In “Learn To Think”, Trotsky says, assume a war between “fascist” Italy and “democratic” France. France holds Algeria in chains, as its colony. If Algeria is in rebellion against France, support for Algeria will weaken France, and consequently strengthen “fascist” Italy. In other words, it is an example of “my enemy's enemy is my friend”. For the Italian workers, their immediate enemy is the Italian state, and its fascist regime. A comparison, here, could be drawn with both the Ukrainian and Russian workers, for whom, the immediate enemy is again their own ruling class and state.
Should the Italian workers, then, adopt the mantra that what is bad for their immediate enemy, i.e. a defeat at the hands of France, will be good for them, on the basis of “my enemy's enemy is my friend”? Of course, not, Trotsky says. That would amount to simply putting a plus sign where our enemy places a minus. A defeat of “fascist” Italy, by “democratic” France, would not take the struggle of the Italian workers for Socialism forward one jot, because the imperialist, capitalist state that underpins both bourgeois-democracy and fascism, would still exist, and it is this state that is their fundamental enemy, not the superficial appearance given by the specific form of political regime adopted by the bourgeoisie as best suits its needs at the time.
Consequently, despite knowing that giving direct assistance to Algerian revolutionaries, undertaking a revolutionary war of independence, would weaken France, and consequently strengthen Italy, the Italian workers facilitate the revolutionary struggle of the Algerians. This is the purpose of Trotsky's example, and yet the AWL turn it into an example about, workers not obstructing an imperialist state providing military assistance to a national liberation struggle! They not only fail to understand the real purpose of the example, but they also fail to take into account everything else that both Trotsky and Lenin had written about such liberation struggles, and Marxists approach to them. In other words, that Marxists only give support to truly revolutionary forces engaged in such struggles, as set out in The Theses On The National and Colonial Struggles, and as Trotsky had emphasised again in relation to the Chinese Revolution, and his opposition to the support given by the Stalinists to the KMT.
The AWL write,
“Note that Trotsky advocates a coherent and consistent internationalist policy for workers’ movements around the world – not the idea that the only or dominating task in every given situation, at every given moment, is opposing action by the government of one’s own country.”
Again, this is duplicitous, implying that the requirement of workers to support a national liberation struggle comes above the idea that they must continue to conduct a struggle against their own ruling class and state on the basis that “the main enemy is at home”. But, Trotsky, in the same piece makes clear that the opposite is true. He says,
“Does this not signify, however, that the Italian workers moderate their struggle in this case against the fascist regime? Not in the slightest. Fascism renders “aid” to the Algerians only in order to weaken its enemy, France, and to lay its rapacious hand on her colonies. The revolutionary Italian workers do not forget this for a single moment. They call upon the Algerians not to trust their treacherous “ally” and at the same time continue their own irreconcilable struggle against fascism, “the main enemy in their own country”. Only in this way can they gain the confidence of the rebels, help the rebellion and strengthen their own revolutionary position.”
It should also be noted that those who support Putin's Russia, also fail to take into consideration the context of Trotsky's determination, during this time, to fight against the campists and social imperialists, who sought to tie the workers into the camp of “democratic imperialism” against fascism, in the upcoming war, on the basis of some more progressive nature of the former over the latter, when they refer to Trotsky's example of supporting Brazil against Britain, as set out in “Anti-Imperialist Struggle is Key to Liberation”.
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