In Defence of Trotskyism¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter defends the method of Leon Trotsky against both the dogmatic ultra-leftism of the Fourth International leadership and the liquidationist opportunism that emerged in the post-war period. The central argument is that the Second World War unfolded in ways Trotsky could not have predicted in 1938, but that his method — not his mechanical predictions — remained the only correct guide for understanding the new epoch.
The war in Europe became primarily a conflict between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. Hitler, convinced by Stalin’s purges of the Red Army and its poor Finnish campaign performance, expected a quick victory. However, German fascism’s racist brutality galvanised the Soviet population against the invaders. The USSR’s nationalised planned economy proved decisive: 1,500 factories were dismantled and relocated east of the Urals, enabling the Soviet Union to out-produce Germany in tanks, guns and aeroplanes within months. The Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, was the decisive engagement. The Red Army’s victory was achieved despite Stalin and the bureaucracy, whose blunders had nearly caused defeat. Yet the Stalinist bureaucracy emerged enormously strengthened, its prestige boosted, enabling it to survive for decades. This fundamentally changed the European and world balance of forces, closing the road from Trotskyist groups to Communist workers.
The Fourth International’s leadership — Pablo, Frank, Mandel, Cannon, Hansen — held an ultra-left position, mechanically repeating Trotsky’s 1938 perspectives without understanding his method. They failed to grasp that the USSR’s victory strengthened Stalinism for a whole historical period, while reformists and Stalinists saved capitalism in Europe, enabling a prolonged economic upswing. The British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), led by Ted Grant, correctly analysed the post-war period, predicting a period of bourgeois democracy and economic boom driven primarily by the unprecedented expansion of world trade, which temporarily mitigated capitalism’s contradictions. The International leadership responded with organisational intrigues rather than political argument, using Gerry Healy as a stooge against the RCP.
On Eastern Europe, Grant rejected both Shachtman’s bureaucratic collectivism and Cliff’s state capitalism, defending Trotsky’s analysis of the USSR as a deformed workers’ state. Applying Trotsky’s method, Grant characterised the Eastern European regimes as deformed workers’ states under a new type of proletarian Bonapartism, where the Stalinists destroyed the old state and installed themselves without direct working-class participation. Grant also predicted Mao’s victory in China, arguing that Mao would establish a deformed workers’ state and that China would eventually come into conflict with Stalinist Russia.
The chapter traces Healy’s disruptive history in the movement, including his multiple expulsions and readmissions. Healy’s faction entered the Labour Party, forming the secret “Club” and paper Socialist Outlook, pursuing a programmatic bloc with left reformists — a liquidationist policy Grant opposed as opportunism. In July 1949, the demoralised RCP dissolved itself, its members joining the Labour Party under Healy’s leadership. Grant was expelled after 22 years in the movement, his expulsion ratified at the Third World Congress on a motion by Ernest Mandel. The Fourth International split in 1953 between Pablo and Cannon; Healy switched to Cannon. The chapter concludes by characterising Pablo’s faction as neo-Stalinist liquidators who had wrecked the Fourth International.