AGAINST TROTSKYISM: A Collection of Documents (Progress Publishers, Moscow - £1.50p)
When Stalin organised the assassination of Trotsky in August 1940 he believed he had reached the end of the road in the struggle against Trotskyism. With his contempt for theory, Stalin the "practical man" thought that the Fourth International would be buried with Trotsky's corpse in a Mexican grave.
But today, history is catching up with the Stalinist bureaucracy. The influence of revolutionary Marxism and the Fourth International is growing rapidly, especially among the youth, while the world Stalinist movement is increasingly split and entangled in ideological confusion. The days when Trotskyism could be answered with a bullet are over and the Kremlin bureaucrats are forced to attempt to attack the Trotskyist movement in print.
PROBLEMS OF STALINISTS This latest and most ambitious effort brings to the surface all the problems of the Stalinist bosses when they try to dabble in history. They begin, of course, by trying to use Lenin's polemics with Trotsky between 1903 and 1917 against the Fourth International. This section of the book might have been of value for students of the history of the Bolshevik party before 1917 if the quotations were not so selective. The whole of the period when Trotsky was Commissar for War, at the head of the Red Army and leading the fight against the Whites and foreign intervention, is completely ignored, as is the voluminous corresponDonations continue to arrive. Last week we received E10 from a St Helen's shop steward who writes: "I've been reading The Red Mole now ever since the Pilkington strike. The paper's reporting of industrial struggles has improved a lot, but I still prefer your stuff on the struggles in Ireland and Vietnam, which can't find in any other left-wing paper." We are still a long way from £10,000, though, and would urge readers to help transform the trickle of money into a downpour. The total now stands at:
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ADDRESS dence between Lenin and Trotsky during that period. Similarly, Lenin's letters to Trotsky during the former's last illness, where he asks Trotsky to take up the struggle against Stalin and Dzherzinsky (March 5, 1923), find no mention in this book. (They are to be found in Volume 45 of Lenin's Collected Works, issued by the same publishers as the book under RESOLUTIONS Nearly half the book is devoted to resolutions against Trotsky and Trotskyism passed by various organisations in the Soviet Union (Party Conference, Trade Union branches, factory committees, etc) after December, 1923 that is after Lenin's death and when the Stalinist bureaucracy had already established its stranglehold over every phase of Soviet life -, resolutions adopted by the Fifth Congress of the Communist International and various Comintern Plenums, etc. These also, of course. were by then packed with the Stalinist faithful. An interesting sidelight on this is given us by a South African delegate to the Sixth Congress (1928). *A typed Copy of Trotsky's thesis on the situation in China was circulated among some delegates.....It was a damaging attack on Stalin's policy.....Of this Clements Dutt (brother of Palme Dutt and British delegGC) said to me in all seriousness: *Trotsky's analysis is of course correct, but I'm sorry to say that Trotsky is no longer a communist. The implication was clear: a communist must follow the line and failure to conform, even...on the soundest theoretical grounds, put one outside the fold….." (Rebel Pity by Eddie & Win Roux, Penguin Books, 45p.)
OMISSION The most important omission in this compilation is the nineteen-thirties, the period of the great purges and the notorious Moscow Trials, during which Trotsky and his supporters were accused of the vilest imaginable crimes, including plotting, with Hitler, the overthrow of Stalin and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. These trials-were the logical conclusion of all the rigged up campaigns against Trotskyism which preceded them. At the present stage of the renewed struggle against Trotskyism, not even the neoStalinists can swallow that monstrous travesty of justice when a whole generation of Bolsheviks were literally wiped out.
In their foreword the editors do not hesFUND-RAISING BENEFIT CONCERT To aid victims of political repression by the Bandaranaike regime.
'CONCERT FOR CEYLON': Friday, 8th December, from 8.00 p.m. at the "Mother Redcap' opposite Camden Town tube, N.W.1. Admission: ticket only-50p. Performing will be artists from Ceylon, South Asian mainland, and well-known English folk artists Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner of 'Combine' theatre group.
Sponsored by the Ceylon Solidarity Campaign, 9 Dennington Park Mansions, London N.W.6.
Available now:-pamphlet Ceylon: Island Behind Bars, price 15p. Also, Bulletin no.4 of the C.S.C. will shortly be available, with news of recent developments in Ceylon.
ASSOCIATION FOR RADICAL EAST ASIAN STUDIES Meetings to be held at School of Oriental and African Studies, Malet Street, W.C.1. Tuesday, 28 November, 6 p.m. Conference Room, film on Laos-People and their Guns. Thursday, 30 November, 6 p.m. General Refectory, 'South Korea under Martial Law". Panel discussion. Speakers-Jon Halliday and Louis Wolf.
Monday. 4 December, 6.30 p.m., Conference Room, "Repression in the Philippines". Speakers include Louis Wolf. itate to make use of all the distortions and falsifications of the earlier anti-Trotsky campaigns. Thus we learn that in 1905 "Trotsky sought to counter Lenin's theory of the growth of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in to the socialist revolution with his own so-called theory of permanent revolution' which questioned the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution and denied the revolutionary potential. ities of the peasantry as an ally of the proletariat".
One has only to read Trotsky's writings of the period, now brilliantly reproduced in Leon Trotsky 1905 (Allan Lane, £4.95) to know that this is standing the position on its head. It was precisely Trotsky's Permanent Revolution which declared war on the theory of revolution by stages to which both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks adhered in 1905, and pointed out that in our epoch, the tasks of the bourgcois revolution in backward countries, could only be carried out through a proletarian dictatorship, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat put the socialist tasks on the order of the day. He also stated that in this revolution, the allies of the proletariat would be the peasants but the hegemony would be in the hands of the proletariat. What the editors describe is not Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution but the stale Stalinist caricature of that theory.
Similarly we read that "The Trotskyites lost all vestige of influence in the working class long before 1917". Strange, is it not, that this same Trotsky was voted on to the highest organs of the Bolshevik Party immediately after he joined forces with Lenin and that he was given the most responsible tasks by the Party after the seizure of power. Strange, is it not, that Lenin should have proposed this Trotsky, whom he is supposed to have distrusted all his life, as Chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissaries, i.e. as Head of the new Government, at the meeting of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party on October 26th (November 8th) 1917. It would be just as easy to deal with similar distortions in the Introduction. The most enthusiastic buyers of this book will be those very Trotskyists it is attempting to defeat. For the book demonstrates more clearly than ever the total inability of the Stalinists to look history in the face.
George Cunvin. The Ceylon Solidarity Campaign announces .... The Demands of the Ceylon Solidarity Campaign are: -immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners; -an end to the State of Emergency now; -removal of all powers under Special Regulations and repeal of repressive legislation including Criminal Justice Commissions Act; -restoration of all political rights including the right of political organisation; -restoration of all democratic rights including the right of free speech and assembly: -restoration of all Trade Union rights including the right to strike and to engage in all other trade union activity: -bringing to trial of army and police officers responsible for mass murders and other atrocities committed against the people; -re-opening of the universities and schools now used as prison-camps and restoration of all students' rights.
CLASS STRUGGLE AND REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES IN AUSTRALIA Meeting with John McCarthy, Editor of Militant and leading member of the Communist League in Australia.
Friday, 1 December, at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1 (near Holborn tube), 7.30 p.m. Details: Jo Andrews, 01-837 9987 CHINA: The 'Political Theory of Mao Tsetung'. Speaker: Sam Mauger, Chairman: Hung Ying Bryan. Wed. 29th Nov. at 7.15. Holborn Central Library Hall, Theobalds Road, WC1. Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, 24 Warren Street, London W1. 01-387 0074. The following statement was issued October 29th by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The October 21, 1972, issue of the Workers Press, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League, carried a slanderous attack on Bala Tampoe, the general secretary of the Ceylon Mercantile Union. The author of the article, one Jack Gale, asserts that Tampoe is "known to have associated with the CIA" Why should the imperialist spy agency want to associate with Bala Tampoe? Washington is certainly not preparing to overthrow the Bandaranaike regime - at least from the left. Gale offers no explanation. Nor does he explain what interest Bala Tampoe, who opposes both imperialism and the Bandaranaike regime, could conceivably have in associating with the CIA.
The author of the article indicates as his source of information only Edmund Samarakkody, a former factional opponent of Tampoe. An investigation undertaken by us in 1969 showed that the slander was cooked up and put into circulation originally by the former Trotskyists in Ceylon who betrayed the movement and accepted posts offered them by Bandaranaike, and who were under heavy fire for this from Bala Tampoe.
How did this bit of ancient garbage happen to finally end up gracing the pages of the Workers Press, which makes a great show of its repugnance for the former Trotskyists in Ceylon and all their works?
First of all because the technique of the "big lie" has been utilised with increasing frequency in recent years by the leaders of the SLL under the guidance of their general secretary, Gerry Healy, and this item looked particularly suitable for such use The smearing of Bala Tampoe, a leading Ceylonese Trotskyist, in this way is on par with the beating that stewards of the SLL inflicted on Ernest Tate, a leading British Trotskyist, while Healy looked on. Tate was "guilty" of hawking Trotskyist literature in front of an SLL public meeting. Tampoe scorned inducements to line up with the SLL These are signs, among others, of the deep degeneration of the SLL. Incapable of meeting criticism with reasoned arguments, the leaders of the SLL borrow from the arsenal of Stalinism -which also calls for labeling political opponents as "spies" and "agents of foreign powers and subjecting them to physical assault The timing of the attack on Bala Tampoe is worth noting. Tampoe is one of the main attorneys for the defence of the young revolutionists of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, who are now being processed in the courts by the repressive Bandaranaike regime. Coinciding with this defence, various unions (among them the Ceylon Mercantile Union) initiated the first big action by the toiling masses of Sri Lanka since the "state of emergency" was decreed by Bandaranaike a year ago. This action was a nationwide, twenty-four-hour hunger strike. And the bank workers, in defence of their wage standards, called a strike in defiance of the coalition government composed of the bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom party, the reformist Lanka Sama Samaja party, and the pro-Moscow Communist Party. All the reactionary supporters of the treacherous coalition regime rallied in support of its efforts to railroad the JVP revolutionists to long terms in prison, to smash the bank workers' strike, and to keep the masses cowed.
This was when the Healyites found it necessary to make their contribution. They did not solidarise with the Trotskyist led bank workers' strike. They did not solidarise with the legal defence of the young revolutionists of the VP against the frame-up charges of the coalition regime. They did not solidarise with the hunger strike taken as a step towards arousing mass resistance to the abrogation of democratic rights in Sri Lanka. Instead, the Healyites singled out the main enemy" for their bucket of mud. What does Healy hope to gain from this? Something of great importance to him, In view of the latest developments in Sri Lanka, curiosity in the ranks of the SLL over his real reasons for splitting from the world Trotskyist movement might become troublesome. A fast prophylactic was required. Hence the poisonous article against Bala Tampoe and the Fourth International.
will be more triendly towards his party here. narrow immediate gain. Brandt's policy will
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