Max Shachtman
Genesis of Trotskyism
Foreword
Since this pamphlet was first written, a number of events have taken place
which should be borne in mind in reading what follows. Outstanding among
these events is the cruel defeat suffered by the German working class at the
hands of triumphant Fascism. The victory of the barbaric capitalist reaction
in Germany was made possible essentially by the impotence of the
proletariat. In turn, that was induced by the craven treachery of the party
of the Second International, and the bankruptcy into which the official
Communist party was thrown by Stalinism.
The collapse of the German Communist party removes from the dwindling ranks
of the Communist International the last of its sections possessing any mass
following or influence. What is left of this organization lies prostrate,
bleeding from a thousand wounds, rendered incapable of rising again as a
revolutionary or progressive force by the stranglehold of the Russian Soviet
bureaucracy.
The defeat of the German proletariat and its Communist party is the
terrifying payment they were forced to make for the demoralization,
disorientation and bureaucratic Centrism to which they were subjected for
ten years by the Stalinist machine. The German working class must now suffer
all the diabolical torture of the Hitlerite savages, and as a consequence,
the working class of the entire world is also set back. Not because the
triumph of Fascism was inevitable. Quite the contrary. Had the German
proletariat been mobilized in the united front movement for which we
agitated unremittingly, and for which we were condemned as
counter-revolutionists and "social-Fascists," the Brown Shirts would have
been crushed and never have reached the seat of power. The social democrats
on the one hand, and the Stalinists on the other, stood like boulders in the
path of the working class. Instead of the accelerator of the revolution, the
Stalinists acted as a brake upon it.
This foreword can pretend only to the briefest reference to the new
problems, for a more extensive elucidation of which the voluminous
literature of our movement must be consulted. Suffice it to say that the
German events, and the bureaucratic self-contentment and unconcern,
deepening of the errors and disintegration of Stalinism and its parties
which followed them, have brought us to the ineluctable conclusion: That the
Communist International has been strangled by Stalinism, is bankrupt, is
beyond recovery or restoration on Marxian foundations; That the internally
devoured Stalinist parties which proved so impotent at the decisive moment
of struggle against the class enemy in China, then in swift succession in
Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, now in Czechoslovakia, tomorrow elsewhere - will
never be able to deal with the burning problems of the struggle in any of
the other countries; That this holds true especially, and above all, of the
situation in the Soviet Union, where the dangers to the workers' state
multiply without a corresponding growth of strength of the proletarian
organizations; That the wealth of past experience and the whole of the
present world situation dictate to the earnest revolutionist the course of
breaking relentlessly and completely with the decadent Stalinist apparatus
and embarking upon the course of building up a new Communist International
and new Communist parties in every country of the world. The Left
Opposition, breaking with its past policy of acting as a faction of the
official party, has solemnly dedicated itself to this tremendous historical
task. To the new movement it offers that rich and comprehensive experience,
that tested and verified body of revolutionary ideas and criticism which it
developed in the ten years of its existence as a distinct current in the
revolutionary movement. It came into being as the direct heir and executor
of fundamentally the same tendency which originated with Marx and Engels,
was first victorious in the Russian revolution, and will find its full
fruition in the world revolution for the liberation of human kind.
-M. S.
November 1933
The Left Opposition and the Communist Movement
The Communist movement throughout the world is passing through a terrific
crisis. From the day the Communist International was founded in Moscow in
1919, it has experienced several critical periods. A clear dividing line,
however, cuts those into two principal parts. One covers the first five
years of the International, during which are generally recorded crises of
growth, in which the parties were purged of accidental and non-Communist
elements. On the other side of the line are the last nine years, with an
almost uninterrupted crisis of decline, during which the revolutionary wing
was amputated from the parties.
The marks of this crisis are evident for all who have eyes to see with. In
its early years the Communist International was a virile, growing movement
whose authority, prestige and success rose in every land under the guidance
of Lenin and Trotsky. The present leadership of the International has
reduced it to stagnation or decline. A crisis which shakes the capitalist
world as it has never been shaken since the world war, finds the
International powerless to act. In Spain, a popular uprising of the masses
offers the Communists their first big opportunity to lead a proletarian
battle for emancipation; only, there is no Communist party. In England,
France, the United States, Czechoslovakia, the Scandinavian countries,
Poland, China, India - in all those countries where Communism was once
represented by mass parties or parties on the road to embracing masses - the
section of the International writhes in the agony of impotence.
With insignificant exceptions, not one of the authentic leaders of world
Communism during the first years of its organized existence, is to be found
in its ranks today -including, and primarily, the Russian party. Everywhere,
the Communist parties have become sieves into which ever new sections of the
working class are poured by the capitalist crisis, only to be lost through
the holes of bureaucratism and false policies. Almost thirteen years after
the founding of the International, the overwhelming majority of its greatly
reduced membership has not been in the party ranks for longer than two
years; the old members have been lost or expelled.
Why is this disastrous situation of concern to every worker conscious of his
class interests? For the following reasons:
Communism is the hope of the whole working class. A classless socialist
commonwealth cannot be attained without the overthrow of the rule of
capitalism. To accomplish this aim is the historic mission of the working
class. The sharpest and most effective instrument at the command of the
workers in the struggle against their class enemy, is the revolutionary
political party. Such a party is not the work of one day or one man. It
grows out of the needs of the class whose interests it represents, until it
embraces the most advanced, the most militant and the best tested fighters.
When the ruling class has lost the following of the masses, when it can no
longer satisfy even their most elementary daily needs, and when the masses
transfer their confidence to their own class party -the ranks of the latter
are strengthened and steeled to the point where it is enabled to fight the
final battle. In raising the proletariat to the position of the ruling
class, a new page is opened up in human history, for the workers cannot
liberate themselves without emancipating the whole of humanity. To lead the
proletariat in this titanic inspiring struggle modern history offers as the
most highly developed, as the only possible leadership - the Communist
party.
The only other party that presumes to speak in the name of labor is the
social democracy, or the socialist party. But in reality, it is the party of
the petty bourgeoisie, the last pillar of capitalist democracy. >From a
defense of "democracy in general," it switches to the defense of "democracy
in particular," that is, a defense of its specific capitalist fatherland. It
sacrifices the interests of the world proletariat to the interests of its
own national labor aristocracy and middle class.
During the war, the socialists were the main instruments of imperialism in
the ranks of the working class. They supported the imperialist war, each in
the interests of his own ruling class. After the war, the socialists missed
no opportunity to range themselves on the side of the capitalist class in
the fierce struggle to put down the revolutionary proletariat -- by force of
arms, if necessary.
From its foundation day, the Communist International declared pitiless war
against socialist treachery, against corruption and degeneration in the
working class, against bureaucratism and opportunism. The Communist parties
everywhere were born and grew up in combat against socialist reaction. The
torn confused and scattered ranks of the revolutionary movement throughout
the world were reunited under the banner of the Russian revolution and world
Communism. Into the darkness of reaction which the socialists had propped up
firmly in the saddle, the Communists brought the light of working class
progress. They broke the strangulating noose of class collaboration which
the socialists had tightened around the neck ...
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