Introduction to the Fourth Edition¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter introduces the fourth edition of Lenin and Trotsky, originally written in 1968 as a polemical reply to Monty Johnstone, a leading theoretician of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Johnstone had published a reappraisal of Trotsky in the Young Communist League journal Cogito, and Woods and Grant seized the opportunity to explain the genuine relationship between Lenin and Trotsky, which had been systematically falsified by Stalinists since the invention of "Trotskyism" in 1924. Until the late 1960s, open discussion of Trotsky's ideas had been impossible within the official communist movement. The radicalisation of youth following the 1968 French revolutionary general strike, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Vietnam War revived interest in Trotsky's theoretical legacy, prompting the CPGB to assign Johnstone the task of writing an exposure of Trotsky to stiffen the ranks of the YCL.
The authors argue that Johnstone's "reassessment" fundamentally misrepresents Trotsky's positions, equating the Left Opposition's proposal to tax rich peasants with Stalin's forced collectivisation, and comparing Trotsky's civil war writings to Stalin's terror. Trotsky's analysis of revolutionary possibilities in the 1920s and 1930s was not exaggerated; revolutionary potential was squandered by Stalinist, social democratic, and anarchist leaderships. In France in 1936, the Communist Party under Maurice Thorez acted as a brake on factory occupations, prioritising social peace over working-class power. In Spain, Stalinists prevented the 1936 Catalan uprising from developing into a full revolution, sacrificing the Spanish revolution in pursuit of a diplomatic deal with Western democracies. Trotsky maintained a revolutionary internationalist position against imperialist war, while Stalin made a pact with Hitler in 1939 and later dissolved the Comintern in 1943.
The collapse of the USSR in 1989-91 confirmed Trotsky's analysis in The Revolution Betrayed (1936), which Johnstone had rejected. The bureaucracy had become an absolute fetter on the economy and converted itself into a capitalist class, restoring capitalism. The authors insist that the only serious explanation for this collapse was provided by Trotsky, who predicted the internal contradictions of the bureaucratic regime would lead to a catastrophic outcome. The capitalist counter-revolution has produced the biggest peacetime drop in production, and Russian capitalism has proved unable to develop the productive forces. A new revolution in Russia is being prepared, which will re-establish the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky. The chapter concludes by asserting that debates over the "two stage" theory remain highly relevant, particularly in South Africa, where communist youth reject the Stalinist two-stage theory in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. The authors argue that world capitalism has entered an impasse, a new revolutionary epoch is opening, and activists must arm themselves theoretically by studying Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.