The Labour Party and Britain’s Decline¶
Core Argument¶
In his polemical analysis of the Labour Party and Britain’s decline, Trotsky argues that the party’s leadership, particularly Ramsay MacDonald, serves not as a vehicle for socialism but as the instrument of Britain’s capitulation to American imperialism. The Anglo-American antagonism, which Trotsky claims he fought from 1923 to get the Comintern to recognise as the fundamental world conflict, has entered a stage of military “collaboration” that will culminate in American dictatorship over the world, including Britain. MacDonald’s “gradual disarmament” is exposed as a farce: the real aim is parity of the US and British fleets, which actually establishes inequality in America’s favour because its superior productive capacity means it can out-build Britain in wartime. The Young Plan gives America control over Europe’s finances, while the Anglo-French Naval Agreement of July 1928 was abandoned at America’s behest. At Geneva, European leaders spoke in fear of America. The Daily Herald called a United States of Europe “grotesque”, arguing it would trap Britain between two tariff blocs.
Trotsky dismisses the Fabian hope of a peaceful parliamentary transition to socialism. British parliamentarianism holds together not through tradition but through wealth accumulated from former world domination; its fate depends on world capitalism, which has exhausted its progressive mission. A Labour government would not expropriate the bourgeoisie; its leaders are small bourgeois conservatives. It would attempt paltry reforms, disappointing workers and irritating the bourgeoisie, leading to a revolutionary split, a fascist counter-revolutionary bloc, and civil war. The British proletariat must therefore prepare for revolutionary struggle.
In his polemics, Lenin consistently denounced Sidney and Beatrice Webb as Fabian apologists for the existing order, not as naïve but as respectably servile to established power. They supported their own bourgeoisie during the war, accepted a peerage for Webb (Lord Passfield), and served as Colonial Minister—chief jail-keeper of British imperialism—while simultaneously gathering material from Soviet bureaucracies for their two-volume compilation. As late as 1923, the Webbs saw little difference between Bolshevism and tsarism; by the 1930s they fully recognised the ‘democracy’ of Stalin’s regime. No contradiction exists: Fabians were indignant when the revolutionary proletariat withdrew freedom from ‘educated’ society, but accepted a bureaucracy withdrawing freedom from the proletariat. They cited staged ‘self-criticism’ as proof of free speech. The Webbs defended the Soviet Union theoretically against Left Opposition criticism while, practically, the Labour Government containing Lord Passfield refused Trotsky a visa to Britain. In both cases, they remained true to themselves.