., proceeding from appearance to essence and from essence less profound to essence more profound.” And, “When human intelligence grapples with a particular thing, draws from it an image (= a concept), that is not a simple, direct, dead act, it is not a reflection in a mirror, but a complex, twofold, zigzag act.”

Scientific Investigation of History

The International Communist League intervened in the unfolding political revolution in East Germany in 1989-90 based upon a program for proletarian political revolution in the East and socialist revolution in the West [see “For the Communism of Lenin and Trotsky!” Spartacist (English-language edition) No. 47-48, Winter 1992-93]. We didn’t win, but we fought, and that’s key. Afterwards, we had extensive discussion to try to grasp the various aspects of what had happened in that very complex, rapidly developing incipient revolution. Jan Norden, who in 1996 would defect from our organization to co-found the Internationalist Group (IG), belittled and denied the ICL’s role as the conscious revolutionary vanguard. He repeatedly claimed, “the key element was missing, revolutionary leadership.” The polemical reply, that “we were the revolutionary leadership” in Germany, has a core of truth but is still insufficient. Science proceeds through successive approximations.

What happened was not simply determined by what we did, although what we did was very important. To say otherwise ignores the actual balance of forces and is radically false, both politically and theoretically. While imprisoned under Mussolini, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote in The Modern Prince about the formation of what he called a “collective will,” that is, a compact group struggling for power. As Gramsci put it:

“The active politician is a creator, an awakener, but he neither creates from nothing nor moves in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effective reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile or is it not rather a relationship of forces in continuous movement and change of equilibrium? To apply the will to the creation of a new balance of the really existing and operating forces, basing oneself on that particular force which one considers progressive, giving it the means to triumph, is still to move within the sphere of effective reality, but in order to dominate and overcome it (or contribute to this).”

Here’s what Fryer says: sometimes there are unforeseen consequences of what one struggles for. He says that:

“The materialist recognition of the objectivity of being and its laws is, not yet freedom, but the requisite for all real freedom.

“It is of course perfectly true that men act with conscious aims and intentions. But no attempt to explain human history in terms of the conscious aims and intentions, wills and desires of men will advance our understanding very far. Man’s aims clash, and something happens which no one had intended, desired or foreseen. Therefore any scientific understanding of social development has to start from ‘the inner general laws’ which ultimately govern both the development of human society and the aims and intentions, ideas and theories, in people’s heads.”

So men’s aims clash. There were also forces that were active in East Germany in 1989-90 that tried to stop this process of incipient political revolution cold. One was Gorbachev’s Stalinist bureaucracy. After the January 3 demonstration against the fascist desecration of a memorial to Soviet soldiers at East Berlin’s Treptow Park, the German imperialists launched a furious anti-communist campaign. Then we saw the Stalinists driving full steam with the anti-Soviet, pro-capitalist West German Social Democratic Party—which we called the Trojan horse of capitalist counterrevolution—for capitalist reunification. [See “‘Workers Soviets Must Rule in All Germany!’” WV No. 948, 4 December 2009.]

Marxism is a scientific investigation of history that places the acts of individuals in their concrete historical context. So comrade Bert Mason’s article in the current Workers Vanguard was a fine contribution on the role of Lincoln in the American Civil War [“Honor Abraham Lincoln!” WV No. 938, 5 June 2009]. “Lenin as Philosopher” is superb; it’s a masterful analysis of dialectical contradictions. I especially appreciated that Fryer put his analysis in the context of World War I, when Lenin was studying Hegel and grappling with the betrayal by the German Social Democrats who had deserted to the side of their own bourgeoisie during the first imperialist world war. How did such a formidable workers party, with vast influence in the German proletariat, come to that state of opportunist degeneration? What was the process of economic and political and social development that led to their social-patriotic capitulation?

Well, that’s what Lenin dealt with in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). He examined all the phases of the development of an opportunist layer within the working class. Without this, one couldn’t understand how quantity turned into quality. Mutually opposed, contradictory tendencies are inherent in all phenomena of nature and society. Lenin explained how the unity and conflict of oppositions, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in this case, worked themselves out. Lenin assiduously studied Hegel, and we have to, too.

I wrote a short note about an article in Workers Vanguard that was uncritical of the American philosopher John Dewey, that quoted Dewey approvingly without criticizing him philosophically (“On John Dewey,” WV No. 924, 7 November 2008). The same Dewey who had a role in fighting the frame-up of Trotsky by the Stalinist epigones was an opponent of Marxism and of the October Revolution. Dewey was a pragmatist, not any kind of dialectical materialist. Trotsky scathingly denounced pragmatism as a mixture of rationalism and empiricism—empiricism means one’s own sense impressions are the ultimate source of knowledge. It doesn’t mean that empiricists completely say that there’s no independently existing objective world out there. Trotsky denounced pragmatism as the “curse of American thought” and insisted that an unpostponable task of the SWP—this was in 1939-40—was to educate its cadres in the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

Against Philosophical Idealism

This talk wouldn’t be complete without a short exposition on the manifestations of the various forms of subjective idealism. Lenin argued that, ultimately, idealism is clericalism. In popular terms, it’s sort of like “thinking makes it so.” You have probably heard the vulgar version of it: if a tree crashes in the forest and I wasn’t present, then it didn’t crash. That, ultimately, logically, leads to what is called solipsism—that the only things that are real are one’s own subjective impressions and thoughts and sensations.

Many years ago, through a rather laborious process, I studied some of the idealists, who are important to understand. Immanuel Kant, the German idealist, was very interesting, but difficult to read in many ways. His key work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), sought to reconcile idealism and materialism. Kant didn’t deny the existence of “things in themselves,” just our ability to know them. He formulated this along the following lines: how are a priori synthetic judgments possible? How do we arrive at truth independent of human experience and scientific experimentation? Essentially, what he argues for are the propositions of what is known as common sense, which is really unsystematized and pre-scientific. Kant also studied astronomy, which made him very interesting. But he tried to reconcile materialism and idealism.

In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886), Engels had to deal with such thinkers. Of course, he made his way through Ludwig Feuerbach, who rightly criticized Hegel for his absolute idealism. Marx, in his “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845), characterized Feuerbach’s materialism as contemplative, noting that for Feuerbach, “things, reality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively.”

In “A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party,” Trotsky referred to a conversation he had with a certain British political economist who echoed the liberal economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes was a proponent of “priming the pump,” and deficit spending to stimulate demand, and government investment in order to arrest the endemic financial and economic crises of capitalism—some of the stuff that Obama and his administration are tinkering with. On the basis of his discussion with this political economist, with his praise for Keynes and his hatred of Marx, Trotsky concluded that he was an opponent of materialist dialectics in his general outlook. Trotsky says:

“If it is possible to place a given person’s general type of thought on the basis of his relation to concrete practical problems, it is also possible to predict approximately, knowing his general type of thought, how a given individual will approach one or another practical question. That is the incomparable educational value of the dialectical method of thought.”

Marxism: A Guide to Action

We have applied this dialectical materialist methodology to many questions. You can look at “Cuba and Marxist Theory” (Marxist Bulletin No. 8) where we applied our dialectic, materialist methodology in assessing the formation of a bureaucratically deformed workers state in Cuba. A petty-bourgeois-led, guerrillaist movement led to the destruction of capitalism in Cuba without the leadership of a Trotskyist party. Developing that understanding required the application of a dialectical materialist methodology. It was part of the preservation and extension of our fundamental Marxist program.

This is the same thing as with the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)—you have to appreciate the role of actual contradictions. The EFCA was a referendum on unionization, with the National Association of Manufacturers and other bosses’ organizations waging a major campaign against it while the AFL-CIO and Change to Win union federations campaigned for its passage. While warning the workers against any reliance on any government-prescribed mechanisms of class collaboration, we would support the EFCA in its original form because the card-check provision would make it somewhat easier to organize unions. We drew the class line without hiding our criticism of the role of the defeatist, class-collaborationist union bureaucrats. We examined the concretes of the EFCA with its living contradictions, not on the basis of speculation, but on the basis of scientific investigation of history. Our investigation included what the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyists of the time, wrote about the 1935 Wagner Act, which contributed to more comrades doing research on the history of the Marxist movement. [See “Why Marxists Support the EFCA,” WV No. 929, 30 January 2009.]

Dialectics is not a master key for all questions; you have to make a concrete, scientific analysis. I want to end with a quote from “Lenin as Philosopher,” which I think is really apropos of what we’re talking about:

“Men’s power to change their world progressively crystallizes out and perfects the scientific element in their concepts; their relative helplessness on the other hand gives rise to the tendency of abstract ideas to fly away from reality and weave themselves into marvelous, internally consistent systems of myth and illusion, from which the real world and real relationships of men to nature and men to men are then deduced.”

A comrade asked why do we need to read anything by this Gramsci guy? Wasn’t Gramsci anti-Trotsky, and so on. Definitely on the Trotsky-Stalin question, Gramsci went not for Trotsky but for Stalin. So that was his contradiction. But he had some very penetrating observations about consciousness, the relationship between the subjective and the objective, and how an objective, concrete analysis of the relationship of forces in the national and international context is critical to deciding how to apply one’s program. It’s very helpful.

It’s a terrible waste to dismiss somebody like that. Just like dismissing Plekhanov, whose renegacy is well known. Following the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, Plekhanov denounced the December Moscow insurrection as an adventure, and in 1917 he opposed the seizure of power by the Bolshevik-led workers. Importantly, however, he never joined hands with those Mensheviks and others who tried to mobilize against the revolution. In the course of the Civil War following the 1917 Revolution, Lenin concluded that there’s no way that you could be a genuine communist without understanding Hegel’s logic, Plekhanov’s philosophical works, and Marx’s Capital.

That’s a challenge to us to rise to a higher theoretical level, because that’s the only way to prepare ourselves for the tasks of the struggle for a communist future. It’s a laborious, worthwhile, lifelong process.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor American Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon

Click on the title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of his 1944 chapter on the history of the early American Trotskyist movement, "The Dog Days Of The Left Opposition".

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

*****

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Markin comment:

I will stand by my previously stated remarks made in many earlier entries about the place of James P. Cannon in the American revolutionary pantheon- he had, in his prime, the capacity, warts and all, to help lead the American socialist revolution, if the opportunity had ever presented itself. The above-linked article is placed here as evidence of that capacity and to show the current generation that, even though we are in a trough in the class struggle better days are coming, or we had better act like they are.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Max Shachtman In His Socialist Workers Party Days

Click on the title to link to the Max Schachtman Internet Archive's copy of his rather prophetic, 1939 article, "Intellectuals In Retreat".

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

*****

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.


Markin comment;

Max Shachtman is exactly the kind of left-wing political figure that I was thinking of when I mentioned above the partial contributions of those who, in the end, became enemies, one way or another, of the struggle for our communist future. Although he eventually joined the ranks of the "State Department" socialists after World War II in his youth he was a boon factional companion of James P. Cannon in the American Communist Party, an editor of the class struggle defense newspaper, "Labor Defender", and founding member of the American Trotskyist organization, the Socialist Workers Party. He is also, I might add, the main source for all those political slanders aimed at his former mentor, Cannon, concerning his alleged high-handed bureaucratic regime.

*Labor's Untold Story Told- The Holt Labor Library-The Voices of The Pioneers Of American Trotskyism

Click on title to link to the Holt Labor Library's audio program of the voices of the pioneers of the American Trotskyist movement, mainly what later became the Socialist Workers Party in 1938.

*From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-Trotskyists and the Second World War

Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

Workers Vanguard No. 943
25 September 2009

Trotskyists and the Second World War

(Quote of the Week)

Bourgeois scribblers and reformist swindlers falsely assert that the Second World War, which began in September 1939, was a battle for “democracy against fascism.” In fact, World War II was driven by the same underlying economic impulse as the First World War: the struggle among the imperialist powers to seize new arenas of exploitation around the planet and to defend their existing ones. Against the tide of reactionary patriotism, Trotskyists carried out their internationalist duty to rally the proletariat in its own class interests: standing for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union, a workers state despite its Stalinist degeneration, and opposing all the imperialist combatants in that carnage—a position for which U.S. Trotskyists were imprisoned in 1941. We print below excerpts from a resolution adopted by the Eleventh Convention of the American Trotskyist movement in November 1944 that was originally printed in Fourth International, published by the then-revolutionary Socialist Workers Party.

When the United States entered the second World War, Roosevelt, chief spokesman of American capitalism proclaimed that this war was a crusade for democracy, for the “Four Freedoms,” for the destruction of fascism and totalitarianism. The labor bureaucrats, recruiting sergeants for the war machine, volunteered their services to sell the war as a conflict between “free labor” and “slave labor.”

After three years of America’s participation in the war, the demagogic slogans under which the people were dragooned into the slaughter have been stripped bare. Democracy and freedom are among the first casualties of the war. The slogans of “national unity” and “equality of sacrifice” are a snare. The pledges to take the profits out of war to prevent a new crop of wartime millionaires, are proved a monstrous hoax.

The capitalist government logically began its reactionary campaign by striking its first blows at the class-conscious vanguard of the American working class. On the very day war was declared, December 8, 1941, sentence was passed on the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. They were convicted under the anti-labor Smith “Gag” Act for their uncompromising and outspoken opposition to the war program and because of their firm adherence to the principles of revolutionary Socialism. The conviction and imprisonment of the 18 was accompanied by a whole series of measures designed to throttle the unions and paralyze labor’s resistance to the onslaught of Big Business.

The right to strike, basic to the freedom of the labor movement, has been virtually outlawed. Workers have been frozen to their jobs at frozen wages while the cost of living continues to rise. A “modified” version of forced labor has been imposed by executive decree. An increasing weight of taxes is being saddled on those least able to pay while corporation profits soar to the highest levels in history.

The war immediately strengthened the most reactionary groups and institutions. The surge of reaction, especially the persecution of minorities and the spread of race-hatred, is a wartime continuation of tendencies inherent in capitalist decay. Brutal discrimination and humiliating segregation of the Negro people in the armed forces as well as in civilian life reduce the slogans of “democracy and freedom” to a hideous mockery for 13-million American citizens. The wave of anti-Semitism unloosed by capitalist reaction has already risen to alarming proportions. Jim Crowism and anti-Semitism march hand in hand with the assault against the organizations of the working class. This is the reality behind the demagogic facade of the “Four Freedoms.”

Prior to America’s entry into the war, this reactionary trend was analyzed and forecast in the Manifesto of the Fourth International on The Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution which stated:

“Seeking to gain the advantages of a totalitarian regime, the imperialist democracies launch their own defense with a redoubled drive against the working class and the persecution of revolutionary organizations. The war danger and now the war itself is utilized by them first and foremost to crush internal enemies. The bourgeoisie invariably and unswervingly follows the rule: ‘The main enemy is in one’s own country’.”

—“The U.S. and the Second World War,” Fourth International (January 1945)

*Labor's Untold Story-Honor The 75th Anniversary Of The Minneapolis Teamsters' Strikes

Click On Title To Link To James P. Cannon's Writings On The Great Minneapolis Teamsters Strikes Of 1934

Commentary

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of three great labor struggles that ended in victory in heart of the Great Depression(the 1930s version of what we, at least partially, confront today); the great General Strike in San Francisco that was led by the dockers and sailor unions and brought victory on the key issue of the union hiring hall (since then greatly emasculated); the great Minneapolis Teamster strikes that led to the unionization of truck drivers and allied workers in that labor-hating town and later to the organizing of over-the-road drivers that created one of the strongest (if corrupt) unions in North America; and, the Toledo Auto-Lite Strike whose key component was leadership by the unemployed workers. Does all of this sound familiar? Yes and no. Yes, to labor militants who, looking to a way out of the impasse of the condition of today's quiescent labor movement, have studied these labor actions. No, to the vast majority of workers who are either not organized or are clueless about their history. In either case, though, these actions provide a thread to how we must struggle in the future. Although 75 years seems like a long time ago the issues posed then have not gone away. Far from it. Study this labor history now to be ready to struggle when we get our openings.

*******


This year is the 75th Anniversary of the great Minneapolis Teamsters strikes that paved the way to the later over-the road trucker unionization that was to make the Teamsters Union one of the strongest unions (if at the same time one of the most corrupt but that is a story for another time). Here is a 1934 article by Socialist Workers Party(SWP) (then Communist League Of America)leader James P. Cannon who was also a key leader behind the scenes (and not so behind the scenes when the law came looking to arrest him and Max Schachtman) about the lessons to be learned by labor militants from that great series of strike actions. I also recommend "Teamster Rebellion" and "Teamster Power" by local Teamsters leader and later SWP leader Farrell Dobbs. Those books trace the rank and file struggle and the later over-the road fight that he was instrumental in leading.


James P. Cannon

The New International
1934

Minneapolis and its Meaning
June 1934
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Written: 1934
Source: The New International. Original bound volumes of The New International and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack


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Standing by itself, the magnificent strike of the Minneapolis truck drivers would merit recognition as an extraordinary event in modem American labor history. Its connection with the second wave of labor struggles to sweep the country since the inception of the NRA, however, and its indubitable place as the high point of the present strike wave, invest the Minneapolis demonstration with an exceptional importance. Therefore it has come by right to be the subject of serious and attentive study and of heated discussion. This discussion, despite all the partisan prejudice and misrepresentation injected into it, is bound on the whole to have a profitable result. The best approach to the trade union question, the key question of revolutionary politics in the United States, is through the study and discussion of concrete examples.

The second strike wave under the NRA raises higher than the first and marks a big forward stride of the American working class. The enormous potentialities of future developments are clearly written in this advance. The native militancy of the workers, so impressively demonstrated on every strike front in recent months, needs only to be fused with an authentic leadership which brings organization, consciousness, and the spirit of determined struggle into the movement. Minneapolis was an example of such a fusion. That is what lifted the drivers’ strike out above the general run. Therein lies its great significance—as an anticipation, if only on a comparatively small, local scale, of future developments in the labor movement of the country. The determining role of policy and leadership was disclosed with singular emphasis in the Minneapolis battle.

The main features of the present strike wave, on the background of which the Minneapolis example must be considered, are easily distinguishable. Now, as in the labor upsurge of last year, the attitude of the workers toward the NRA occupies a central place. But the attitude is somewhat different than it was before. The messianic faith in the Roosevelt administration which characterized the strike movement of a year ago and which, to a certain extent, provided the initial impulse for the movement, has largely disappeared and given place to skeptical distrust. It is hardly correct, however, to say, as some revolutionary wishful thinkers are saying, that the current strikes are consciously directed against the NRA. There is little or no evidence to support such a bald assertion.

It is more in keeping with reality to say that the striking workers now depend primarily on their own organization and fighting capacity and expect little or nothing from the source to which, a short year ago, they looked for everything. Nevertheless they are not yet ready even to ignore the NRA, to say nothing of fighting against it directly. What has actually taken place has been a heavy shift in emphasis from faith in the NRA to reliance on their own strength.

In these great struggles the American workers, in all parts of the country, are displaying the unrestrained militancy of a class that is just beginning to awaken. This is a new generation of a class that has not been defeated. On the contrary, it is only now beginning to find itself and to feel its strength. And in these first, tentative conflicts the proletarian giant gives a glorious promise for the future. The present generation remains true to the tradition of American labor; it is boldly aggressive and violent from the start. The American worker is no Quaker. Further developments of the class struggle will bring plenty of fighting in the USA.

It is also a distinct feature of the second strike wave, and those who want to understand and adjust themselves to the general trend of the movement should mark it well, that the organization drives and the strikes, barring incidental exceptions, are conducted within the framework of the AFL unions. The exceptions are important and should not be disregarded. At any rate, the movement begins there. Only those who foresaw this trend and synchronized their activities with it have been able to play a part in the recent strikes and to influence them from within.

The central aim and aspiration of the workers, that is, of the newly organized workers who are pressing the fight on every front, is to establish their organizations firmly. The first and foremost demand in every struggle is: recognition of the union. With unerring instinct the workers seek first of all the protection of an organization.

William S. Brown, president of the Minneapolis union, expressed the sentiment of all the strikers in every industry in his statement: “The union felt that wage agreements are not much protection to a union man unless first there is definite assurance that the union man will be protected in his job.” The strike wave sweeping the country in the second year of the NRA is in its very essence a struggle for the right of organization. The outcome of every strike is to be estimated primarily by its success or failure in enforcing the recognition of the union.

And from this point of view the results in general are not so rosy. The workers manifested a mighty impulse for organization, and in many cases they fought heroically. But they have yet to attain their first objective. The auto settlement, which established the recognition of the company union rather than the unions of the workers, weighs heavily on the whole labor situation. The workers everywhere have to pay for the precedent set in this industry of such great strategic importance. From all appearances the steelworkers are going to be caught in the same runaround. The New York hotel strike failed to establish the union. The New York taxi drivers got no union recognition, or anything else. Not a single of the “red” unions affiliated to the Trade Union Unity League has succeeded in gaining recognition. Even the great battle of Toledo appears to have been concluded without the attainment of this primary demand.

The American workers are on the march. They are organizing by the hundreds of thousands. They are fighting to establish their new unions firmly and compel the bosses to recognize them. But in the overwhelming majority of cases they have yet to win this fundamental demand.

In the light of this general situation the results of the Minneapolis strike stand out preeminent and unique. Judged in comparison with the struggles of the other newly formed unions—and that is the only sensible criterion—the Minneapolis settlement, itself a compromise, has to be recorded as a victory of the first order. In gaining recognition of the union, and in proceeding to enforce it the day following the settlement, General Drivers Union No. 574 has set a pace for all the new unions in the country. The outcome was not accidental either. Policy, method, leadership—these were the determining factors at Minneapolis which the aspiring workers everywhere ought to study and follow.

The medium of organization in Minneapolis was a craft union of the AFL, and one of the most conservative of the AFL Internationals at that. This course was deliberately chosen by the organizers of the fight in conformity with the general trend of the movement, although they are by no means worshippers of the AFL. Despite the obvious limitations of this antiquated form of organization it proved to be sufficient for the occasion thanks to a liberal construction of the jurisdictional limits of the union. Affiliation with the AFL afforded other compensating advantages. The new union was thereby placed in direct contact with the general labor movement and was enabled to draw on it for support. This was a decisive element in the outcome. The organized labor movement, and with it practically the entire working class of Minneapolis, was lined up behind the strike. Out of a union with the most conservative tradition and obsolete structure came the most militant and successful strike.

The stormy militancy of the strike, which electrified the whole labor movement, is too well known to need recounting here. The results also are known, among them the not unimportant detail that the serious casualties were suffered by the other side. True enough, the striking workers nearly everywhere have fought with great courage. But here also the Minneapolis strike was marked by certain different and distinct aspects which are of fundamental importance. In other places, as a rule, the strike militancy surged from below and was checked and restrained by the leaders. In Minneapolis it was organized and directed by the leaders. In most of the other strikes the leaders blunted the edge of the fight where they could not head it off altogether, as in the case of the auto workers—and preached reliance on the NRA, on General Johnson, or the president. In Minneapolis the leaders taught the workers to fight for their rights and fought with them.

This conception of the leadership, that the establishment of the union was to be attained only by struggle, shaped the course of action not only during the ten-day strike but in every step that led to it. That explains why the strike was prepared and organized so thoroughly. Minneapolis never before saw such a well-organized strike, and it is doubtful if its like, from the standpoint of organization, has often been seen anywhere on this continent.

Having no illusions about the reasonableness of the bosses or the beneficence of the NRA, and sowing none in the ranks, the leadership calculated the whole campaign on the certainty of a strike and made everything ready for it. When the hour struck the union was ready, down to the last detail of organization. “If the preparations made by their union for handling it are any indication,” wrote the Minneapolis Tribune on the eve of the. conflict, “the strike of the truck drivers in Minneapolis is going to be a far-reaching affair. . . . Even before the official start of the strike at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday the ’General Headquarters’ organization set up at 1900 Chicago Avenue was operating with all the precision of a military organization.”

This spirit of determined struggle was combined at the same time with a realistic appraisal of the relation of forces and the limited objectives of the fight. Without this all the preparations and all the militancy of the strikers might well have been wasted and brought the reaction of a crushing defeat. The strike was understood to be a preliminary, partial struggle, with the objective of establishing the union and compelling the bosses to recognize it. When they got that, they stopped and called it a day.

The strong union that has emerged from the strike will be able to fight again and to protect its membership in the meantime. The accomplishment is modest enough. But if we want to play an effective part in the labor movement, we must not allow ourselves to forget that the American working class is just beginning to move on the path of the class struggle and, in its great majority, stands yet before the first task of establishing stable unions. Those who understand the task of the day and accomplish it prepare the future. The others merely chatter.

As in every strike of any consequence, the workers involved in the Minneapolis struggle also had an opportunity to see the government at work and to learn some practical lessons as to its real function. The police force of the city, under the direction of the Republican mayor, supplemented by a horde of “special deputies,” were lined up solidly on the side of the bosses. The police and deputies did their best to protect the strikebreakers and keep some trucks moving, although their best was not good enough. The mobilization of the militia by the Farmer-Labor governor was a threat against the strikers, even if the militiamen were not put on the street. The strikers will remember that threat. In a sense it can be said that the political education of a large section of the strikers began with this experience. It is sheer lunacy, however to imagine that it was completed and that the strikers, practically all of whom voted yesterday for Roosevelt and Olson, could have been led into a prolonged strike for purely political aims after the primary demand for the recognition of the union had been won.

Yet this is the premise upon which all the Stalinist criticism of the strike leadership is based. Governor Olson, declared Bill Dunne in the Daily Worker, was the “main enemy.” And having convinced himself on this point, he continued: “The exposure and defeat of Olson should have been the central political objective of the Minneapolis struggle.” Nor did he stop even there. Wound up and going strong by this time, and lacking the friendly advice of a Harpo Marx who would explain the wisdom of keeping the mouth shut when the head is not clear, he decided to go to the limit, so he added: “This [exposure and defeat of Olson] was the basic necessity for winning the economic demands for the Drivers Union and the rest of the working class.”

There it is, Mr. Ripley, whether you believe it or not. This is the thesis, the “political line,” laid down for the Minneapolis truck drivers in the Daily Worker. For the sake of this thesis, it is contended that negotiations for the settlement of he strike should have been rejected unless the state troopers were demobilized, and a general strike should have been proclaimed “over the heads of the Central Labor Council and state federation of labor officials.” Dunne only neglected to add: over the heads of the workers also, including the truck drivers.

For the workers of Minneapolis, including the striking drivers, didn’t understand the situation in this light at all, and leaders who proceeded on such an assumption would have found themselves without followers. The workers of Minneapolis, like the striking workers all over the country, understand the “central objective” to be the recognition of the union. The leaders were in full harmony with them on this question; they stuck to this objective; and when it was attained, they did not attempt to parade the workers through a general strike for the sake of exercise or for “the defeat of Governor Olson.” For one reason, it was not the right thing to do. And, for another reason, they couldn’t have done it if they had tried.

The arguments of Bill Dunne regarding the Minneapolis “betrayal” could have a logical meaning only to one who construed the situation as revolutionary and aimed at an insurrection. We, of course, are for the revolution. But not today, not in a single city. There is a certain unconscious tribute to the “Trotskyists”—and not an inappropriate one—in the fact that so much was demanded of them in Minneapolis. But Bill Dunne, who is more at home with proverbs than with politics, should recall the one which says, “every vegetable has its season.” It was the season for an armed battle in Germany in the early part of 1933. In America in 1934, it is the season for organizing the workers, leading them in strikes, and compelling the bosses to recognize their unions. The mistake of all the Stalinists, Bill Dunne among them, in misjudging the weather in Germany in 1933 was a tragedy. In America in 1934 it is a farce.

The strike wave of last year was only a prelude to the surging movement we witness today. And just as the present movement goes deeper and strikes harder than the first, so does it prepare the way for a third movement which will surpass it in scope, aggressiveness, and militancy. Frustrated in their aspirations for organization by misplaced faith in the Roosevelt administration, and by the black treachery of the official labor bureaucracy, the workers will take the road of struggle again with firmer determination and clearer aims. And they will seek for better leaders. Then the new left wing of the labor movement can have its day. The revolutionary militants can bound forward in mighty leaps and come to the head of large sections of the movement if they know how to grasp their opportunities and understand their tasks. For this they must be politically organized and work together as a disciplined body; they must forge the new party of the Fourth International without delay. They must get inside the developing movement, regardless of its initial form, stay inside, and shape its course from within.

They must demonstrate a capacity for organization as well as agitation, for responsibility as well as for militancy. They must convince the workers of their ability not only to organize and lead strikes aggressively, but also to settle them advantageously at the right time and consolidate the gains. In a word, the modem militants of the labor movement have the task of gaining the confidence of the workers in their ability to lead the movement all the year round and to advance the interests of the workers all the time.

On this condition the new left wing of the trade unions can take shape and grow with rapid strides. And the left wing, in turn, will be the foundation of the new party, the genuine communist party. On a local scale, in a small sector of the labor movement, the Minneapolis comrades have set an example which shows the way. The International Communists have every right to be proud of this example and hold it up as a model to study and follow.

***Writer's Corner- James T. Farrell On Meeting Leon Trotsky

Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For The Writer (Most Famously The "Studs Lonigan" Trilogy)And Left-Wing Political Activist. More, Much More Will Appear On This Writer At A Later Time, Including His Political Disputes With Various American Followers Of Leon Trotsky And His Contributions To The Socialist Workers Party's Political Defense Work(Especially, The Defense Of Leon Trotsky, During The Heart Of The Moscow Trials- When It Counted).

Guest Commentary

James T Farrell

A Memoir on Leon Trotsky

I met Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937. He seemed different from what might have been expected. He gave the impression of extraordinary simplicity. Alice Ruhl – wife of Otto Ruhl, one time left wing Socialist member of the German Reichstag and biographer of Karl Marx – said of Trotsky that he had changed from his younger days: he had, she said, become more simple, more like Lenin. Many who knew him earlier said that he was cold. He did not seem so in Mexico. He was easy to talk to and one felt less distance between him and oneself than is sometimes the case when one meets a man prominent in political life. But this comparison is perhaps not a good one. Trotsky was then a defeated leader, and a man in exile. He was seeking to rebuild a political movement and was engaged in the most dramatic fight of his life. Accused of betraying the revolution he helped to lead and the society he did so much in helping to found, he was defending his revolutionary honor. He lived behind guarded walls, and followers and secretaries of his carried guns inside his home. He was preparing to answer the charges Stalin launched against him in the Moscow trials.

Elsewhere I have described the Coyoacan Hearings held by the Commission of Inquiry of which Dr. John Dewey was chairman. [1] I shall not repeat this here, but shall merely offer a few personal impressions and anecdotes about him.

One could not separate Trotsky the man from Trotsky the historical figure. When you saw him and spoke with him, you were aware that he was the man who organized the practical details of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and also that he was the organizer of the Red Army. You were aware that you were speaking with one of the greatest revolutionaries in history. He himself had a deep sense of history and of his own historic role. The intense drama of his life was known to me. There he was in that home on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan, pitting his brain against an empire. It was because he was Trotsky that his simplicity was so striking when he was gray and living like a hunted man in Mexico. His followers spoke of him in worshipful tones. For them, he made life more important. He permitted them to believe that they, too, were entering history. They called him “the Old Man,” and they acted like disciples. Constantly, they would pose questions to ascertain what one thought of him, and when John Dewey remarked on Trotsky’s brilliance, they immediately began thinking and hoping that Trotsky would convert Dewey to Trotskyism.

There was an exactness about Trotsky. Even in English, his choice of words revealed this. He seemed to know how far he wanted to go with each person, and his choice of words conveyed or suggested this. There was not, however, much spontaneity in him – or, rather, his spontaneity was kept in check. He, himself, had given his life to an Idea. This Idea – the Revolution – and his personality were as though fused together. A brave man, he was always ready to make any sacrifice to the Idea, and he dealt with people in terms of their relationship to and their acceptance of the Idea. What use would they be to this Idea, this cause? He was working for and living for the cause.

Thus, while he was easy to talk. to, it yet remained that there was a distance between him and others. You did not come into contact with his full personality as you did with, say, John Dewey. This seemed most clear to me the last time I spoke with him. We sat by the long table on which he worked in the home of the painter, Diego Rivera, on Avenida Londres in Coyoacan. He asked me what I was going to do when I returned to America. “I’m going to write novels.” He said he knew that, but again asked me what I was going to do. The service to the cause was more important to him than your personality. Max Eastman, who knew him much better than I did, has often said that he was cold. This I believe is what Eastman means, this seeing individuals as servants to an aim and an idea rather than as personalities in their own right. And this was a trait in his character which marked him off as so different from John Dewey.

He was a witty, graceful, and gallant man. There was something deeply touching and inspiring in his relationship with his wife, Natalia. She was very small and elegant. One could see that she had once been a beautiful woman. The tragedies of her life, the loss of her children in particular, had saddened her. Hers was one of the saddest faces I have ever seen, and she is one of the bravest and noblest of women. Whenever you saw them together, you could not but sense how there was a current of tenderness between them. A gentleness and depth of feeling was apparent in the way he looked at her or touched her hand.

We went on a picnic with him after the ending of the Coyoacan Hearings. Waiting to leave and standing on the porch of the patio of the Rivera home, there was Trotsky bustling about, making sure that there was enough food for everyone, that there was beer for me, that nothing would be forgotten or overlooked. My wife said to me teasingly that Trotsky took an interest in his home and that if he could, why couldn’t I. He came up to me a moment later. I remarked: “L.D., you have ruined my life.”

I explained what I meant and told him what my wife had said.

“It is very simple,” he answered, speaking with a strong accent. “Once (pronouncing it like vunce) I had to feed five million men. It is a little more complicated than feeding five.” Often there was a point, a political reference, a moral in his wit.

We left for a nearby woods in two cars. My wife and I got into the back seat of a roadster. All was in readiness for our departure. Suddenly, Trotsky appeared at the side of the car and said: “Jim, I will (the w pronounced like a v) ride in the open car, and Hortense will ride in the closed car.”

There was gallantry here. For Trotsky to ride in an open car meant a possible risk to his life. Along with his gallantry, there was in his nature a deep respect for women. I have met many Europeans of the Left and of the Revolution, and I have read much of their lives and been told many anecdotes about them. Many of these men, without being quite aware of it, have given the best years of their lives to an effort to emancipate mankind. But with a good proportion of them, emancipation stops at the door of their own homes. Their wives are not completely included in this emancipation; they do all of the housework and serve their revolutionary husbands, sometimes slavishly. In one place in his recent biography The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Isaac Deutscher mentions how Trotsky, busy as he was, would in a very un-European fashion, help Natalia with the housework and the care of the children. Trotsky’s gallantry was, I believe, real, and it was based on a sense of the dignity of women and of respect for them.

At the picnic, Trotsky and Natalia went off to walk in the woods in opposite directions. This was undoubtedly a solace to him. He lived a guarded life of confinement with little freedom of movement. His secretaries constantly guarded him, with guns on holsters at their side. A contingent of Mexican police stood outside the Rivera home to protect him. He fretted and balked in this confinement, and he was fatalistic about the danger of his being assassinated. He believed that when Stalin wanted really and finally to have him murdered, Stalin would undoubtedly succeed. And as is known, this happened.

After taking the walk, he returned to the group. One of the Americans present was building a fire. He was an ex-follower of Trotsky’s who had left the Trotsky movement, but who had come to Coyoacan to help the work of the Dewey hearings. Trotsky watched him for a moment and became impatient. He didn’t like the way the American friend was going about making the fire. He took over and made his own fire, accompanying it with raillery that was friendly but also sharp. And there was political point to this. Trotsky was teasing a one-time follower for having broken ideologically with the Trotskyite Movement. Trotsky always liked to tease Americans, especially about so-called American efficiency, and he also teased his American ex-follower in this vein.

We ate and talked and sang. One of Trotsky’s police guards was a tall, young, and good looking Mexican cop. Trotsky liked and trusted him. This policeman sang El Rancho Grande, and everyone liked it so much that he was asked to sing it again. After Trotsky was murdered, I was told that this policeman had been bought by enemies of Trotsky’s.

I had several talks with him. Having been an American in the twenties and having read my H.L. Mencken, I sometimes took a relish in telling stories which recounted stupidity. I told a story of this kind. The subject was a famous European writer with whom Trotsky had had controversies. This writer is not stupid, but he appeared this way because he had been evading questions concerning Stalin that would have pinned him down. Trotsky became quickly impatient and didn’t want to hear the end of the story. It bored him. He interrupted and said: “X should learn how to write better novels.”

He asked questions about American literature and spoke of having read Babbitt, but his admiration for Lewis’ book was qualified. The character of Babbitt seemed unintelligent to him. I spoke of Dreiser whom I praised as a great writer but whose philosophical and general ideas I thought sometimes banal. Trotsky asked how could a man be a great writer if his ideas were stupid. “What American writers need,” he said, “is a new perspective.”

He meant a Marxian perspective. He believed that America would one , day have a great Marxist renaissance. Actually he hadn’t read enough of American literature to know whether American writers did or did not need a new perspective. His statement was a consequence of the confidence of faith. Marxism was a science to him, and it permitted him to predict in faith.

Speaking of how Americans viewed him, I said that many saw him as a romantic figure, in fact as a romantic hero. He said that he knew this and disliked being so regarded. He wasn’t interested in my explanation of how it happened that he seemed to some Americans a romantic figure.

Just before the beginning of the first of the hearings of the Dewey Commission, Trotsky was standing on the porch outside his work room. The divorced wife of a famous American writer crashed the gate, and, inside the home, she went up to Trotsky. She told him that he didn’t know who she was and then identified herself by giving her former husband’s name.

“I am sure,” responded Trotsky, “that if I did know, I should be most impressed.”

Another time, I asked him if he thought that Stalin and Hitler would get together. This was in 1937, and some of us who had engaged in the bitter fight against the Moscow trials had come to believe that a Nazi-Soviet alliance was going to be made. Trotsky answered by remarking that if this happened, it would be a great catastrophe. Around that time, he predicted the Stalin-Hitler pact.

My publisher, James Henle, an old newspaper man, had worked on the New York World in 1917. He had been sent to interview Trotsky, then in New York, and they had met in a bakery on the East Side. Trotsky had struck Henle as an intelligent man. He had predicted the Russian Revolution. But as Henle tells the story, he heard endless predictions in those days. A month later, the February Revolution in Russia happened. Trotsky did not remember this interview.

The last time I saw him, I went to his home on the day before I left Mexico. When I arrived he was talking with Otto Ruhl in his office. Ruhl had stood with Karl Liebnecht during the first World War. When the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, Ruhl had characterized it as a “pacifist putsch.” He and Trotsky had almost never agreed, it seemed. There they were, two old revolutionaries in exile in Mexico. They still disagreed, and speaking in German, their voices rose. I heard Trotsky talking loudly, in fact shouting. I couldn’t understand a word of German, but I could guess what they were arguing about. Ruhl was still, in Mexico, determined to press his disagreement, with the Bolsheviks of 1917. I was told that soon after this Otto Ruhl and Trotsky stopped seeing each other.

The lunch was simple, but less so than normal. Trotsky was a most gracious host. There was not much talk and then we said good-by. He went to take an afternoon siesta.

His was one of the fastest working minds I have ever encountered. And just to see and talk to him, one had a sense of a great will. His body, his habit were bent to that will. in many ways he was Spartan. There were times in fact during his days of power when he spoke like a man of a modern Sparta, and Isaac Deutscher uses the word Spartan in reference to Trotsky at one point in his biography.

This memoir is passing and random. It does not treat of Trotsky’s theories and ideas. This I shall try to discuss on another occasion. Here, I merely wished to set down passing impressions of Trotsky. His personality was not only strong but highly attractive. He was very gracious. There was a mocking look in his bright eyes, and I had the feeling that he looked out on life with a kind of mockery and irrepressible sense of irony. He had committed himself to an idea, and he had risen to heights of power that few men know. And then, there he was, back in exile. Most of his life was spent in exile. In Siberia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, he had been an exile – writing, talking, urging, serving a burning idea with total conviction.

He was strikingly different from many exiles. Revolutionary exiles frequently decay and disintegrate. Trotsky didn’t. No man could have known a defeat more total than he. It was amazing how little it damaged him. Writing, fighting the same battle, he didn’t seem like an embittered or unhappy man. I thought of this, and how different are the stories of Napoleon’s exile. Trotsky was a man who might be compared to Napoleon. But in exile, Napoleon bore the strains and the isolation less well than Trotsky. With Napoleon, power was all. To Trotsky, power was the means of making his ideas possible. It was the means whereby man achieved his historic destiny. Power was the arm of a faith. That faith served him in exile.


I was in the hospital, weak and worn, following an operation for a carbuncle. It was night. A radio was on at the head of my bed. I was not listening to it. There was a news broadcast. About half of the words penetrated my mind. Leon Trotsky ... assassin ... not expected to live.

I was shocked. I couldn’t sleep and was given a pill. The next morning, I woke up with a feeling of guilt. I had had some dream. Then the news vendor came, and there was the story of the murder. His life was like a Greek tragedy. He was a great hero and a great martyr. But the tragic character of Trotsky’s death only focuses on the great and terrible tragedy of our century. Such burning conviction, such brilliance, such Spartan sacrifice as his – and it went to create a state that evolved into the most terrible tyranny in history. Today, the state which he helped to create stands threatening the freedom of all of us. The values we cherish, the hopes of man for a more decent world, these are now threatened by that powerful state. Trotsky and Lenin were among the great men of this century. But has it ever been that the work, the life of two great men has ended in such brutal and inhuman tyranny? The ironies of their stories are written in blood and suffering. It is now almost thirty-seven years since they were the leaders of the October Revolution. And as we can look back, it, seems from this particular vantage point that we could be no worse off if their work and their achievement had never been. The horrors of Tsardom are as nothing to those which succeeded it.

Trotsky walked in his garden. The sun was shining. The afternoon was at the point of beginning to wane. He went into his work room and sat down with the manuscript his assassin had brought him. The Alpine stock was driven into his brain. His blood fell on a page of the manuscript of his biography of Stalin. The last words he had written were “the idea.” His own blood spilled on that page.



Footnotes
[1] John Dewey in Mexico, in my book, Reflections At Fifty and Other Essays, New York 1954.