Trotsky on Our Sins [1]¶
Core Argument¶
In this 1926 review of Trotsky’s latest book, Bertrand Russell engages seriously with the Bolshevik leader’s critique of the British Labour movement while ultimately rejecting his revolutionary prescriptions as strategically reckless. Russell finds Trotsky’s diagnosis “extraordinarily penetrating” but his proposed cure worse than the disease.
Russell endorses Trotsky’s central complaint: that the Labour Party lacks a coherent theoretical outlook and substitutes expediency for principle. He agrees with Trotsky’s argument that Republicanism is not optional for socialists—that to proclaim a socialist programme while treating the monarchy as harmless and cheap is logically equivalent to “acknowledging materialistic science and making use of the incantation of a sorcerer for toothache.” Russell extends this logic to the Churches, contra the introduction by Brailsford, arguing that organised religion is necessarily reactionary in the modern world. The deeper fallacy, Russell contends, is the belief that electing professing Socialists to Parliament matters more than securing actual socialism. Labour politicians who must promise not to implement their own programme to get elected have already conceded defeat. The desire to be considered “gentlemen” by class enemies, he argues, is a peculiarly British weakness that precludes serious political struggle.
Russell draws on Trotsky’s extended analogy of Cromwell, who preferred soldiers convinced of the justice of their cause over “gentlemen” officers. The British Labour movement, Russell laments, contains hardly anyone whose convictions are strong enough to make them indifferent to gentlemanliness. He traces this to a broader British aversion to philosophical consistency: Cromwell had a complete philosophy, as did the Benthamites who created the Liberal Party. The Russian Communists succeeded precisely because they were not content with “a hotch-potch of amiable sentiments.” Socialism cannot be Christianity consistently carried out, Russell insists—Christianity is agricultural, socialism industrial.
However, Russell turns sharply against Trotsky’s programme for Britain, calling it “a programme which could only be advocated by an enemy or a fool.” Trotsky envisions a Labour Government with a clear majority being swept aside by resolute revolutionaries, who would then face civil war against the bourgeoisie supported by police, courts, and army. Russell identifies a catastrophic failure of realism: Trotsky’s own analysis shows Britain’s economic deterioration and dependence on the United States, yet he argues as if Britain were economically self-subsistent. French aeroplanes and American warships would destroy any Communist regime, or an economic blockade would cut off food supplies. Soviet sympathy, however enthusiastic, cannot place a fleet in the Atlantic stronger than America’s. Britain would need to reduce its population to twenty million through starvation before achieving economic independence.
Russell’s polemic is sharp: Trotsky hates British imperialism “not without good reason,” but this makes his advice untrustworthy. He is, like everyone else, a patriot when it comes to the pinch—a Communist revolution in England would benefit Russia, and Trotsky recommends it without impartial consideration of British interests. The pacifism Trotsky despises in the British Labour movement is not sentimental but forced by American economic dominance. If Trotsky genuinely wants Communism to spread, Russell concludes, he should turn his attention to the American Federation of Labour.