Britain and Mexico, 1938¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents two texts from 1938 in which Leon Trotsky defends the Mexican government’s expropriation of British and American oil companies and excoriates the British government’s response as a textbook case of imperialist cynicism. The core argument is that the dispute is not a legal or commercial matter but a clash between national independence and imperialist plunder. Trotsky insists the juridical question is simple: British capitalists voluntarily submitted to Mexican law, and only Mexican courts can interpret it. The British government’s claim to defend ‘international law’ is exposed as a fraud, since the same government supports fascist aggression in Ethiopia and Spain. The economic argument is equally stark: foreign capital has extracted Mexico’s mineral wealth for decades, contributing nothing to the country’s infrastructure or culture, while enriching a tiny clique of magnates who build palaces in London and Monaco. Trotsky calls for a Labour Party commission to produce a ‘stunning balance’ of this exploitation.
The second text broadens the analysis. Trotsky argues that the British boycott of Mexican oil is a self-boycott that harms Britain’s own state interests, proving that capitalist profits override national defence. He links the Cedillo uprising to Chamberlain’s policy, asserting that British imperialism, blocked by the Monroe Doctrine from direct naval blockade, operates through internal agents. He refutes the charge that expropriation is a ‘communist’ measure, placing it instead in the tradition of the American Revolution and Civil War: Cardenas is compared to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant, clearing the ground for independent bourgeois-democratic development. Trotsky draws on Marx’s support for Lincoln to argue that the international proletariat can support progressive bourgeois measures without adopting their programme.
The polemics are multiple and sharp. Trotsky attacks the British government directly, the Labour Party for its silence, and the French Popular Front press (Marianne) for alleging he inspired the expropriation in Hitler’s interests. He dismisses this as no more intelligent than the Moscow Trials, and identifies the GPU as the source of such slanders, adapting their libels to local audiences. He concludes that the struggle over Mexican oil is a skirmish in the global battle between oppressors and oppressed, and that the British working class must act decisively to paralyse imperialist violence.