This chapter is self-evidently about the international implications of Stalinism, and underlines how profoundly the regime broke with the foundations of Bolshevism in favour of peddling illusory notions that it was able to recruit various imperialist powers and cliques within them to the supposed cause of peace.
We work from the first two parts of this chapter:
- From “World Revolution” to Status Quo
- The League of Nations and the Communist International
Early on in these passages, Trotsky quotes a key Bolshevik statement, from their programme, about such illusory perspectives to underline the gravity of what he was criticising:
“The developing pressure of the proletariat, and especially its victories in individual countries, are strengthening the resistance of the exploiters and impelling them to new forms of international consolidation of the capitalists (League of Nations, etc.) which, organizing on a world scale the systematic exploitation of all the peoples of the Earth, are directing their first efforts toward the immediate suppression of the revolutionary movements of the proletariat of all countries. All this inevitably leads to a combination of civil wars within the separate states with revolutionary wars, both of the proletarian countries defending themselves, and of the oppressed peoples against the yoke of the imperialist powers. In these conditions the slogans of pacifism, international disarmament under capitalism, courts of arbitration, etc., are not only reactionary utopias, but downright deceptions of the toilers designed to disarm the proletariat and distract it from the task of disarming the exploiters.”
The perspective of “socialism in one country” was right from the start flatly at odds with this. Far from rejecting “the slogans of pacifism, international disarmament under capitalism, courts of arbitration”, the Communist International under Stalinist leadership became among the chief promoters of these kinds of illusions.
But as Trotsky pointed out, this did not lessen the commitment of the Stalinist leadership to the Comintern. It made them more determined to dominate it:
“The bureaucracy, however, had no intention to liquidate therewith its connection with the Communist International. That would have converted the latter into a world oppositional organization, with resulting unfavourable consequences in the correlation of forces within the Soviet Union. On the contrary, the less the policy of the Kremlin preserved of its former internationalism, the more firmly the ruling clique clutched in its hands the rudder of the Communist International. Under the old name it was now to serve new ends. For the new ends, however, new people were needed. Beginning with the autumn of 1923, the history of the Communist International is a history of the complete renovation of its Moscow staff, and the staffs of all the national sections, by way of a series of palace revolutions, purgations from above, expulsions, etc.”
He pointed out that if the policies that the Comintern was advocating by 1936 has been enacted earlier, disaster would have befallen the Russian revolution right from the start:
“…Soviet power could not have held out for 12 months without the direct help of the international – and especially the European – proletariat, and without a revolutionary movement of the colonial peoples. The only reason the Austro-German military powers did not carry their attack upon Soviet Russia through to the end was that they felt behind their back the hot breath of the revolution. In some three quarters of a year, insurrections in Germany and Austro-Hungary put an end to the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The revolt of the French sailors in the Black Sea in April 1919 compelled the government of the Third Republic to renounce its military operations in the Soviet South. The British government, in September 1919, withdrew its expeditionary forces from the Soviet North under direct pressure from its own workers. …”
The Soviet government, of course, was compelled to deal with the capitalist powers. But the idea that the Communist Parties should therefore become partisans of their own government, was treasonous:
“It could never have entered the mind of the Soviet government as a whole, however, nor any member of it, to represent its bourgeois counteragents as ‘friends of peace’, and still less to invite the communist parties of Germany, Poland, or Estonia, to support with their votes the bourgeois governments which had signed these treaties”
And
“Although the Rapallo agreement with democratic Germany was signed four years later on a formal basis of “equal rights” for both parties, nevertheless if the German communist party had made this a pretext to express confidence in the diplomacy of its country, it would have been forthwith expelled from the International.”
There is the principle. The policy of the Comintern under Stalin, of seeking imperialist allies, and chaining the working-class movement to alliances with them, could only endanger the existence of the workers’ state:
“The danger of a combined attack on the Soviet Union takes palpable form in our eyes only because the country of the Soviets is still isolated, because to a considerable extent this ‘one-sixth of the Earth’s surface’ is a realm of primitive backwardness, because the productivity of labour in spite of the nationalization of the means of production is still far lower than in capitalist countries, and, finally – what is at present most important – because the chief detachments of the world proletariat are shattered, distrustful of themselves, and deprived of reliable leadership.
“…the nationally limited and conservative, ignorant and irresponsible Soviet bureaucracy has brought nothing but misfortunes to the workers’ movement of the world. As though in historic justice, the present international position of the Soviet Union is determined to a far higher degree by the consequences of the defeat of the world proletariat, than by the successes of an isolated Socialist construction. It is sufficient to recall that the defeat of the Chinese revolution in 1925-27, which untied the hands of Japanese militarism in the East, and the shattering of the German proletariat which led to the triumph of Hitler and the mad growth of German militarism, are alike the fruits of the policy of the Communist International.”
So the Stalinist bureaucracy devoted its political and diplomatic efforts to ‘neutralising’ the bourgeoisie.
Hence the significance of the USSR joining the League of Nations in September 1934. This was the prelude to its agreement with France, the Stalin-Laval pact, of 1935 (Laval later became a key figure in the Nazi collaborator regime of Marshall Petain in Vichy France after 1940).
Trotsky pointed out that the pact was
“…infinitely more favourable to France than to the Soviets. The obligation to military from the side of the Soviets is, according to the treaty, unconditional; French help, on the contrary, is conditioned upon a preliminary agreement with England and Italy, which opens an unlimited field for hostile machinations against the Soviet Union”
But the USSR’s entry into the League of Nations was accompanied by a deluge of propaganda “..as a triumph of socialism and a result of ‘pressure’ from the world proletariat” In reality it:
“…was in reality acceptable to the bourgeoisie only as a result of the extreme weakening of the revolutionary danger. It was not a victory of the Soviet Union, but a capitulation of the Thermidorean bureaucracy to this hopelessly compromised Geneva institution, which, according to the above-quoted words of the Bolshevik program, ‘will direct its future efforts to the suppression of revolutionary movements’’.
The result is that the USSR had to abide by the rules of the League. And it did, for instance over Italy’s seizure of Abyssinia:
“At the very time when Litvinov, who was nothing at Geneva but a shadow of Laval, expressed his gratitude to the diplomats of France and England for their efforts ‘in behalf of peace’, efforts which so auspiciously resulted in the annihilation of Abyssinia, oil from the Caucausus continued to nourish the Italian fleet.”
And he emphasises the treachery of refusal to combat Mussolini:
“Even if you can understand that the Moscow government hesitated openly to break a commercial treaty, still the trade unions were not obliged to take into consideration the undertakings of the Commissariat of Foreign Trade. An actual stoppage of exports to Italy by a decision of the Soviet trade unions would have evoked a world movement of boycott incomparably more real than the treacherous “sanctions”, measured as they were in advance by diplomatists and jurists in agreement with Mussolini.”
This was flatly in contradiction with the policy of the Comintern in the days of the British General Strike of 1926, which itself was far from a Bolshevik policy, but nevertheless:
“And if the Soviet trade unions never lifted a finger this time, in contrast with 1926, when they openly collected millions of roubles for the British coal strike, it is only because such an initiative was forbidden by the ruling bureaucracy, chiefly to curry favour with France. In the coming world war, however, no military allies can recompense the Soviet Union for the lost confidence of the colonial peoples and of the toiling masses in general.”
So we get Stalin’s statement in Izevstia, from Sept 1935, quoted by Trotsky:
“The fundamental aim of German fascism is to isolate the Soviet Union … Well, and what of it? The Soviet Union has today more friends in the world than ever before.”
As Trotsky pointed out, this was simply fatuous “The Italian proletariat is in the chains of fascism; the Chinese revolution is shattered, and Japan is playing the boss in China; the German proletariat is so crushed that Hitler’s plebiscite encounters no resistance whatever; the proletariat of Austria is bound hand and foot…”
And in terms of recruiting France, Spain and Britain to the ‘friends of peace” supposedly in opposition to Hitler, Trotsky pointed out the words of Lloyd George:, who “warned the House of Commons … against condemning fascist Germany, which … was destined to be the most reliable bulwark against communism in Europe. ‘We shall yet greet her as our friend.’” said Lloyd George.
And he quotes the “notorious interview” of Stalin with an American newspaper baron in 1936, as a prime example of bureaucratic blindness:
“I think that the position of the friends of peace is growing stronger; the friends of peace can work openly, they rely upon the strength of public opinion, they have at their disposal such instruments, for instance, as the League of Nations.”
said Stalin… And Trotsky comes back:
“The bourgeois states do not divide themselves into ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ of peace – especially since ‘peace’ as such does not exist. Each imperialist country is interested in preserving its peace, and the more sharply interested, the more unbearable this peace may be for its enemies. The formula common to Stalin, Baldwin, Leon Blum, and others, ‘peace would be really guaranteed if all states united in the League for its defense’, means merely that peace would be guaranteed if there existed no causes for its violation. The thought is correct, if you please, but not exactly weighty.”
Disarmament is a fatuous perspective because “The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge arms when they need to fight. The possibilities of a new, and, moreover, very speedy, arming lie in contemporary technique.”
[the one thing that has modified that today is the de-industrialisation of the imperialist countries]
So, in beginning to sum this up, Trotsky writes:
“The Third International was born of an indignant protest against social patriotism. But the revolutionary charge placed in it by the October revolution is long ago expended. The Communist International now stands under the banner of the League of Nations, as does the Second International, only with a fresher store of cynicism. When the British Socialist, Sir Stafford Cripps, called the League of Nations an international union of brigands, which was more impolite than unjust, the London Times ironically asked: ‘In that case, how explain the adherence of the Soviet Union to the League of Nations?’ It is not easy to answer.”
The truth is that the leftward movement of the workers movement under the impact of the depression and the threat of fascism, meant that Cripps, and people like him, had moved to the left of Stalin.
As elaborated by Stalin in his infamous interview with the US press baron, who asked him about his plans for world revolution:
““We never had any such plans or intentions. … this is the result of a misunderstanding.”
To which Howard asked “A tragic misunderstanding?” and Stalin replied ““No, comic, or, if you please, tragi-comic.”
“What danger can the surrounding states see in the ideas of the Soviet people if these states really sit firmly in the saddle? The idea of exporting a revolution is nonsense. Every country if it wants one will produce its own revolution, and if it doesn’t, there will be no revolution. Thus, for instance, our country wanted to make a revolution and made it ..”
Scoring this renunciation of internationalism and revolution, Trotsky points out that
“Before ‘our country’ desired to make a revolution, we imported the idea of Marxism for other countries, and made use of foreign revolutionary experience. For decades we had our émigrés abroad who guided the struggle in Russia. We received moral and material aid from the workers’ organizations of Europe and America. After our victory we organized, in 1919, the Communist International. We more than once announced the duty of the proletariat of countries in which the revolution had conquered to come to the aid of oppressed and insurrectionary classes, and that not only with ideas but if possible with arms.”
And this was not just in theory and in principle:
“We in our own time aided the workers of Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Georgia with armed force. We made an attempt to bring aid to the revolting Polish proletariat by the campaign of the Red Army against Warsaw. We sent organizers and commanders to the help of the Chinese in revolution. In 1926, we collected millions of roubles for the aid of the British strikers. At present, this all seems to have been a misunderstanding. A tragic one? No, it is comic…. Even the Communist International has changed from a serious to a comic personage”
And then Trotsky lays out what Stalin should have said if he were to openly proclaim the truth:
“In the eyes of Lenin, the League of Nations was a machine for the preparation of a new imperialist war. We see in it an instrument of peace. Lenin spoke of the inevitability of revolutionary wars. We consider the idea of exporting revolution nonsense. Lenin denounced the union of the proletariat with the imperialist bourgeoisie as treason. We with all our power impel the international proletariat along this road. Lenin slashed the slogan of disarmament under capitalism as a deceit of the workers. We build our whole policy upon this slogan. Your tragi-comic misunderstanding lies in your taking us for the continuers of Bolshevism, when we are in fact its gravediggers.”
But of course, he could never have done that.
