The Idiocy of Left Brexitism and Its Twin - Part 2 of 15

Trotsky rejected the idea of “lesser-evilism”, and of the Popular Front as a means of opposing the “greater evil”. The opportunists and parliamentary cretins have argued for voting for Kamala Harris, to defeat Trump, for example, misusing Trotsky's words – as is their wont – to do so. They seem to forget that it was the policies of Obama that opened the door to the first Trump Presidency, just as those of Biden opened the door to the second, and as the policies of Macron have opened the door to Le Pen, those of Scholz to the AfD, and those of Starmer to Farage. In the quote, they use, Trotsky writes, opposing the lunacy of the Stalinist Third Period,

“The wiseacres who claim they see no difference between Bruning and Hitler are in fact saying: it makes no difference whether our organisations exist or whether they are destroyed … If fascism comes to power, it will ride like a tank over your skulls and spines … Only a fighting unity with social democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, communist workers; you have little time to lose.”

Quite right, but, there is nothing in this article that justifies the opportunists position of creating a popular front, and even less for simply voting for bourgeois parties, as a lesser-evil. On the contrary, what Trotsky is arguing for, in it, is the opposite of that, the opposite of a popular front, let alone passively voting for bourgeois candidates, who we know will attack workers and create conditions for demoralisation, apathy and open the door to the Right! Its why, in 1979, for example, even faced with the prospect of the first Thatcher government, Marxists argued that we could not ask workers to simply vote for a Labour government that was already attacking them, and, instead, proposed an alternative, limited socialist programme, and called for support for those Labour candidates that stood on it, such as Jeremy Corbyn, as part of a fighting strategy. What Trotsky argues for is “a fighting unity” in action, against the fascists, i.e. for a workers united front, a fighting front, in action, of all workers. In this article, he says, though the opportunists chop it out of their account,

“The Social Democracy supports Brüning, votes for him, assumes responsibility for him before the masses-on the grounds that the Brüning government is the “lesser evil.” Die Rote Fahne attempts to ascribe the same view to me – on the grounds that I expressed myself against the stupid and shameful participation of the Communists in the Hitler referendum. But have the German Left Opposition and myself in particular demanded that the Communists vote for and support Brüning? We Marxists regard Brüning and Hitler, Braun included, as component parts of one and the same system. The question as to which one of them is the “lesser evil” has no sense, for the system we are fighting against needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the proletariat must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the revolution.”

In other words, there was no suggestion, on Trotsky's part, that they should vote for Bruning, the equivalent of the opportunists demand for a vote for Harris as the lesser-evil to Trump. The opportunists, today, simply accuse Trotsky of the same thing the Third Period Stalinists did, in the 1930's, an accusation that Trotsky himself flatly denied. Similarly, the 1930's, equivalent of today's opportunists, Hilferding, was also to claim that Trotsky had adopted that position, a claim that Trotsky, himself, again, flatly rejected.

Such a vote, is a purely passive action, tying the Communists to the bourgeois parties, and so damning them when those bourgeois parties, inevitably, attack the workers. On the contrary, the Communists should be drawing the workers away from them. It is simply an even more craven form of the Popular Front, in which the Communists suppress their own programme in order to retain a purely electoral alliance with the bourgeois parties.

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