Marxists and the British

Labour Party

Introduction

Stalinism, 'Reformism', and Trotskyism

The Russian Revolution of 1917 inspired revolutions and uprisings throughout Europe, and in other areas of the world like China, in the first years after the First World War. But unfortunately, in contrast with Russia, these revolutions suffered from an unprepared, inexperienced leadership, and failed to overthrow capitalism. As explained in more detail in 'What About Russia?' on this site (opens in new window), the continued isolation of the revolution to the economically backward territories of the Soviet Union led to the inevitable overthrow of the workers' democracy and genuine socialist ideals of the Russian revolution.

The 'Communist' regimes that ruled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s onwards and then, after 1945, in Central and Eastern Europe, China and a few other countries represented a grotesque caricature of the genuine ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin. They were a collection of ruthless dictatorships ruled by a privileged bureaucratic elite denying democratic rights while running, in an arbitrary top-down fashion, planned nationalised economies.

Fearful of losing their power, the clique around Stalin increasingly consciously opposed working class revolutions in other countries that could inspire the Soviet workers to threaten the ruling elite. Starting from the idea that they were defending the Russian revolution, the Communist Parties throughout the world changed their character in the 1920s and 1930s, slavishly following this debasement of Marxism, which became known by the name of its foremost representative - Stalinism.

Thus from this period at least until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of Stalinism, the working classes of most countries of the world had a choice of two mass parties, both with hopelessly compromised leadership: firstly the 'reformist' parties of the Second International, mainly going by the names of 'Labour' 'Socialist' or 'Social Democratic' parties (Marxists sometimes apply the term "Social Democracy" to all the parties of the Second International) and secondly the Stalinist Communist Parties.

After the First World War the parties of the Second International were termed 'Reformist' by Marxists, because - in words if not in actions - they argued that life under capitalism for the working class could be continually improved by gradual reforms of the iniquities of capitalism, until (perhaps) socialism was achieved in the distant future.

However, by the very nature of capitalism, which competitively accumulates capital by robbing the working class of the fruits of its labour, the capitalists are repeatedly forced by the periodic crises of their system to undermine reforms, and if their rule is threatened are capable of resorting to force of arms, as they did for instance in the 1973 coup in Chile against both the reformist government of Allende and the large number of workers who were moving in revolutionary direction.

In the course of repeated capitalist crises during the last century, the 'reformist' parties moved from reform to counter-reform, particularly as they generally became completely bourgoisified in the 1990s. As a general, broad characterisation - with various exceptions - these parties in the past had a dual character, particularly the parties of the Second International. On the one hand, they had a genuine working class base, and carried the aspirations of the working class for a socialist future. On the other hand their leadership was welded to the fortunes of the capitalist class, and acted as an instrument to prevent socialist change, sometimes quite brutally as in the 1918-20 German revolution.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Trotsky fought to keep the genuine ideas of Marxism alive against the growing onslaught of the rising bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and Stalin's murderous secret police, the GPU (see Leon Trotsky's Assassination on our site.) Trotskyists internationally first worked, often in secret and against immense persecution, within the Communist Parties, in an attempt to win the ranks of courageous Communist Party workers to the genuine ideas of Marxism.

When the threat of fascism loomed in Germany, Trotskyists proposed that the communist party of Germany campaigned for a joint fight with the German social democratic workers against the Nazis. This united front policy, which was no more than the application of the policy of the communist international before its Stalinist degeneration, would have united workers in action against Hitler's forces and had the potential to stop Hitler coming to power.

However Stalin and the bureaucracy gathering around him opposed this policy. As a result the German communist party was not able to build a movement that challenged the German social democrats leaders' refusal to seriously fight the Nazis. Neither was it able to unite workers in action against the Nazis. This failure inevitably aided Hitler's victory in 1933.

After Hitler came to power, it became clear that the Communist Parties of the world could not learn from this tragic mistake - there was no discussion, no pause for thought, amongst its ranks. But Hitler's coming to power meant that a crushing defeat for both the German working class and the Communist Party of Germany, at that time the second biggest Communist Party in the world.

The fact that there was no open discussion within the Communist International or any of its parties on this huge defeat meant that they had ceased to living, democratic workers' organisations. The Communist International had become an instrument of Stalin's foreign policy and Trotsky concluded that, like in 1914, the task facing Marxists was to start to lay the basis for a new, genuinely Marxist International. (During the Second World War Stalin shut down the Communist International in 1943 as a favour to the world capitalist leaders, and the Communist Parties on the whole became no different, in practice, from the 'reformist' parties.)

So in 1938 Trotsky and his small bands of adherents across the globe founded the Fourth International, in a time when the dark shadow of fascism and the approaching Second World War was cast over Europe. The Committee for a Workers International can trace its roots to the work of Trotsky and the Fourth International. (This story is told in the "History of the CWI")

Trotsky anticipated a revolutionary wave spreading across Europe as a result of the coming Second World War, just as a revolutionary wave resulted from workers' experience of the horrors of the First World War of 1914 - 1918 (including in Russia 1917).

Trotsky's perspective was that, just as the events after the First World War led to the creation of the Communist International and mass Communist Parties, so the Second World war would give the same opportunity to the Fourth International.

An important part of this perspective was that Trotsky did not expect Stalin's regime to survive, foreseeing either a workers' revolution in the Soviet Union or the victory of capitalist counter-revolution there. But Trotsky was assassinated by one of Stalin's agents in 1940 and had not foreseen the precise events that would unfold.

The end of the Second World War did indeed see a revolutionary wave throughout the world. But Stalin's regime also emerged strengthened, as the Soviet Union's economy and the determination of the Soviet people to resist Nazism resulted in a tremendous military victory over Hitler.

Capitalism lost Eastern Europe and China to regimes modelled on Stalin's; the colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy began to crumble; whilst in Western Europe the capitalist class were forced to rely on the reformist parties and the Communist Parties to keep capitalism from being overthrown.

The Labour Party was elected to power in Britain with a large majority, but whilst carrying out reforms, made no attempt to carry out a socialist transformation of society. Immediately after 1945, in many European countries including France, Italy and even most of western Germany, the Communist Parties were included in coalition governments that helped stabilise capitalism.

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