It is extremely significant that Trotsky should have spent the last years before Stalin's axeman cut him down, striving to build a new International. Furthermore it is my belief that t’e achievement of Trotsky in struggling against the stream to found it, makes a contribution to his ; stature at least equal to his earlier distinctions.(1) This essay will provide the theoretical framework for this struggle.
The Marxist notion of the unity of theory and practice means that truth is developed out of practice and proved in practice. Theory without practice is empty and practice without theory is blind. The two sides must constantly be brought back in harmony with one another. Without the experience of action, theory degenerates into aterile dogmatism; neglect of theory leads to directionless pragmatism.
This unity of theory and practice and the dialectical relationship between them, in ongoing purposeful activity, must be understood when I refer, for short, to praxis. Now the scale of the praxis must be adeqrate to the subject matter of the activity. This factor has profound significance for working-class politics, At bottom the scale depends on the : level of the productive forces. Clearly in the middle ages, based on domestic handicraft and agriculture, events on one side of the world had normally no influence on those on the other. To all intents and purposes . social and political praxis needed to develop only within a national scale. However, the extraordinary development of the productive forces brought about by capitalism, for the first time, brought all of humanity ithin the comprehension of a single system, the world market. Yet modes of thought and action, methods of making history, remain frozen in forms which do not measure up to the requirements of the expanded productive forces, in forms which have becomes increasingly ineffective and counterproductive.
Human praxis must and cen now become commensurate with the reality of the situation it finds itself in. It was for this reason that Marx stressed the necessity for the transcending of national boundaries, and the need for the universal appropriation of the means of production. In the German Ideology he said “...appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been de~ veloped to a totality and which exist only within a universal intercourse. . From this aspect alone therefore, the appropriation must have a universal character..." (p.83 full ed. L&W)
"Empirically communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples ‘all at once' and similtaneously,...++
(1)That a recent critic of Trotsky, N.Krasso, should fail to see this and dismisses Trotsky's efforts in the cavalier way that he does, is itself symptomatic of a large lacuna in the political consciousness of much of the Marxist movement today. (See New Left Review 44.Also a reply NLR 47)
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"The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical" (p.47)
In a pathetic note attached to the G.I. the institute of Marxism Leninism attempts to explain away Marx's trenchant remarks by saying that they were correct only for "the.period of pre-monopoly capitalism", but that "in the epoch of imperialism", "the socialist revolution could be victorious... in a single country". This is clearly an attempt to save the revisionist position of 'socialism in one country'. It is obvious however, that the advent of imperialism makes the victory of socialism in a single country less and not more likely. The law of combimed and uneven development cited by the authors does not help. Lenin and Trotsky only used this idea to revise the perspective of where and when the rev=olution would break out first. Neither of them expected that socialism could be consolidated, victorious and secure, in a single country. The replacement of Lenin's'holding operation’ by Stalin's "socialism in one country", may seem just a question of phraseology, especially given a holding operation of several decades. In fact, these phrases reflect different conceptual universes, and issue in entirely different politics.
With Stalin, Marxism collapses from a world-historical praxis into that of a single country. Comminist Parties outside the 0.5.5.R. became mere adjuncts to Soviet diplomacy, often willing to betray the workers for the sake of maintaining peaceful co-existance and the status-quo. However this attempt to ensure the safety of the U.SS.R. by smothering the contradictions was always doomed to be broken down by reality. Stalin's defence of the increasingoppressivness of the State by reference to 'Capitalist encirclement', 'spies' etc. contradicts, though he refused to recognise it, the socialism in a single country perspective.
The attempt to maintain the status quo in an inlerently developing antagonism just does not work. Just when the Stalinists have have all their own men in line along comes a Castro, making trouble, making revolution, and jeopardising the cosiness of peaceful co-existance with Imperialism. Or perhaps the Imperialists themselves take a mean advantage of the passivity of the Kremlin to leap in and try to batter a small workers' state to death.
The adoption of this anti-internationalist position made nonsense of the idea of the Third International, and after it was served up by Stalin as a burnt offering to his imperialist allies during the last war, this seems to have been tacitly conceded.
For it is from the world-historical character of our epoch and the “ need for comminism to be based on a universal appropriation that there flows the need to build a movement truly universal in scope, consisting of nothing leas than the international working class, whose purpose is the achievement of a world-wide communism, and whose praxis must be commensurate with that purpose, The instrument of this revolution, the revolutionary party, should therefore be an International, a world party of revolutionaries, unified in praxis.
",,..the emancipation of labour is neither a local nor a national
but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern soc-
lety exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence
practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries..."
Rules of the I.W,M.A,1864-71. My emphasis)
Never before has it been so plain as it is today, that the politics and economy of capitalism, its markets, its crises, its wars - all have an international character (1)
Just as socialism cannot be realised in one country without world revolution so no revolutionary national grouping can develop completely without a world party. The world-historical character of events today means that the correct analysis of the world situation is more complex than ever before. This analysis cannot be developed abstractly in a single head. Such would be sheer idealism. Only analysis of the world situation, constantly re-examined and tested in the light of practical action, can enable all the sectors of a world movement to feel the.pulse of history in the making. Only an International based on democratic = centralism, permitting different tendencies to confront each other democratically while: uniting them in action, can allow experieneea from all corners of the world to become properly weighed and translated into revolutionary tasks on a world scale. Only a universal praxis will suffice.
"What. is involved is the construction of something qualitatively
different from the mere sum of the national organisations. By
pooling national experience and opinion in aecordance with the
rule of democratic centralism, it is possible to build an inter ~
national leadership much superior to anything within the capacity
of a single section. The basic concept is not that of assembling
a staff of intellectuals, however valuable and necessary this is,
but of combining on an international scale leaderships that are
deeply rooted in their own national soil and connected in a living
way with the masses of their own country. An international lead- (1) Krasso's above mentioned dismissal of Trotsky's efforts to found a new International flows from his failure to see this. How in the middle of the Vietnam war can Krasso believe that history keeps "different times in Paris, Rome, London or Moscow"? I+ haa been said that historical time is not a unitary flow - there are only specific structures with specific histories ( see Gareth Stedman Jones NIR 46). Quite so, but even in Marx's day he was able to recognise the structural opposition of capitalism itself. By the time Trotsky formulated the theory of Permanent Revolution it should have been plain for all to see that we live in one world with one history. (One grants of course that different countries entered World History at different stages of their development and in different ways so that the ensuing totality is clearly complex, and there is always the necessity. to study very carefully the precise way a country fite into the whole and. the specific relation of ites dialectic to that of the whole.)
-ership of that kind is capable of 9 a Wt oF the difficult. dual
task of keeping theory up to dete and of working cut viable polic-
ies of revolutionary action on the great world issues of the day."
(Seventh World Congress of the Fourth International)
Such an International cannot be at all a mere association of nat- * ional parties having independent programmes, held together merely by loose ties, an association of a 'federative! or 'polycentrist' character. Still less will a mere 'feeling of solidarity' with other oppressed peoples engaged in struggle do. There must be a common international prog- r ramme on the basis of which the national sections develop anawers to the particular problema of their country. Their experience is then fed back into the international organieation.
This mst not be misunderstood.(1) It is not a question of a number of parallel structures, keeping parallel times, with parallel agendas s0 that lessons learnt in one place apply ipso facto in another. It ie a question of building up from a total experience a totalisation of world history, & picture of the links binding the subordinate structures at various levels, an understanding of the dialectic between various epicentres of world revolution.
Only such &n analysis and such a programme can lead to the most meaningful actions being undertaken in particular places - and of course the concrete application will depend upon the revolutionaries! situation in the articulated whole. Outside the Fourth International, in the whole Marxist left, it seems only Che Guevara has understood this, in his last message 'Two or Three more Vietnams'. He has been subjected to the same scorn and misrepresentation as Trotsky was, for it.
The best way of developing revolutionary cadres with a correct analysis and an internationalist outlook and pmctice, lies in their being part and parcel of a living International, democratic in organisation and unified in action. For not a single minute during his political work should such a revolutionary forget that what he is dceing is essentjially one with his comrades all over the world, with whom he shares a common purpose and praxis.
How do we stand today on the question of building the International? The Second International is nothing but a joke, and of course nothing so Binister looking as a Third International must be allowed to disttrb peaceful co-existance with Imperialism. Only the Fourth International strives to build a revolutionary International.
The abdication from this task by the traditional social democratic and Stalinist parties has had catastrophic results for the workers movement.
SSS Se Se Sy a ee a i “eee et) eee ee (1) As Krasso misunderstands Trotsky when he (K) writes "Political agendas were not interchangeable across geographical frontiers...."
When a Labour Government came to office we suffered the spectacle of Anthony Greenwood, estar of the social democratic left, gassing schoolchildren in Bahrein on behalf of an autocracy rrightful even by the standards of that area. Within weeks of the slaughter of a million workers and peasants of Indonesia, Michael Stewart was first ashore shaking the bloody hands of the butchers and promising them every assistance. Hardly & voice was raised in the Labour Movement - so deepgoing is the demobil-— isation of consciousness on this question. It is no accident that the Government's domestic policy is equally class-collaborationist.
With the Stalinist parties the situation is no better. The pernicious theory of socialism in one country has been translated into a diffuse . polycentrism - every party its own way to socialism and to hell with the rest of the world. Episodes in the long history of Kremlin treason to the revolution were the sabotage of the Chinese economy by the withdrawal without notice of technicians and plans, the arming of India against China, and the granting of aid to the repressive regime in Columbia against which guerilles are fighting arms in hand. The last shows the complete lack of any livinglink between the Kremlin and the Columbian workers and peasants, and it was rightly condemned at 0,L.A.5.
The Chinese Communist Party in spite of its revolutionary phraseology, is equally sunk in chauvinism and opportunism stemming from its lack of any idea of internationalisn, The way it rushed in to recognise the counterrevolutionary coup d'etat in Algeria in hopes of gaining factional advantages over the Russians if the proposed conference was staged there shocked even neo-colonialists African regimes. They arm the Pakistan military dictatorship. They have not come out in support of Guevara and the OLAS conference - presumably because of their obscure and trivial quarrel with Cuba.
Woret of all is the failure of the Russians and Chinese to organise a united front for the defence of Vietnam.
However it would be a mistake to think of' these episodes ag mere aberrations which may be easil y corrected. These anti-internationalist attitudes have deep social roots in authoritarian structures concerned with conserving the power and privileges of a parochial bureaucracy.
It was when Trotsky saw that the Third International and the Comm unist Parties had degenerated into administrative machines with no internal life, that he decided it was time to start again, to build a new International dedicated to breaking the grip of social democracy and the Stalinist bureaucracies on the workers' movement. It remains true that the idea of building a new International represents perhaps the most enduring and relevant legacy of Leon Trotsky.
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