Prometheus Research Library

A Working Archive of American and In­ter­na­tion­al
Marxist History, Documentation, and Related Interests

	Printable version	HOME	February 1989
	Prometheus Research Series 2

• Introduction

• Appendix: “Proletarian Military Policy”

• Appendix: “Trotskyists in WW II,”
  by Pierre Vert

• Socialist Workers Party

• Max Shachtman’s Polemics

• “Fascism and the World War,” 4 November 1940

• “Working-Class Policy in War and Peace,” January 1941

• Britain: Resolutions from the founding
  conference of the Rev­olu­tionary
  Com­mu­nist Party, March 1944

• “Resolution on Military Policy”

• “On National Defence”

• “Attitude of the Proletariat Towards Imperialist War”

• Appendix: “Britain’s War Production Is in Chaos”

Editions La Brèche

Martin Widelin, founded underground anti-
Nazi newsletter addressed to German soldiers.

no credit

Piet van 't Hart, leader of the Com­mit­tee of Rev­olu­tionary Marxists, who fought clandestinely during the German occupation of Holland, 1940-1945.

• France: Com­mit­tees for the Fourth
  In­ter­na­tion­al, April 1941

• “A Propos of ‘Trade-Union Control of National
  Defense’,” by Comrade C.

• “The Committee’s Reply to Comrade C.”

• Bibliography

published by Spartacist Publishing Co.

Introduction

“Trotskyist Policies on the Second Imperialist War--Then and In Hindsight,”

by the In­ter­na­tion­al Executive Com­mit­tee of the in­ter­na­tion­al Spartacist tendency

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Continued from left column

But to call in the midst of a potentially rev­olu­tion­ary situation for proletarian state power to defend against Hitler is not the same thing as to call for “trade-union con­trol of military training” when it is the bourgeois state waging war against Hitler. Trotsky erred in attempting to raise a positive set of demands for the war in the absence of a rev­olu­tion­ary situation. As a general rule rev­olu­tionaries prefer to raise negative demands on the bourgeois state—these are the most powerful vehicles for mobilizing the masses against the bour­geoi­sie. Positive demands on the core institutions of the capitalist state—the army, police and courts—are easily bent in the reformist direction of portraying the bourgeois repressive apparatus as somehow class-neutral.

“Proletarian Military Policy”: Either Utopian...

In hindsight it is clear that the P.M.P. is shamelessly utopian: the bourgeois state is not about to legislate away its con­trol of military training. The working class cannot “con­trol” any aspect of the bourgeois army, except in a transitory rev­olu­tion­ary situation (e.g. one pre­sent­ing certain elements of dual power). In such a situation, Leninists seek to win the mass of the soldiers to the side of the incipient proletarian rev­olu­tion, in the process smashing the institutions of the bourgeois state and thus creating a new proletarian state in its place.

Along the road of struggle leading to the es­tab­lish­ment of a proletarian state, the call for the es­tab­lish­ment of workers self-defense or­gan­iza­tions is central to the rev­olu­tion­ary program. These or­gan­iza­tions represent the army of the workers state in embryo—but only if they are completely in­de­pen­dent of the bourgeois state. The Transitional Program, adopted at the founding conference of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al in 1938, couples its call for workers’ military schools and military training with the demand for the “complete in­de­pen­dence of workers’ or­gan­iza­tions from military-police con­trol.”²⁶ But the P.M.P. demanded that the bourgeois state fund workers’ military schools, bending toward a reformist position on the char­ac­ter of the capitalist state. The SWP’s ridiculous demand for “trade-union con­trol of conscription” went even further down this road.

...Or a Concession to Allied War Propaganda

Rev­olu­tionary defeatism represents the desire, from an in­ter­na­tion­al and strategic standpoint, to turn the im­pe­ri­al­ist war into a civil war. Yet the origins of the formulation reveal a certain confusion inherent in its use. Lenin first developed the concept during the Russo-Japanese war, when he supported the military victory of nascent Japanese capitalism against the tsarist monarchy (Lenin viewed the war as a repeat of the nationalist wars of 19th century Europe and not as an interim­pe­ri­al­ist conflict prefiguring WWI). However, during the First World War Lenin clearly generalized “defeatism” into a policy which applied equally to the pro­le­tar­iats of all the im­pe­ri­al­ist combatants. The use of the term “defeatism” is based on the recognition that: (1) a string of military defeats for an im­pe­ri­al­ist gov­ern­ment helps to bring about domestic social struggle and (2) any significant social struggle in time of war inevitably “aids” the enemy power. The pro­le­tar­iat will not curtail the class struggle for fear of facilitating the victory of the “enemy” im­pe­ri­al­ist camp. Karl Liebknecht’s slogan “The main enemy is at home” best encapsulates the sense of Lenin’s rev­olu­tion­ary defeatism.

Lurking not far under the surface of the P.M.P. was the proposition that the pro­le­tar­iats of the world had a greater enemy than their own bour­geoi­sies—namely German fascism. Hitler’s armies were marching toward Paris as Trotsky wrote the May 1940 Manifesto; later Trotsky advocated that the ig­no­mini­ous French capitulation become the centerpiece of P.M.P. propa­gan­da:

It is important, of course, to explain to the advanced workers that the genuine fight against fascism is the socialist rev­olu­tion. But it is more urgent, more imperative, to explain to the millions of American workers that the defense of their “democracy” cannot be delivered over to an American Marshal Pétain....If the fatherland should be defended, then the defense cannot be abandoned to the arbitrary will of individuals. It should be a common attitude.²⁷

But Trotsky had pointed out as early as 1934 that fascism in power operates in a manner politically akin to a bonapartist military dictatorship.²⁸ To link “defense of democracy” and “anti-fascism” with the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ist war effort represented a capitulation to false consciousness. It was the job of rev­olu­tionaries to expose the anti-fascist pretensions of the “democratic” ruling classes. In 1927 Winston Churchill had declared to Mussolini’s gov­ern­ment, “If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.”²⁹ A decade later he was railing about the “bestiality of Nazism.” The Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al had hammered home the point that the “democratic” bour­geoi­sie of today will tomorrow employ the fascists as a club against the rev­olu­tion­ary pro­le­tar­iat. While in theory the P.M.P. was based on the idea that the “democracies” would rapidly try to institute some kind of bonapartist dictatorship, in practice it conceded ground to the “anti-fascist” war propa­gan­da of the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ists. Thus it meant retreat to a profoundly ahistorical view of the war and the regimes prosecuting it.

The new military policy was only applied, and could only have been applied, in Britain, the United States and their ancillary allies (Australia, Canada). Sam Levy at once recognizes and attempts to deny this fact:

The struggle was first and foremost in the original bourgeois democratic countries, even though the struggle for the armed bodies of men was equally necessary in the Fascist countries, though its manner and form would be determined by circumstances, the difficulties involved, etc.³⁰

Levy has to be vague about the concrete application of the P.M.P. to Germany. The May 1940 Manifesto was hardly demanding that Hitler’s state establish schools for workers’ training under trade-union control.

The world pro­le­tar­iat had every reason to fear and loathe the Nazi jackboot. Naturally this fear was particularly acute in the European nations which were most vulnerable to German conquest and occupation. The Belgian masses had already experienced occupation in WWI. But it was not the job of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al to accept the Allied bourgeois armies as saviors by declaring that (in the words of the May Manifesto) “We do not wish to permit the bour­geoi­sie to drive untrained or half-trained soldiers at the last hour onto the battlefield.” Trotsky was not referring to the German army in this passage—there is a tacit Anglo-American bias behind the abstraction of “the bour­geoi­sie.”

Yes, Hitler’s armies had smashed through Holland, Belgium and France—thousands had died and millions were going to die in this obscene war of im­pe­ri­al­ist conquest, the renewal and intensification of the conflagration that had wracked the European continent from 1914 to 1918. But far better that intense proletarian class struggle and colonial uprisings paralyze the British and American war effort, perhaps leading to transient German victories, than that the pro­le­tar­iat implicitly support the Allied armies by demanding better trained and equipped soldiers! Behind the P.M.P. as it was developed by the British and American Trotskyists lies the insistence that “Hitler must stop at our borders”—that is, the assumption that military defeat, occupation, mass murder, forced labor could or should only happen to the peoples of the European continent and the colored peoples of the colonies.

If mass popular opposition to the war had disrupted the British war effort, leading Hitler to attempt a Channel crossing (as it was, he never mounted a serious effort), the German conquerors would have inherited the problems of the British bour­geoi­sie, compounded by national resentment at the foreign invader. The colonial slaves of the British empire would doubtless have taken advantage of a humiliating British defeat to declare their in­de­pen­dence. It is not hard to imagine the rev­olu­tion­ary world scenario which would have ensued, infecting even the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, many of whom were the sons of Social Dem­ocratic and Com­mu­nist workers.

In fact the masses of India did take advantage of the war to press their struggle for national liberation. Within a few weeks of Britain’s bald announcement that India was “at war” with the Axis powers, 90,000 workers were on strike against the war in Bombay, and there were also strikes and mass meetings in Calcutta and elsewhere. If the small Trotskyist forces had demanded, in the midst of this strike wave, that the British im­pe­ri­al­ists fund special schools under trade-union con­trol so that the Indian masses could “fight fascism” and defend British “democracy,” it would have meant their trans­for­ma­tion and virtual dissolution into the British administration.

The initial Indian strike wave was derailed, but mass antiwar sentiment did not evaporate. The rapid succession of Japanese military victories in Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and finally Burma impelled even the compradors of Gandhi’s Congress Party to action against the war. In August and September of 1942 a massive “Quit India” movement swept the subcontinent. Barricades went up in the streets of Bombay, spon­ta­ne­ous strikes erupted—millions went into the streets shouting “Inquilab Zindabad!” (Long Live the Rev­olu­tion!). British retaliation was swift and vicious: thousands were killed, entire villages were bombed by the air force, and tens of thousands were rounded up and put in British concentration camps. The Indian Stalinists, now firm backers of the British war effort, helped the im­pe­ri­al­ists crush the struggle. The young and inexperienced Trotskyist forces organized in the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India (BLPI—led at the time by exiled members of the Ceylonese Lanka Samasamaja Party) intervened heroically. They warned of the treachery of the Congress Party and the Stalinists, advocated the agrarian rev­olu­tion—and they called for the formation of strike and workers self-defense com­mit­tees. The P.M.P. had no place in the BLPI’s program, which was headlined with the slogans, “Down with imperialism! Down with the im­pe­ri­al­ist war!”³¹

The British and American Trotskyists could have pursued these same negative slogans which had been used by rev­olu­tionaries in World War I. “Not one man and not one penny for the im­pe­ri­al­ist army” should have been the basis for their propa­gan­da on the war. Insofar as the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ists lost during the early years of the war, “fear of foreign invasion” did come to predominate in popular political consciousness in the main Allied metropolitan centers. But the Allied losses weren’t terminal. The population was not ground into the kind of despair, desperation and grasping at alternatives (real or illusory) that leads to massive unrest and revolt against a warring gov­ern­ment, as occurred, e.g., in Russia in 1917, in Germany in 1918, among the Ukrainian peasantry in June 1941. In any case rev­olu­tionaries do not base their program on transitory popular moods, but on the historic interests of the working class. In the early years of the First World War the tiny forces of the Zimmerwald antiwar socialists had to swim against the current of popular pro-war sentiment. They stuck to their guns, awaiting the domestic discontent that the hardships of war (and especially defeat) inevitably engender. This was also the task of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­alists in World War II.

A Step Toward Social-Patriotism

The American SWP and British WIL used the P.M.P. to blur their propa­gan­da on the nature of the war and blunt the edge of their rev­olu­tion­ary defeatism. A 1941 pamphlet published by the WIL claimed that their newspaper, Socialist Appeal, had “consistently put forward a proletarian military policy whereby the workers will be enabled to wage a genuine rev­olu­tion­ary war against Hitlerism and every other brand of Fascism.”³² The SWP’s Militant declared: “the real solution is to transform this im­pe­ri­al­ist war into a war against fascism.”³³ The Militant’s declaration is made in the midst of an article opposing the new “Lend-Lease” law (which allowed Roosevelt to provide massive material aid for the British war effort) and it is coupled with the statement: “That can only be done by taking all power out of the hands of the capitalist class. The workers can fight and conquer fascism only by taking con­trol of the country into their own hands.” Yet when 29 leaders of the SWP and Teamsters Local 544 were tried in Minneapolis under the Smith Act (18 were eventually convicted and sent to prison), Cannon’s trial testimony also tended toward the call to transform the war into a “real” struggle against fascism:

Q: Is it true then that the party is as equally opposed to Hitler as it is to the capitalist claims of the United States?

A: That is uncontestable. We consider Hitler and Hitlerism the greatest enemy of mankind. We want to wipe it off the face of the earth. The reason we do not support a declaration of war by American arms is because we do not believe the American capitalists can defeat Hitler and fascism. We think Hitlerism can be destroyed only by way of conducting a war under the leadership of the workers.³⁴

In addition, Cannon portrayed “trade-union con­trol of military training” as a simple legislative proposal—a bit of parliamentary cretinism most insincerely delivered. Cannon’s trial testimony was a source of controversy in the Trotskyist movement at the time, but the P.M.P. figured in only a minor way. Grandizo Munis’ criticism was suffused with striking advocacy of “violence” and “sabotage,” revealing a good dose of Blanquism and anarchism. Neither Cannon then, nor Trotskyists today, seek or glory in any general way in “violence” and “sabotage.”

Yet Cannon's testimony certainly lacks the sense that imbued the thesis on American imperialism adopted by the founding conference of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al:

There is every indication that, unless European imperialism is smashed by the proletarian rev­olu­tion and peace established on a socialist basis, the United States will dictate the terms of the im­pe­ri­al­ist peace after emerging as the victor. Its participation will not only determine the victory of the side it joins, but will also determine the disposition of the booty, of which it will claim the lion’s share....American imperialism challenges the claims of its older rivals to exclusively exploit China’s vast rich resources, both natural and human. Behind this “pacific” slogan [the “open door”] is the half-drawn sword—against both Japan and England for an increasing right to exploit China and the Chinese masses. As in all other cases, American imperialism in the Far East is a thin cloak for aggressive im­pe­ri­al­ist expansion.³⁵

In fact the ferocious war between the Japanese and American im­pe­ri­al­ist forces in the Pacific figured hardly at all in the weekly newspaper of the SWP after Roosevelt finally succeeded in provoking the Japanese to declare war on the United States. The only ideological basis for the Pacific War was intense racism (on both sides)—rev­olu­tionaries could hardly find a “bridge” to the defensist sentiments of the masses on that basis.

The im­pe­ri­al­ist ambitions of Washington and Tokyo in Asia figured prominently in Trotsky’s own projections as to the probable course of WWII. From the beginning of the Japanese war against China in July 1937, Fourth In­ter­na­tion­alists had given unconditional military support to the Chinese resistance to Japanese conquest, while recognizing that the war in China would become “more and more interlocked with the im­pe­ri­al­ist war” (May Manifesto). After December 1941 Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist army did subordinate itself to the U.S. im­pe­ri­al­ist war effort, but Mao Tse-tung’s peasant-based forces continued to wage the struggle for national in­de­pen­dence. The prescience of Trotsky’s December 1939 prediction that the Japanese would move from China into the American, British and Dutch colonies of the South Pacific (and not northwest toward the USSR)³⁶ is startling in light of the fact that it was only two years later that the heroic Soviet spies Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi finally confirmed that this was the intention of the Japanese high command.

The SWP’s adoption of the P.M.P. necessitated a certain blindness to the grinding, racist war being fought in Asia. Yet the Militant condemned the internment of Japanese Americans, and the SWP also conducted extensive agitation for black rights during the war. Prior to the late 1930s the American black population lived largely in the rural South, but the war and the military buildup that preceded it saw a tremendous migration of blacks into industry in the North and West, into Southern urban areas, and into the military. Blacks keenly resented the fact that the armed forces remained rigidly segregated, with the upper echelons of the officer corps heavily drawn from white Southerners and openly racist. While the black population hated everything that Hitler stood for, wartime propa­gan­da about American “democracy” ran counter to their everyday experience. Thus black American response to WWII mobilization was contradictory, ranging from skeptical to cynical to overtly hostile. This latter reaction was captured in the words of a young Southern black quoted in the 19 October 1940 Socialist Appeal as saying, “I only hope I go to the army and stay there long enough to get my hands on a machine gun....All the fighting I’ll ever do will be right here at home.” The SWP’s wartime agitation against Jim Crow won it substantial black recruitment, much of it deflected from the Com­mu­nist Party, which had abandoned the struggle for black rights when it embraced the im­pe­ri­al­ist war effort. This exemplary campaign against racism and segregation, especially in the military, tended to cut across the implicit social-patriotism of the P.M.P.

The P.M.P.’s tendency to blur the line between defeatism and defensism was reflected in the statement, first made in the May 1940 Manifesto, that a Bolshevik strives to be the “best soldier.” This stands in flat contradiction to the Manifesto’s call for fraternization between the troops of the im­pe­ri­al­ist armies, but it is repeated in the SWP’s September 1940 resolution. In contrast, a Manifesto by the Executive Com­mit­tee of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al written just after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union calls for workers to be the “best soldiers” in a suitable army—the Red one.³⁷ The rev­olu­tionaries imprisoned in Stalin’s Arctic camps, among whom there still numbered many Trotskyists, volunteered to serve in the Red Army by the hundreds of thousands. Despite the criminal refusal of the Stalinist bureaucracy to let them fight, the Soviet political prisoners did what they could for the Soviet war effort, relinquishing certain of their rights and agreeing to the extension of the working day to 12 hours.³⁸ This was totally appropriate: Trotskyists were military defensists in the case of Soviet Russia, but they were not supposed to be defensists in the case of the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ists. 

The SWP zealously applied Trotsky’s dictum that “any confusion with the pacifists is a hundred times more dangerous than temporary confusion with the bourgeois militarists”³⁹ They dumped their campaign against conscription in favor of a virulent attack on “mealy-mouthed” pacifism, which their September 1940 resolution labels “a debilitating poison in the workers’ movement.” This in the midst of a major wave of social-chauvinism!

Leninists do not separate them­selves from the masses of youth, especially the young workers, drafted in time of im­pe­ri­al­ist war. If drafted, rev­olu­tionaries go into the army with the rest of their generation in order to engage in propa­gan­da and agitation against the war. Individual pacifist resistance is no solution to im­pe­ri­al­ist war, yet many of its practitioners are courageous individuals whom Marxists want to address with their propa­gan­da—and the bourgeois state’s repressive measures against them should certainly be opposed by rev­olu­tionaries. Mass pacifist sentiment can provide a starting point for rev­olu­tion­ary propa­gan­da against the war, as the report of the Canadian section to the Emergency Conference of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al in May 1940 recognized (there was mass opposition to conscription in French Canada).⁴⁰

The anti-pacifist campaign of the SWP and WIL paralleled that of the bourgeois militarists. After the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the pacifist George Orwell became an open social-patriot and he railed that it was left-wingers “trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist” who had sapped the morale of British imperialism in the face of Hitler.⁴¹ With the Wehrmacht sitting across the Channel, the WIL’s emphasis on the need to “arm the workers” had to sound similar to Orwell’s call on the British state to “arm the people” against Nazi invasion.

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¹ Pierre Broué, “Trotsky et les Trotskystes face à la deuxième guerre mondiale,” Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no. 23 (September 1985), 35-60. Back

² Sam Levy, “The Proletarian Military Policy Revisited,” Rev­olu­tionary History, vol. I, no. 3 (Autumn 1988), 8-18. Back

³ This work appears in Leon Trotsky’s The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), 199-258. Back

⁴ Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972), 306-307. The entire manifesto, quoted extensively below, appears on pages 299-329. Back

⁵ “Once Again: The USSR and Its Defense,” 4 November 1937, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1937-38), 2nd ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1976), 43. Back

⁶ “Learn to Think,” 22 May 1938, ibid., 333. Back

⁷ “A Step Toward Social Patriotism,” 7 March 1939, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1938-39), 2nd ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974), 211-212. Back

⁸ “Stalin’s Capitulation,” 11 March 1939, ibid., 216-219. Back

⁹ “Manifesto of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian World Rev­olu­tion,” Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), 2nd ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), 183-222. Back

¹⁰ See “On the Question of Workers’ Self-Defense,” ibid., 99-105. This article was written on 25 October 1939 but not published by Trotsky in his lifetime. Back

¹¹ “Discussions with Trotsky,” 12-15 June 1940, ibid., 251-289. Only the discussion of 12 June deals directly with the P.M.P. Back

¹² See “We Do Not Change Our Course” (30 June 1940), “Letter on Conscription” (9 July 1940), “American Problems” (7 August 1940), “How to Defend Ourselves” (12 August 1940), “How to Really Defend Democracy” (13 August 1940), “Another Thought on Conscription” (17 August 1940), ibid., 296-299, 321-322, 331-342, 343, 344-345, 392. Back

¹³ The fragments of this uncompleted article are published as “Bonapartism, Fascism, and War,” ibid., 410-418. Back

¹⁴ See “SWP Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy.” Back

¹⁵ See Max Shachtman, “Fascism and the World War.” Back

¹⁶ Cannon mentions this Los Angeles opposition in a letter to Farrell Dobbs written in February 1942. See The Socialist Workers Party in World War II (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), 217. Back

¹⁷ For this account of the dispute among the British Trotskyists we have relied on Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, The War and the In­ter­na­tion­al (London: Socialist Platform, 1986). See especially pages 12-17. Back

¹⁸ See resolutions from the founding conference of the Revolutionary Communist Party, March 1944: “Resolution on Military Policy” submitted by WIL and TO; “On National Defence” submitted by the Militant Group; “Attitude of the Proletariat Towards Imperialist War” by the Left Faction of the former RSL. Back

¹⁹ “A Propos of ‘Trade-Union Control of National Defense’ ” and “The Com­mit­tee’s Reply to Comrade C.” Back

²⁰ “Bonapartism, Fascism, and War,” op. cit., 413. Back

²¹ “Summary Speech on Military Policy,” The Socialist Workers Party in World War II, 98. Cannon’s main political report to the Plenum-Conference which adopted the P.M.P. is printed in the same volume, titled “Military Policy of the Proletariat,” 66-83. Back

²² Op. cit., 411-412. Back

²³ V.I. Lenin, “The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Rev­olu­tion,” Collected Works, 4th ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960-1970), vol. 24, 21-22. Back

²⁴ Cited in Brian Pearce, “Lenin and Trotsky on Pacifism and Defeatism,” first printed in the British Labour Review, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 1961), and reprinted in the pamphlet What Is Rev­olu­tionary Leadership? (New York: Spartacist Publishing Co., 1970). Pearce relies heavily on Hal Draper, “The Myth of Lenin’s ‘Rev­olu­tionary Defeatism’,” an article serialized in the New In­ter­na­tion­al, nos. 161-163 (Sept.-Oct., Nov.-Dec. 1953 and Jan.-Feb. 1954). Back

²⁵ This account of the September events in Czechoslovakia is based on Karel Kostal, “Munich: l’envers du mythe,” Cahiers Léon Trotsky, no. 23 (September 1985), 23-34. Back

²⁶ The Transitional Program for Socialist Rev­olu­tion, 2nd ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974), 91. Back

²⁷ “How to Really Defend Democracy,” op. cit., 344-345. Back

²⁸ “Bonapartism and Fascism,” 15 July 1934, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1934-35), (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), 51-57. Back

²⁹ Cited in Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933-9 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 14. Back

³⁰ Levy, op. cit., 8. Back

³¹ “Draft Programme of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India” (1942), reprinted by the Lanka Samasamaja Party (R), December 1970. Back

³² Cited in Bornstein and Richardson, op. cit., 55. Back

³³ See “Fight Against War Goes On!,” Militant, 15 March 1941. Formulations similar to the one quoted appear in a few subsequent issues of the Militant. Back

³⁴ James P. Cannon, Socialism on Trial, 5th ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), 52. Grandizo Munis’ attack on Cannon’s trial testimony and Cannon’s reply are appended to this edition.
      Workers Power’s tendentious history The Death Agony of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al (London, 1983, p. 20) echoes Munis’ criticisms. To serve their purposes Workers Power transmutes the reply by Cannon which we have quoted above to “That is unanswerable. We consider Hitler and Hitlerism the greatest enemy of mankind,” etc. Back

³⁵ “Thesis on the World Role of American Im­pe­ri­al­ism,” Documents of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973), 247. Back

³⁶ “The Twin-Stars: Hitler-Stalin,” 4 December 1939, Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40), 117. Back

³⁷ “For Defense of the Soviet Union,” August 1941. Published in Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al, vol. II, no. 8, October 1941. Back

³⁸ Joseph Berger, Nothing But the Truth (New York: The John Day Company, 1971), 203. Back

³⁹ See “Discussions with Trotsky,” op. cit., 256. Back

⁴⁰ “The Canadian Section and the War,” Documents of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al, 389. Back

⁴¹ George Orwell, “England Your England” (1941), Inside the Whale and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1962), 86. Back

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The series of demands centering on the call for “trade-union con­trol of military training,” first raised by Leon Trotsky in the last months of his life and adopted by the Trotskyist movement as the “Proletarian Military Policy” (P.M.P.), played no small role in disorienting the small and sometimes isolated sections of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al in the early years of World War II. The P.M.P. has not been operational since about 1943, when German and Japanese military power began to recede and it became clear that the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ists would win the war. However, Pierre Broué opened a discussion on the subject in Cahiers Léon Trotsky in September 1985.¹ More recently Sam Levy, a veteran of the British Trotskyist movement, has again raised the subject for critical historical review.² As Levy and Broué both partially document, at the time of its initiation the P.M.P. was a source of some dispute among those claiming the mantle of Trotskyism.

Leon Trotsky’s articles and letters on the subject of World War II and the P.M.P. are available in English in Pathfinder Press’s Writings of Leon Trotsky series. The key writings and speeches of American Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leader James P. Cannon on this subject are also available in Pathfinder’s collection, The Socialist Workers Party in World War II. However, other important documentary materials have long been out of print. We publish some of these here in Prometheus Research Series 2; a listing of the immediately relevant material by Cannon and Trotsky appears in a bibliography appended to this bulletin. The documents we reprint should be read in conjunction with the equally important articles and speeches in the Cannon and Trotsky writings.

The political consciousness of all classes in Europe in the period following WWI was dominated by the victory of the proletarian rev­olu­tion in Russia in 1917. The spectre of Bolshevism loomed very large for those European sectors that had even one piece of silver to rub between their grubby fingers. For these elements—those who gained the slightest material advantage from the status quo, those with ideological or religious connection to the bourgeois order—fear of Com­mu­nism dictated necessarily pro-fascist sympathies. After the military defeat in WWI of the most powerful European state, Germany, and especially after the failure of two successive pro­le­tar­ian rev­olu­tions in that country, the stage was set for Nazism, Germany’s virulent na­tion­alism, to place itself at the head of European reaction. The proletarian victory in Russia failed to spread to the rest of Europe following the inconclusive war between Russia and Poland in 1920. This failure was largely due to the immaturity of the Com­mu­nist leadership, as Trotsky pointed out in his brilliant and fundamental 1924 work, Lessons Of October.³ Nonetheless, European reaction continued to feed on the combativity of the working class, particularly in Germany. Since fear of Com­munism had not been accompanied by its spread, the growing Nazi party, with wide echoes of agreement, offered up the Jews as surrogate Bolsheviks.

When Leon Trotsky launched his call for the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al in July 1933, the approaching interim­pe­ri­al­ist war already cast its shadow over the world. Hitler’s rise to power ensured that German im­pe­ri­al­ism would sooner, rather than later, embark on a military struggle to reverse the terms of the Versailles treaty which had ended the First World War. Nazism had triumphed in Germany largely because of the treacherous misleadership of the working class by the Stalinists and Social Dem­ocrats. Hitler’s barbaric regime was widely and acutely hated by the world pro­le­tar­iat. As Hitler crushed the working class under the Nazi jackboot, consolidated a military alliance with Mussolini’s Italy and built the war machine with which he would launch a struggle to redivide the world, the opposing im­pe­ri­al­ist bour­geoi­sies took advantage of the anti-fascist sentiments of the masses. The French and British ruling classes portrayed their defense of the existing im­pe­ri­al­ist status quo as a defense of “democracy” against fascism. The American bour­geoi­sie began to abandon the posture of European “peacemaker” which it had adopted after WWI, aligning itself with the French and British camp and also cloaking its im­pe­ri­al­ist war aims in “democratic” and “anti-fascist” garb.

“War and the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al”

When in June 1934 Trotsky authored “War and the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al,” a manifesto on the coming im­pe­ri­al­ist conflagration, he cut through the “anti-fascist” and “democratic” pretensions of the im­pe­ri­al­ist warmongers:

18. The sham of national defense is covered up wherever possible by the additional sham of the defense of democracy. If even now, in the im­pe­ri­al­ist epoch, Marxists do not identify democracy with fascism and are ready at any moment to repel fascism’s encroachment upon democracy, must not the pro­le­tar­iat in case of war support the democratic gov­ern­ments against the fascist gov­ern­ments?

Flagrant sophism! We defend democracy against fascism by means of the or­gan­iza­tions and methods of the pro­le­tar­iat....And if we remain in ir­rec­on­cil­able opposition to the most “democratic” gov­ern­ment in time of peace, how can we take upon ourselves even a shadow of responsibility for it in time of war when all the infamies and crimes of capitalism take on a most brutal and bloody form?

19. A modern war between the great powers does not signify a conflict between democracy and fascism but a struggle of two imperialisms for the redivision of the world.⁴

Leninists believed that the rise of imperialism had starkly posed before humanity the choice: either socialism or barbarism. The coming world war would be both a resumption and an extension of the first, on a more global scale. If the crisis of proletarian leadership was not resolved with the successful seizure of state power, human civilization would pay dearly. The working class would not shrink from defending its own conquest of power, arms in hand, nor would it shrink from giving all the military support within its means to the struggles of the colonial masses against imperialism. But the pro­le­tar­iat had no interest in this coming war, which would see the slaughter of millions, the mass destruction of industrial capacity, the devastation of agricultural lands and of the infrastructure of civilization—all so that one or another im­pe­ri­al­ist cabal could be assured of superprofits from colonial exploitation. Extending the rev­olu­tion­ary defeatist policy which guided the Bolsheviks during the First World War and which imbued the documents of the first four congresses of the Com­mu­nist In­ter­na­tion­al, Trotsky wrote:

58. In those cases where it is a question of conflict between capitalist countries, the pro­le­tar­iat of any one of them refuses categorically to sacrifice its historic interests, which in the final analysis coincide with the interests of the nation and humanity, for the sake of the military victory of the bour­geoi­sie. Lenin’s formula, “defeat is the lesser evil,” means not defeat of one’s country is the lesser evil as compared with the defeat of the enemy country but that a military defeat resulting from the growth of the rev­olu­tion­ary movement is infinitely more beneficial to the pro­le­tar­iat and to the whole people than military victory assured by “civil peace.” Karl Liebknecht gave an unsurpassed formula of proletarian policy in time of war: “The chief enemy of the people is in its own country.” The victorious proletarian rev­olu­tion not only will rectify the evils caused by defeat but also will create the final guarantee against future wars and defeats. This dialectical attitude toward war is the most important element of rev­olu­tion­ary training and therefore also of the struggle against war.

59. The trans­for­ma­tion of im­pe­ri­al­ist war into civil war is that general strategic task to which the whole work of a proletarian party during war should be subordinated.

Trotsky made only one addition to the rev­olu­tion­ary program elaborated during World War I—the duty of the world pro­le­tar­iat to militarily defend the gains of the October Rev­olu­tion despite the usurpation of political power by the bureaucratic caste headed by Stalin:

8. ...Defense of the Soviet Union from the blows of the capitalist enemies, irrespective of the circumstances and immediate causes of the conflict, is the elementary and imperative duty of every honest labor or­gan­iza­tion.

Trotsky foresaw that a new world war would inevitably draw in the Soviet degenerated workers state, perhaps in military alliance with one of the im­pe­ri­al­ist camps. In no way would this mitigate either the pro­le­tar­iat’s duty to defend the Soviet Union, or the policy of intransigent defeatism toward all the warring im­pe­ri­al­ist bour­geoi­sies:

44. Remaining the determined and devoted defender of the workers’ state in the struggle with imperialism, the in­ter­na­tion­al pro­le­tar­iat will not, however, become an ally of the im­pe­ri­al­ist allies of the USSR. The pro­le­tar­iat of a capitalist country that finds itself in an alliance with the USSR must retain fully and completely its ir­rec­on­cil­able hostility to the im­pe­ri­al­ist gov­ern­ment of its own country. In this sense, its policy will not differ from that of the pro­le­tar­iat in a country fighting against the USSR. But in the nature of practical actions, considerable differences may arise depending on the concrete war situation. For instance, it would be absurd and criminal in case of war between the USSR and Japan for the American pro­le­tar­iat to sabotage the sending of American munition to the USSR. But the pro­le­tar­iat of a country fighting against the USSR would be absolutely obliged to resort to actions of this sort—strikes, sabotage, etc.

Trotsky’s elaboration of the tactical con­sid­er­ations which flowed from Soviet defensism provoked controversy within the in­ter­na­tion­al movement. Yvan Craipeau, who held the position that the Russian bureaucracy was a new ruling class, argued that military defense of the Soviet Union in the coming war would inevitably lead the Trotskyists into social-patriotism. In his reply to Craipeau, Trotsky pointed out that Soviet defensism and rev­olu­tion­ary defeatism had existed as two coequal elements in the program of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary pro­le­tar­iat since 1918:

In that period [1918-1923] the Soviet state maneuvered on the in­ter­na­tion­al arena and sought temporary allies. At the same time, it is precisely in that period that defeatism was made a duty for the workers of all the im­pe­ri­al­ist countries, the “enemies” as well as the temporary “allies.”⁵

Within the basic framework established by “War and the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al,” the Trotskyist movement debated and adopted positions upon the various military conflicts which preceded and prefigured the approaching world war (military support to the Republican side while refusing to vote war credits during the Spanish Civil War; the military defense of Ethiopia against im­pe­ri­al­ist Italy; the military defense of China against im­pe­ri­al­ist Japan). Trotsky recognized that there was no sharp line of demarcation between the pro­le­tar­iat’s policy in war and peace. He insisted that defeatism was simply the extension to wartime of the pro­le­tar­iat’s ir­rec­on­cil­able hostility to bourgeois class rule:

To carry the class struggle to its highest form—civil war—this is the task of defeatism. But this task can be solved only through the rev­olu­tion­ary mobilization of the masses, that is, by widening, deepening, and sharpening those rev­olu­tion­ary methods which constitute the content of class struggle in “peacetime.”⁶

Within the context of heightened in­ter­im­pe­ri­al­ist rivalry and war there could arise colonial uprisings and proletarian struggles to which one or another of the im­pe­ri­al­ist camps might give military assistance. This would not mitigate the duty of the in­ter­na­tion­al pro­le­tar­iat to give all the military support within its means to these struggles, just as the pro­le­tar­iat would be bound to militarily aid the Soviet Union in the coming war.

The horrible depravity of German fascism, fusing as it did the most base social barbarism with a new technology of mass death, propelled many de­spair­ing ex-leftists into the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ist camp as the war approached. While in the period leading up to the First World War it was the extreme right-wing militarists who pushed for war, in the Allied countries in the pre-WWII period it was the factions on the “left” of the political spectrum who were the most ardent advocates of war (the Roosevelt New Dealers, the British Labour Party, and the Stalinist parties from 1935 until the Hitler-Stalin pact). The main factions of the French and British bour­geoi­sies tried to appease Nazi Germany. When, after the abject capitulation of Chamberlain and Daladier to Hitler at Munich in the fall of 1938, some of Trotsky’s supporters in Palestine capitulated to popular “anti-fascism” and argued for abandoning rev­olu­tion­ary defeatism, Trotsky labeled the Palestinian comrades’ position “a step toward social patriotism.” Using the concrete example of Czech­oslo­va­kia to unmask the “anti-fascist” rhetoric of the bour­geoi­sie, Trotsky wrote:

“Could the pro­le­tar­iat of Czechoslovakia have struggled against its gov­ern­ment and the latter’s capitulatory policy by slogans of peace and defeatism?” A very concrete question is posed here in a very abstract form. There was no room for “defeatism” because there was no war (and it is not accidental that no war ensued). In the critical twenty-four hours of universal confusion and indignation, the Czech­oslo­vak pro­le­tar­iat had the full op­por­tu­nity of overthrowing the “capitulatory” gov­ern­ment and seizing power. For this only a rev­olu­tion­ary leadership was required. Naturally, after seizing power, the pro­le­tar­iat would have offered desperate resistance to Hitler and would have indubitably evoked a mighty reaction in the working masses of France and other countries. Let us not speculate on what the further course of events might have been. In any case the situation today would have been infinitely more favorable to the world working class. Yes, we are not pacifists; we are for rev­olu­tion­ary war. But the Czech working class did not have the slightest right to entrust the leadership of a war “against fascism” to Messrs. Capitalists who, within a few days, so safely changed their coloration and became them­selves fascists and quasifascists. Trans­for­ma­tions and re­col­ora­tions of this kind on the part of the ruling classes will be on the order of the day in wartime in all “democracies.” That is why the pro­le­tar­iat would ruin itself if it were to determine its main line of policy by the formal and unstable labels of “for fascism” and “against fascism.”⁷

The Origin of the “Proletarian Military Policy”

Trotsky soon saw indications that the Munich capitulation had frightened Stalin into seeking a military alliance with Hitler.⁸ But Trotsky also saw that this alliance would be short-lived. On 23 August 1939 the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed: the Soviet Union pledged to stay out of any war between Germany and the Western “democracies.” Little more than a week later the pact was consummated when the Nazis invaded Poland, finally provoking Britain and France to a declaration of war. The German Blitzkrieg defeated the Polish forces in three weeks. Meanwhile, Soviet troops occupied eastern Poland, as per their agreement with Hitler. As a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the parties of the Com­mu­nist In­ter­na­tion­al did an about-face. The Stalinist Popular Front policy, inaugurated in 1935 with the Stalin-Laval pact, had seen the Stalinist parties following and adding to the mass pro-war sentiment. Now they suddenly discovered the im­pe­ri­al­ist ambitions of the “democratic” Allies, while ignoring the Italian occupation of Abyssinia and the German invasion of Poland.

 The Stalinist about-face produced a sharp break in popular political consciousness in the Allied im­pe­ri­al­ist countries as the war began: public opinion turned sharply to anti-Com­mu­nism. A section of the cadre of the American Socialist Workers Party, led by Max Shachtman, Martin Abern and James Burnham, bowed to this wave of anti-Com­mu­nism and took the first, qualitative step toward reconciliation with their own bour­geoi­sie, abandoning the military defense of the Soviet Union. As a result, Trotsky and Cannon spent the early months of the war embroiled in a crucial factional struggle over the Russian question. It was resolved only in April 1940 when the defectors split, taking 40 percent of the membership from what had been the largest and most successful section of the Fourth International, to found the Workers Party.

In May 1940, as Hitler’s armies rolled through Belgium and Holland and on toward Paris, an emergency conference of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al was held in New York. Trotsky authored a new Manifesto on the war, which was adopted by the conference.⁹ It is in a passage near the end of this Manifesto that a new element in the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al’s program on the im­pe­ri­al­ist war first appears:

The mili­ta­ri­za­tion of the masses is further intensified every day. We reject the grotesque pretension of doing away with this mili­ta­ri­za­tion through empty pacifist protests. All the great questions will be decided in the next epoch arms in hand. The workers should not fear arms; on the contrary they should learn to use them. Rev­olu­tionists no more separate them­selves from the people during war than in peace. A Bolshevik strives to become not only the best trade unionist but also the best soldier.

We do not wish to permit the bour­geoi­sie to drive untrained or half-trained soldiers at the last hour onto the battlefield. We demand that the state immediately provide the workers and the unemployed with the possibility of learning how to handle the rifle, the hand grenade, the machine gun, the cannon, the airplane, the submarine, and the other tools of war. Special military schools are necessary in close connection with the trade unions so that the workers can become skilled specialists of the military art, able to hold posts as commanders.

These sentences are the first expression of what became known as the “Proletarian Military Policy,” though it appears that Trotsky had, as early as October 1939, been groping for some way to use the war to popularize the need for proletarian military training.¹⁰

Trotsky elaborated this new set of demands in a discussion with leaders of the American SWP on 12 June 1940.¹¹ He also wrote several letters and an article on the subject over the next few months.¹² When his life was cut short by a Stalinist assassin in August, Trotsky was working on a major article designed in part to provide the theoretical jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the new demands.¹³ In September, the SWP formally adopted a resolution on the new military policy at a conference in Chicago:¹⁴

We fight against sending the worker-soldiers into battle without proper training and equipment. We oppose the military direction of worker-soldiers by bourgeois officers who have no regard for their treatment, their protection and their lives. We demand federal funds for the military training of workers and worker-officers under the control of the trade unions. Military appropriations? Yes—but only for the establishment and equipment of worker training camps! Compulsory military training of workers? Yes—but only under the control of the trade unions!

From October 1940 until March 1945 these de­mands held a spot in the program box of the SWP’s weekly press.

The adoption of the “Proletarian Military Policy” did not provoke known opposition within the American SWP. However, Max Shachtman, then only one step down the long road he followed toward reconciliation with American imperialism, wrote some very effective polemics against it, which we reprint here.¹⁵ When some of those who had left the SWP with Shachtman rejoined in Los Angeles, they retained their opposition to the P.M.P.¹⁶

In Britain the P.M.P. was extremely con­tro­ver­sial. All wings of the faction-ridden Rev­olu­tionary Socialist League (RSL), official section of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al, initially opposed what they called the “American Military Policy.” However, a pro-P.M.P. faction eventually developed within the RSL: the Trotskyist Opposition (TO) led by Hilda Lane and John Lawrence. In 1942 the TO was expelled, and opposition to the military policy was made a criterion of RSL membership. In contrast, the British Workers In­ter­na­tion­al League (WIL), which had been condemned by the founding conference of the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al for its cliquist refusal to join the RSL, adopted the P.M.P., though not without some internal dissension. When, in March 1944, the WIL fused with the remnants of the RSL, the P.M.P. was still a subject of debate.¹⁷ The new or­gan­iza­tion, the Rev­olu­tionary Com­mu­nist Party (RCP), adopted the resolution on military policy submitted by the former WIL and TO. In addition to this resolution, we reprint below the motions submitted to the RCP founding conference by the Militant Group and the Left Faction of the former RSL.¹⁸

Communication among the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al­ists was spotty to nonexistent during the war. The Dutch Com­mit­tee of Rev­olu­tionary Marxists, which produced some of the best defeatist propa­gan­da, appears not to have known about the P.M.P. Where it did become known, however, the new military policy provoked controversy. The Bulletin Mensuel de la IVe In­ter­na­tion­ale published by the Com­mit­tees for the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al in Vichy France printed excerpts from the SWP’s conference resolution in its April 1941 issue. We print below translations of two articles which accompanied the excerpts. One, a letter by “Comrade C.,” objects to the SWP resolution and to the fact that the French leading Com­mit­tee saw fit to print it. The Com­mit­tee’s reply to Comrade C. also takes issue with the SWP’s military policy while defending their decision to open a discussion on the question.¹⁹

Telescoping the Tasks

In large part the P.M.P. was based on an exaggerated prognosis of the extent to which the pro­le­tar­iat would engage in struggle against the war early on. Trotsky thought that wartime necessity would rapidly rip the “anti-fascist” and “democratic” mask off the Anglo-American im­pe­ri­al­ists. He expected that the bour­geoi­sies of both countries would be forced to impose some variant of bonapartist dictatorship in the face of mounting discontent, leading to social struggle and perhaps situations of dual power. Moreover, Trotsky projected that, faced with internal social struggle, the Anglo-American im­pe­ri­al­ists would follow the example of their French allies and become “defeatist,” viewing Hitler as the lesser evil. In his last article, Trotsky wrote:

The Second World War poses the question of change of regimes more im­pe­ri­ous­ly, more urgently than did the first war. It is first and foremost a question of the political regime. The workers are aware that democracy is suffering shipwreck everywhere, and that they are threatened by fascism even in those countries where fascism is as yet nonexistent. The bour­geoi­sie of the democratic countries will naturally utilize this dread of fascism on the part of the workers, but, on the other hand, the bankruptcy of democracies, their collapse, their painless trans­for­ma­tion into reactionary dictatorships, compel the workers to pose before them­selves the problem of power, and render them responsive to the posing of the problem of power.²⁰

Based on this prognosis, Trotsky combined “fighting fascism” in the war with the task of the pro­le­tar­iat seizing power. In his summary speech to the SWP’s September conference, Cannon makes the telescoping explicit:

Many times in the past we were put at a certain disadvantage; the demagogy of the Social Dem­ocrats against us was effective to a certain extent. They said, “You have no answer to the question of how to fight against Hitler, how to prevent Hitler from conquering France, Belgium, etc.”...Well, we answered in a general way, the workers will first overthrow the bour­geoi­sie at home and then they will take care of invaders. That was a good program, but the workers did not make the rev­olu­tion in time. Now the two tasks must be telescoped and carried out simultaneously.²¹

In “Bonapartism, Fascism, and War” Trotsky bases the P.M.P. on the experience of the Russian Rev­olu­tion:

True enough, the Bolsheviks in the space of eight months conquered the over­whelm­ing majority of the workers. But the decisive role in this conquest was played not by the refusal to defend the bourgeois fatherland but by the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!” And only by this rev­olu­tion­ary slogan! The criticism of imperialism, its militarism, the renunciation of the defense of bourgeois democracy and so on could have never conquered the over­whelm­ing majority of the people to the side of the Bolsheviks....²²

But Trotsky’s use of the post-February Bolshevik example could only be misleading in a situation where there did not yet exist a situation of dual power in any im­pe­ri­al­ist country.

Defeatism and Rev­olu­tionary Tactics

After the overthrow of tsarism in February 1917 the Bolsheviks maintained their intransigent opposition to the im­pe­ri­al­ist war, now being waged by the new “democratic” capitalist gov­ern­ment. Lenin’s April Theses declare that “not the slightest concession must be made to ‘rev­olu­tion­ary defencism’.” But the April Theses also state that:

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in rev­olu­tion­ary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bour­geoi­sie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the im­pe­ri­al­ist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.²³

Increasingly the Bolsheviks attempted to find a “bridge” to the defensist sentiments of the masses. But this was only possible because the working masses had overthrown the tsar and created the soviets—incipient organs of proletarian state power. The pro­le­tar­iat had in hand a conquest worth defending against the German armies. Cor­re­spond­ing­ly the Russian bour­geoi­sie, faced with the rev­olu­tion­ary pro­le­tar­iat, increasingly went over to defeatism (even going so far as to allow German troops to take Riga). “All Power to the Soviets!” became a call for the Russian pro­le­tar­iat to take power, the better to be able to defend the rev­olu­tion against both internal counterrev­olu­tion and the German armies. The Bolsheviks recognized that they might well have to defend a Russian Soviet state after taking power, and they certainly never excluded the possibility that the new state might wage a rev­olu­tion­ary war against Germany.

The shift in Bolshevik propagandistic emphasis led Lenin to remark in 1918 that “we were defeatists under the Tsar, but under Tsereteli and Chernov we were not defeatists.”²⁴ Yet the Bolsheviks never abandoned a defeatist posture toward the Russian bourgeois gov­ern­ment—they simply varied the tactical application because of the class war then raging in Russia. When the im­pe­ri­al­ist war is transformed into a civil war, that civil war is fought out on the internal political terrain of the individual nation-state.

Politics is in large part the art of the possible. It is not possible to demand the equivalent of “All Power to the Soviets!” in the absence of that level of class struggle and consciousness which leads to soviets or some other organs of dual power. The general strike which rocked Prague 21-22 September 1938 was certainly a situation which approximated the one foreseen in Trotsky’s last, unfinished article on the war: the question of change of regime was im­pe­ri­ous­ly posed when the working class simply (and evidently spon­ta­ne­ous­ly) revolted against the rumored capitulation of the Hodza gov­ern­ment to Hitler’s demand for the Sudeten. The call for the formation of general strike com­mit­tees to take power out of the hands of the bour­geoi­sie—the only measure which could defend the Czech, Slovak and German working masses against Hitler—would have been appropriate here, though it was necessary to couple this with agitation for the democratic rights of the Sudeten Germans oppressed by the Czech bour­geoi­sie. In the absence of a struggle for pro­le­tar­ian state power, the Czech ruling class, with the in­dis­pens­able aid of the mass Stalinist party, succeeded in derailing the revolt of the masses. The new Syrovy gov­ern­ment promised before crowds of hundreds of thousands to “fight to the end”—and once the pro­le­tar­iat was demobilized gave way to the French and British insistence on capitulation, ceding the Sudeten to Hitler.²⁵

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