15. After the Sixth Congress
The Stalinists accused the Trotskyists of liquidationism and of alliance with the opportunists. This was just the required slander for any official seeking a role for themselves, much as, today, it is required for pro-NATO social-imperialists to label Marxists as pro-Putin apologists, and for their mirror image, the pro-Putin social-imperialists, to label Marxists NATO apologists.
The reality was that it was the Trotskyists that had correctly analysed the class nature of the events, just as, today, it is the Marxists that have correctly analysed the class nature of the Ukraine-Russia war, as an inter-imperialist war, reactionary on both sides. The crude lies and slanders of the pro-imperialist, idiot anti-imperialists are simply to cover the shame and betrayal of our opponents.
Trotsky also indicates how far Marxism is from the approach of the petty-bourgeois catastrophists (Sismondists et al). Having noted that the defeats and betrayals of the Stalinists had led to the defeat of the Second Revolution, Trotsky notes that the consequence would be a withdrawal of the workers from political activity. Something similar could be seen with the defeat of Corbynism and its international equivalents, in the US and Europe. The consequence would be a resumption of more normal economic life. However, that, in itself, creates the conditions, as Marx notes in Wage-Labour and Capital, for workers to feel more secure, to rebuild their confidence and organisations. Trotsky sets this out at greater length in Flood Tide, and The Curve of Capitalist Development.
In February 1928, the Opposition wrote,
“The situation will now change in the exactly opposite direction; the working masses will temporarily retreat from politics; the Party will grow weak which does not exclude the continuation of peasant uprisings. The weakening of the war of the generals as well as the weakening of the strikes and uprisings of the proletariat will inevitably lead in the meantime to some sort of an establishment of elementary processes of economic life in the country and consequently to somewhat of an even, though very weak, commercial and industrial rise. The latter will revive the strike struggles of the workers and permit the Communist Party, under the condition of correct tactics, once more to establish its contact and its influence in order that later, already on a higher plane, the insurrection of the workers may be interlocked with the peasant war. That is what our so-called ‘liquidationism’ consisted of.” (p 290-1)
This was possible, in China, because of its position as a newly industrialising economy. The defeats inflicted on workers, in Europe, as a result of the errors and betrayals of Stalinism, were not so readily addressed, because it had entered the phase of long wave stagnation. As I have set out, elsewhere, the continued upward momentum of the long wave, begun in 1999, which was suppressed, after 2010, but which burst out of the pressure cooker of lockdowns, in 2022, has seen a similar trajectory. Workers suffered defeats resulting from the errors and betrayals of Stalinism, of Left Populism, prior to and during lockdowns, and the betrayals of social-imperialism, itself guided by bourgeois-nationalist concepts such as national-self-determination and defence of the fatherland. Yet, despite that, the working-class, seizing on the economic recovery, and shortage of labour, has engaged in a deluge of strikes, across the globe, reminiscent of the similar period of the 1950's and 60's. It will, inevitably, flow back into political activity, as it did in that earlier period, but requires adequate Marxist leadership to be successful.
Trotsky's analysis for China was similarly correct. He quotes the same Stalinist Duxiu, who, in 1930, was led to write,
““In Chinese industry and commerce a certain revival was to be marked in 1928.”
And further:
“In 1928, 400,000 workers went on strike, in 1929, the number of strikers had already reached 750,000. In the first half of 1930, the labour movement was still further fortified in the tempo of development.”
It is understood that we must be very cautious with the figures of the Comintern, including Duxiu’s. But regardless of the possible exaggeration of the figures, Duxiu’s exposition bears out entirely our prognosis at the end 1927 and the beginning of 1928.” (p 291)
The Stalinists, themselves purveyors of petty-bourgeois catastrophism, were wrong-footed, expecting the opposite, and so, failing to have oriented to the industrial workers, and their unions. On the contrary, as described earlier, they, increasingly, turned to the peasants and guerilla warfare.
“The possibility of economic revival was not taken into consideration by it. The strike movement went on to a considerable extent apart from it. Can one doubt for an instant that if the leadership of the Comintern had not occupied itself with stupid accusations of liquidationism against the Opposition and had understood the situation in time, as we did, the Chinese Communist Party would have been considerably stronger, primarily in the trade-union movement? Let us recall that during the highest ascent of the second revolution, in the first half of 1927, there were 2,800,000 workers organized in trade unions under the influence of the Communist Party. At the present time, there are, according to Duxiu, around 60,000. This in the whole of China!” (p 291-2)
No comments:
Post a Comment