Two errors

The problem with the circle spirit and the idealist approach of the Trotskyist movement, the problem with the endless elaboration of the program, is not just that it’s a wrong method, but also that you don’t end up with the right program. It couldn’t be otherwise.

It’s not just the fact of isolation, of the objective difficulties, that has led to the defeat of the Trotskyist movement. There have been successful revolutions in semicolonial countries, and the Fourth International has not been in the leadership of these revolutions. It often missed them entirely until they were well on the way. It couldn’t see them happening, couldn’t understand them. Nicaragua is a classic example. In Vietnam too, we couldn’t see what was happening, couldn’t see the depth of that revolution. We always thought it was going to be sold out.

Well, there have not been that many revolutions, you could say that this was accidental, but the fact that we miss revolutions that are actually happening in other countries — we can’t even see them even though they’re on the TV and in the newspapers — means that you’d have to suggest that there’s something wrong with our precise program, strategy and tactics.

I think we can point to two big errors that we’re trying to unravel all the ramifications of. Maybe we’ll find more but these are the ones that are most important, at least at the moment, leaving aside the method and the elevation of principles and all the things that I’ve talked about so far. There are two big political errors. We note them in the resolution on page 94.

The first one is Trotsky’s theory of revolution in semicolonial countries — his theory of permanent revolution. We explain what we think is wrong with this theory in a way that will not force people to decide whether Lenin or Trotsky was right in the debate before 1917 on the strategic course, stages and class alliances in the Russian Revolution. We’ve taken that approach because we think it’s more important to agree on political line as it applies today, than to agree on history. So we describe the error this way:

An underestimation of the role of national liberation struggles within the worldwide fight for socialism, in particular a programmatic error of downgrading the anti-imperialist united front and the democratic stage of revolution in the semicolonial countries, from which flow a sectarian attitude towards national liberation movements; this error was largely responsible for the delay by the majority of the FI in recognising the creation of a workers’ and peasants’ government in Nicaragua in July 1979.9

One phrase that you’ll hear over and over again in the Trotskyist movement after every revolution that takes place, wherever it takes place, is “this revolution confirms Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution”. It’s a peculiar idea, to say the least. We’d be much better in regard to Nicaragua to say the revolution confirms the Sandinista theory of revolution — and then try to understand the Sandinista theory.

Doing that, in our opinion, would lead you to study the basic source of the theory that has guided the Sandinistas, the Cubans and the Vietnamese — Lenin’s writings on the Russian Revolution.

This is not a minor question. The whole theory of permanent revolution has had a devastating effect on the Fourth International, on its ability to be even part of the leadership of national liberation revolutions. There’s an empirical recognition of this fact by the majority leaders of the Fourth International. The Nicaraguan revolution has forced them to redefine what is meant by the permanent revolution theory in order to try to make it fit the reality of the revolutionary process there.

For a long time, the majority denied that there was a workers’ and peasants’ government. In Nicaragua; they said there was a situation of dual power within the government between the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary representatives of the worker-peasant masses. Our criticism of their failure to understand just what had happened in Nicaragua in July 1979 now causes them great embarrassment because they have a much more favourable attitude to the Sandinistas today than they did then. So they now say we have a proletarian dictatorship in Nicaragua. By using this label, they not only justify their more favourable attitude towards the Sandinistas — which of course is a healthy and very encouraging development — but they can also, they think, “confirm” the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution.

The central leaders of the Fourth International appear to be moving in an empirical way toward the Leninist two-stage theory of revolution in the underdeveloped countries but, by saying this is really what Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory means, they continue to facilitate the miseducation of the great majority of the members of the International. When you talk to members of the International who are still educated or trained by them, or who simply read Trotsky’s writings on his theory of permanent revolution, they still think of it as we used to think of it. They draw the conclusion that we’re against a stages theory of revolution.

I talked to a young Turkish comrade in Europe who had heard the terrible news on the grapevine that we no longer call ourselves Trotskyists and perhaps was a little interested and probing to see what this meant. She was quite surprised when I pointed out that I was in favour of a stages theory of revolution. She has been hacking away in the Turkish community and in the revolutionary organisations abroad to try to put forward Trotsky’s theory of no-stage revolution in Turkey. That’s what Trotskyists hammer at. You’ve got a group of Trotskyists who hack away in the Turkish immigration, to try to carve out a Trotskyist current of ultraleft propagandist sectarians based around an ultraleft, sectarian theory of revolution.

The majority leaders refusal to accept that reality, the test of actual revolutions, have repeatedly confirmed the incorrectness of Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory means that the mistake made in regard to Nicaragua will be repeated again.

We see the same problem in the discussion that came up around the Malvinas war, or around Iran. The majority leaders still don’t understand the anti-imperialist axis of these revolutions, of the struggle that must take place in these countries. Perhaps we could see this most clearly around Vietnam. We should now study the Vietnamese Revolution. That’s where the clearest evidence is, because it took place over so long a period of time, under such innumerable tactical forms. A study of that would tell us that that’s the way to do it in difficult circumstances.

We described the second major error like this:

"An overestimation of the place, within the tasks confronting the workers’ states and within the socialist revolution, occupied by political revolution against the ruling castes in the bureaucratised socialist states."10

We could probably generalise and expand that description a little further. There’s a real problem of Stalinophobia within the Trotskyist movement — that is, a hatred and fear of Stalinism so intense that it distorts your political judgment and your attitude to the world class struggle. The clearest expression of it is in regard to the socialist states, and this is where it most needs correction.

The International majority fail to approach politics in the socialist states from the framework of an anti-imperialist axis and to subordinate the tasks to that framework and that axis.

We can see the effects of Stalinophobia in our own history. Why couldn’t we learn from Vietnam? Why were we unable to learn from the Vietnamese Revolution the same lessons we learned from the Sandinistas? Leave aside that we were a little more callow, a little less mature. The main reason we couldn’t learn from Vietnam was because of Stalinophobia. We were Stalinophobes; we didn’t think they could teach us anything because we thought they were Stalinists.

This Stalinophobia comes not only from the origins of the Trotskyist movement, but also from the situation in the advanced capitalist countries. Most of the sections of the International in the advanced capitalist countries are small and of course subjected to the pressures of the anticommunist propaganda that prevails in imperialist countries. That can make it seem terribly important to distinguish yourself from the ruling bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and the East European states, with the result that the bureaucracies themselves begin to appear as a more important historical factor than they really are.

I don’t think we’ve finished our discussion around these two errors by any means. We have to continue to think about what’s happening in the Soviet Union, what’s happening in Eastern Europe. How do we bring up to date Trotsky’s theory of the bureaucracy? Granted it’s a given starting point, most of us when we get our education on the Soviet Union don’t read past Trotsky’s 1936 book The Revolution Betrayed. We take that as the be-all and end-all, the finished word on it. But there have been tremendous changes in the Soviet Union since then which can’t be dealt with just by reading Trotsky’s articles from the ’30s.

Stalinophobia is also clearly the problem confronting the majority of the International in taking the next step on the Cuban Revolution. Why can’t they take the next step? Because Fidel Castro embraced Brezhnev, because the Cubans make nice statements about the Soviet leaders. This is why we can’t make headway with them on the Cuban question. We can’t push it that final distance because of the majority’s Stalinophobia.

The comrades think they’ve solved the problem with the new position they’ve taken on Nicaragua. But that’s a time bomb for them. At a certain point they will have to recognise it’s the same as Cuba, that there is no fundamental difference. If Nicaragua survives it will have to have the same basic relationship with the Soviet Union that Cuba has. If it doesn’t it’ll inevitably be defeated by US imperialism.

These two errors meant that we have distorted the axis of the world revolutionary struggle. The Fourth International has been overly concerned with struggles in the advanced capitalist countries — its strongest sections have usually been in these countries. The revolutions in the oppressed capitalist countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa were seen as a “long detour” — the real and decisive revolutions would come later in the imperialist countries. The analysis of Lenin and the early Comintern in regard to the axis of the world revolution as a result of the development of imperialist capitalism and its effect on the labour movement in the advanced capitalist countries — its creation of a labour bureaucracy — was downplayed or dismissed by the Trotskyist movement.

As a result the Trotskyists in the advanced capitalist countries have been marked by ultraleft and opportunist errors. In the 1950s, a confusion about the role and possibilities of the social democracy led to the burial and decline of Trotskyist parties in this milieu. In the late 1960s and the 1970s a voluntarist underestimation of the obstacles posed by the labour bureaucracy led to adventures and defeats.

Far from having a program for revolutions in every country, the failure to understand the axis of the world revolution in the 20th century and the real relationship between the different sectors of the world revolutionary struggle, contributed to the failure to develop an adequate revolutionary program and practice in any country.