4. In Defence of Trotskyism¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 4: In Defence of Trotskyism¶
This chapter defends the political trajectory of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) against the leadership of the Fourth International (IS) and its British agent, Gerry Healy, in the post-1945 period. The core argument is that the IS, under figures like Mandel, Cannon, and Frank, abandoned Marxist method for incoherent eclecticism and Zinovievite organisational practices, thereby discrediting Trotskyism.
The RCP’s analysis of the post-war world is vindicated against the IS’s errors. Where the IS claimed the USSR was so weakened that imperialism could restore capitalism through diplomacy, the RCP argued that the Red Army’s occupation of Eastern Europe had fundamentally shifted the global balance of power. On China, the RCP rejected Trotsky’s outdated view that Mao would capitulate to Chiang, instead predicting a regime of proletarian Bonapartism—a brutal, totalitarian bureaucracy that would economically develop while enslaving workers and peasants, and would eventually split from Moscow. On Yugoslavia, the RCP insisted Tito’s regime was a deformed workers’ state, no different from Stalin’s USSR, and that the Tito-Stalin split was a national struggle between bureaucratic factions, not a class struggle. The dictatorship of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the chapter argues, indirectly expresses the rule of the proletariat; a political revolution is needed to transform it into a genuine democracy.
The chapter’s polemic is sharpest against Healy. Healy, backed by the Americans, sought to replace the RCP leadership, seizing on a dispute over redundancy procedures and raising scores of spurious disagreements. His faction falsely predicted an imminent slump, demanding immediate entry into the Labour Party despite the absence of the pre-revolutionary crisis Trotsky had stipulated. The RCP majority correctly argued that capitalism’s laws of motion made a cyclical boom inevitable. After two years of debate, Healy’s minority split in October 1947 to operate clandestinely as “The Club.” The IS then issued an ultimatum demanding the RCP place its Labour Party forces under Healy’s control, demoralising the RCP’s leader, Jock Haston.
The RCP’s campaign for Trotsky’s rehabilitation during the Nuremberg trials is highlighted as a principled initiative, exposing the Moscow trials frame-ups and gaining support from intellectuals like H.G. Wells. The American SWP’s refusal to participate is attributed to petty political spite. The chapter concludes that the RCP faced severe objective difficulties—post-war reformist illusions, a confident Labour right-wing, and Stalinism’s rising prestige—but its analysis was consistently superior to the IS’s opportunism.