Big Three Plot in Secret¶
Core Argument¶
In this short polemical piece from Socialist Appeal, the central argument is that the Potsdam Conference of July 1945 exemplifies the betrayal of working-class interests by all three of the Great Powers, including the Soviet Union under Stalin. The core narrative thrust contrasts the opulent, secretive diplomacy of the “Big Three” with the revolutionary openness of Lenin and Trotsky, and with the material suffering of the European masses.
The chapter’s key claim is that the secrecy surrounding the Potsdam negotiations is not a diplomatic necessity but a deliberate cover for counter-revolutionary conspiracy. The authors argue that the real business of the conference is the division of the world into spheres of influence and the suppression of the European revolution—a spectacle that would be “unedifying” if conducted openly. As evidence of the leaders’ remoteness, the text reproduces a News Chronicle report detailing the lavish provisions flown in for the conference: ten-ton mobile refrigerators, choice steaks, dieticians supervising calories, and thousands of items of luxury furnishings, from lawnmowers to liqueurs. This “Byzantine feasting” is presented as symbolic of the gulf between the rulers and a starving, devastated Europe.
The historical context is the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a crisis the authors attribute to “the contradictions of the capitalist system.” The theoretical framework is explicitly Trotskyist. The chapter draws a sharp distinction between the methods of Lenin and Trotsky—who conducted diplomacy openly before the masses—and those of Stalin, Churchill, and Truman. The Stalinist regime is accused of having “travelled far from the ideals of Lenin and Trotsky,” now requiring “a veil of darkness and of silence” to conceal its horse-trading and intrigues.
The polemic is directed against three targets simultaneously. First, the Western imperialists (Churchill and Truman), from whom nothing better is expected. Second, and more damningly, Stalin, who is condemned for adopting the same secretive, counter-revolutionary methods as his capitalist counterparts. Third, the piece implicitly argues against any passive acceptance of great-power diplomacy by the working class. The conclusion is a call to action: workers must protest secret diplomacy and demand open negotiations so that the masses can intervene against the “counter-revolutionary plots” being hatched behind closed doors.