Preface¶
Core Argument¶
This preface situates the third volume of Ted Grant’s collected writings within the deepening crisis of world capitalism since 2008 — economic stagnation, pandemic, war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza — and argues that such upheavals have made revolutionary movements a general feature of the epoch, turning a new generation toward communism. The volume’s contents, covering 1945–1946, are presented as a watershed not only in world history but within the Trotskyist movement itself. The core argument is that the Allied victory and defeat of Hitler produced a historically novel situation — one Trotsky had not foreseen — in which capitalism, Stalinism, and reformism were strengthened for an entire period, rather than collapsing. Ted Grant is credited with grasping this shift immediately, while the main leaders of the Fourth International are polemicised against for clinging mechanically to prophecies of capitalism’s imminent downfall, thereby abandoning the Marxist method. The preface insists that Marxists must study the living world in all its contradictions, not enforce preconceived notions.
The volume is divided into three sections. The first covers international developments, substantiating Grant’s earlier analysis in ‘The Changed Relationship of Forces in Europe’. It features editorials on post-war Europe, Palestine, East Asia, and the American workers’ movement. Grant is shown exposing the imperialist machinations behind the founding of the United Nations, which he described, quoting Lenin, as a ‘thieves’ kitchen’ designed to carve up the world under a cloak of democracy. A notable polemic concerns Germany: while Stalinists joined the chauvinist chorus against German workers, Grant upheld international solidarity, blaming the German capitalists and all imperialist powers for the war. The RCP even published a German-language paper, Solidarität, to help exiled German Trotskyists rebuild. The Nuremberg trials are treated as a key site of imperialist hypocrisy — the Allies using the trials to obscure their pre-war support for Hitler — and as an opportunity for the RCP to campaign against Stalin’s slanders of Trotsky. Grant and the RCP challenged Soviet prosecutors to reproduce the fabricated evidence from the Moscow show trials, a campaign that reached layers of British Communist Party ranks. The American SWP under James Cannon is criticised for refusing to support this initiative, prioritising factional attacks on Grant and Jock Haston instead.
The second section covers Britain, where Labour’s 1945 election victory opened a new period. Grant is shown realising that post-war recovery, though still in its infancy, would strengthen reformism and Attlee’s Labour, making entryism unfavourable. This is contrasted with the RCP Minority around Gerry Healy, backed by the Fourth International, who demanded dissolution into Labour. Grant’s revised British Perspectives for 1946 are presented as evidence of his capacity to adjust strategy to objective conditions, refusing to mechanically repeat the perspectives of the previous decade. The Neath by-election campaign of 1945 is held up as a model of bold open work by a small communist force.
The third section contains internal debates on entrism, democratic centralism, Stalinism, centrism, and economic perspectives. The preface polemicises against the mechanical and dishonest methods of the Fourth International leadership and Healy’s Minority, contrasting them with Grant’s patient, scientific approach. The selection notes clarify editorial decisions regarding unsigned articles and collective authorship of SocialistAppeal.