1945 – Arms and the Class¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter, published in Socialist Appeal in 1945, argues that the central political question facing the European working class in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War is the control of arms. The core narrative thrust is that the Allied imperialist powers, having liberated Western Europe from Nazi occupation, immediately moved to disarm the mass partisan movements that had conducted the armed resistance, while simultaneously arming the reactionary capitalist and monarchist elements who had collaborated with the Nazis. The chapter presents this as a deliberate preparation for a coming class war, not a restoration of peacetime order.
The key claim is that the disarming of the masses is an act of class treachery, facilitated by the Stalinist and Social Democratic leaders of the Communist and Socialist parties. In Belgium and France, these leaders are accused of assisting the Allied imperialists under the slogan of ‘national unity’, agreeing to incorporate the partisans into regular capitalist-controlled armies. In Greece, the leaders of the EAM (National Liberation Front) are said to have initially agreed to disarm the ELAS (Greek People’s Liberation Army), but were forced by the rank-and-file to resist the British imperialists and their puppet, Papandreou. The evidence cited is the observable political behaviour of these parties in the immediate post-liberation period. The chapter draws on the historical context of the resistance against Nazi occupation, contrasting the experience of the masses—who fought and starved—with that of the native capitalists who fraternised with the SS as Quislings. The central polemic is directed against the reformist and Stalinist leaderships who subordinated working-class interests to the framework of the capitalist state and ‘national unity’. The Trotskyist parties of the Fourth International are presented as the only forces with a correct programme, one that insists on the creation of independent workers’ militias, officered and controlled by the workers’ own organisations, rather than by the capitalist state. The chapter concludes that 1945 will mark the beginning of a new epoch for Trotskyism in Europe, as the mass parties of the working class.