History › Part 5
Ten Years: History and Principles of the Left Opposition
From Towards a History of the Fourth International, Part 5: Ten Years: History and Principles of the Left Opposition (Education for Socialists, Socialist Workers Party, New York, April 1974). Reproduced with the permission of Pathfinder Press. Scan: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line.
Introductory note
Next fall the world Trotskyist movement will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Left Opposition, the faction in the Russian Communist party that came to the defense of the program of Leninism against the threat to it emanating from the rising bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. The struggle under the leadership of Leon Trotsky against the retrograde forces headed by Stalin became extended throughout the Third International, leading in 1930 to formation of the International Left Opposition. This international faction prepared the way for the Fourth International, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution, which was founded in 1938.
As part of the preparations for observing the fiftieth anniversary, we have decided to republish Ten Years—History and Principles of the Left Opposition, a pamphlet published in 1933 in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Left Opposition. The author, Max Shachtman, was at that time one of the main leaders of the American Trotskyist movement.
In its day, this pamphlet helped educate a generation of English-speaking revolutionary Marxists. Today it has been virtually forgotten, in part because of the subsequent political evolution of the author, who ended up in the right wing of the Social Democracy.* Yet it is still of value, providing in particular a clear presentation of the key programmatic issues dividing Trotskyism from Stalinism as they stood forty years ago and as they still stand in the main.
It is hardly necessary to stress the fact that the pamphlet is now chiefly of historical interest. What is surprising is how well it still stands up. Of course some of the events dealt with now appear remote and many names mean nothing to the present generation however well-known they once were in the left and in the labor movement. For those who would like more information on these topics, we suggest the volumes of Trotsky's writings published in the last few years by Pathfinder Press, which contain excellent notes covering that period. Isaac Deutscher's biography of Trotsky is also a good reference source.
On the political and theoretical level the pamphlet has in certain aspects long been superseded. It may be worthwhile to indicate these.
The most glaring, perhaps, is the absence of any reference to "peaceful coexistence." The reason for this is simple enough. The pamphlet was written when the Stalinist movement was following an ultraleft course—the "third period," as it was called in the Stalinist lexicon. Consequently the author strikes hard against Stalinist ultraleftism.
That Stalinism went through such a period may seem hardly credible to those who have known it only in association with "popular frontism" and the flagrant class-collaborationism of summit conferences. Yet that was the case. And Stalinist ultraleftism was expressed not only in sectarian policies; it was also expressed in violent actions, minority violence, to use a current expression. The turn to popular frontism and "peaceful coexistence" came after the victory of Hitler, becoming the "new line" at the seventh congress of the Communist International in 1935.
However, the policy of "peaceful coexistence" did not appear full blown. It goes back to 1924, being rooted in Stalin's theory and practice of building "socialism in one country." It is easy in reading Ten Years—History and Principles of the Left Opposition to trace the lineage of "peaceful coexistence."
The date Shachtman placed on his pamphlet was January 1933. His foreword, however, was dated November 1933. The delay in publication was probably caused by the extraordinary efforts the Communist League of America went to in the intervening period to arouse the Communist International to the danger Hitler represented. The small organization of American Trotskyists concentrated all its resources on dramatizing through every possible avenue the meaning of the Nazi seizure of power and the threat this represented, particularly to the Soviet Union.
The delay in publication left its mark in the pamphlet. The foreword declares the bankruptcy of the Communist International and calls for building "a new Communist International." The document itself was written in accordance with an analysis that pointed to a different conclusion—against forming a new international and for remaining a faction devoted to reforming the Communist International. This was the position of the Trotskyist movement up until July 1933.
The immediate reasons for the change in position in 1933 were political. The debacle in Germany, where the Communist party permitted the Nazis to come to power without a fight, plus the failure of the Communist parties in other countries to recognize the enormity of the defeat, or even that a defeat had occurred, was taken as proof of a qualitative change for the worse in the degeneration of the Communist International. The Stalinist bureaucracy had shown itself to be incapable of responding in a vigorous way to even such a threat as the Nazi conquest of power in the heart of Europe.
[p. 4]
From the viewpoint of Marxist theory, however, the empirical evidence, damning as it was, was insufficient. A deeper analysis was called for. Up to this time the Stalinist current had been characterized as "bureaucratic centrism," a concept that constitutes the guiding line in Shachtman's portrayal of Stalinism in his pamphlet. As Shachtman explains, one of the main features of the Stalinist faction had been its tendency to zigzag under the pressure of contradictory forces. Thus it had made unprincipled and very dangerous concessions to the kulaks in the Soviet Union and to such bourgeois political formations abroad as the Kuomintang. Yet it had also responded (in its own way) to the pressure of the Left Opposition, taking over, for instance, the Left Opposition's program of industrialization and economic planning in the Soviet Union. Why, then, had the "bureaucratic centrist" faction failed to respond to pressure from the left in face of the obviously immense danger represented by Hitler's rise to power?
The underlying theoretical problem was taken up by Trotsky in an article dated February 1, 1935, "The Workers' State, Thermidor and Bonapartism" (see Writings of Leon Trotsky [1934-35], pp. 166-84). Trotsky held in this article that it was necessary to make an adjustment in the analogy that had been drawn by the Left Opposition between the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the degeneration of the French revolution. The Left Opposition had held that the Soviet Union faced the danger of "Thermidor" but that Thermidor had not yet occurred. (This view stands at the heart of Shachtman's pamphlet.) Trotsky said that closer analysis showed that the Soviet Thermidor "is not before us but already far behind." It had occurred "approximately" in 1924-25.
However, Trotsky pointed out, it was necessary to refine the concept of the Soviet Thermidor. Whereas the Soviet Thermidor had previously been thought of as a counterrevolution that would restore capitalist property relations, what had actually occurred was the dispossession of the working class from political power. "In its social foundation and economic tendencies, the USSR still remains a workers' state." The Soviet Thermidor had taken place on the political level; and while it had had grievous economic and social consequences it had not destroyed the socialist economic foundations laid down as a result of the October Revolution.
One of the main consequences of this deepgoing analysis was the conclusion that the Soviet workers' state can be regenerated only through a political revolution, that is, through ousting the usurping bureaucracy from power by revolutionary means and restoring proletarian democracy.
The analysis brought fresh insight into the nature of the bureaucratic caste, a term used by Shachtman but not in the profound sense Trotsky gave to it in 1935. In the light of Trotsky's 1935 analysis, which he amplified in 1936 in his book The Revolution Betrayed, it is clear that the bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Union is the most contradictory social formation yet seen in the history of class societies.
In its greed, its reactionary conservatism, its opportunism, and its ruthless insistence on retaining power, it has the characteristics of a decayed ruling class; yet in its economic base it is dependent on property forms of the most advanced nature, property forms that in principle belong to the classless society of the future. The bureaucratic caste therefore has no economic reason for existence so far as Soviet society is concerned; its role is that of a parasitic growth.
The inadequacy of the concept of "bureaucratic centrism" now becomes quite apparent. The shifts in policy of a caste that holds state power and that acts like an outmoded ruling class are qualitatively different from the shifts of a political faction responsive to the pressures of factions sharing state power but standing to its right and left. The term "bureaucratic centrism," which places the emphasis on the political level, stands in the way of clear appreciation of how heavily the course of the governing layer is determined by the economic parasitism of the vast state bureaucracy.
Viewed from this angle, Stalin, as the chief representative of the bureaucratic caste, stood to the right of the faction headed by Bukharin. The bureaucratic caste swept over all the groupings that dated from the proletarian democracy of Lenin's time. The process begun by the Soviet Thermidor led to the liquidation of the October 1917 generation as a whole, culminating in the assassination of Trotsky in 1940.
Trotsky dropped further use of the term "bureaucratic centrism." In a letter to James P. Cannon dated October 10, 1937, he noted in passing how inappropriate the term had become: "Some comrades continue to characterize Stalinism as 'bureaucratic centrism.' This characterization is now totally out of date. On the international arena, Stalinism is no longer centrism, but the crudest form of opportunism and social patriotism. See Spain!"
Shachtman failed to grasp the full meaning of Trotsky's new contribution. The key difficulty, it became clear later, was his inability to entertain the concept of such a highly contradictory phenomenon as the bureaucratic caste. He was not a dialectician, although he claimed to be a defender of the Marxist method.
This weakness showed up in acute form at the opening of World War II. The signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact completely disoriented Shachtman; and when the Soviet armies invaded Poland and Finland, he gave up defense of the workers' state against imperialism.
This collapse in his political positions required theoretical justification. Shachtman found it in the theory advanced by others that the Soviet bureaucracy is a ruling class of a type hitherto unknown in history and unanticipated by Marxist theory. He labeled his version of the supposed new class "bureaucratic collectivism."
The main flaw in this theory is the underlying assumption that planned economy will not work without the "new class"—it plays an economically necessary role. This view separated Shachtman from Trotskyism, paving the way for his subsequent political degeneration. In his war against the "new class," he joined the camp of the Social Democracy and became a supporter of "democratic" capitalism.
* * *
In republishing Ten Years—History and Principles of the Left Opposition, we have corrected a few obvious typographical errors. We have not made any stylistic changes beyond catching a few inconsistencies. In particular we have left references to the Social Democracy and the Socialist party as Shachtman wrote them—no capital letters. He belonged, at least in the thirties, to the school that considers the use or nonuse of capital letters to be a way of indicating the relative importance of certain nouns. In the case of the Social Democracy it was his way of showing the bottomless contempt he felt for the reformist international.
—Joseph Hansen
January 7, 1973
Notes
*He died November 4, 1972, at the age of sixty-eight. For an account of his political evolution see "Max Shachtman 1904-1972" by Milton Alvin in the December 1, 1972, issue of The Militant, and "Max Shachtman: A Political Portrait" by George Novack in the February, 1972, issue of the International Socialist Review.
Contents
- ForewordMax Shachtman (signed M. S.) · November 1933 · pp. 5
- Ten Years—History and Principles of the Left OppositionMax Shachtman · January 1933 · pp. 6-23