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USSR
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 33, 1 July 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The revisionist conception of Socialism in One Country and the policies flowing from it have not only helped to lay the political foundation for a cyclical revival of capitalism but also have aided in creating a danger for the Workers’ Fatherland far greater than active support of revolutions outside of Russia could have done. Stalinism with its theory of the “united front from below,” together with the social democrats, has helped to lead the German working class to defeat. It has helped to destroy the second strongest Communist party of the world. At the same time its impotence has been instrumental in creating a condition the workers fear.
With the rise of Hitler to power not only has the revolutionary movement had a set-back but we are beginning to witness an alignment of social forces favorable to a capitalist attack on the Soviet Union itself. In spite of the so-called “non-aggression pacts” between the USSR and other nations, particularly France and Poland, the contradictions between the imperialist world and an isolated workers’ state are developing toward the point of explosion.
Had the German working class defeated Hitler, thereby taking a step toward social revolution, the influence of their success would have spread. Workers throughout the world would have been heartened and the objective revolutionary factors created by the present world crisis might have been matched by a growth of subjective factors now lagging behind. A political crisis for capitalism, as well as its economic crisis, might have developed.
History is replete with examples of revolutionary movements in one country leading to progressive reforms in other parts of the world. As comrade Trotsky pointed out in Whither England?: the great French Revolution served as a powerful stimulus to the growth of the labor movement and democratic tendencies in England; the July Revolution of 1830 in France was largely responsible for the first English Election Reform Bill in 1831; the revolutionary movement of Chartism contributed to a reduction of the English working-day in 1844–47 and to the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846; the influence of the Russian Revolution in 1905 helped to raise the Labor Party to the position of an important fraction in the English Parliament, while the Russian Revolution of 1917 was to a large extent responsible for the new Election Reforms of 1918.
In short, an examination of history leads us to the conclusion that a triumph of the workers in Germany would have strengthened the international working class in general.
But with the rise of German Fascism the reverse is true. Both the German workers and the international working class movement have suffered a tremendous defeat. Just as the defeat of the great French Revolution led to the restoration of the Bourbons in France and the Corn Laws in England, the defeat of 1848 dealt a blow to the English working class, and the defeat of the German workers in 1923 gave American capital the opportunity to begin with the realization of its plans for the (momentarily) peaceful subjugation of Europe,” so today, a similar wave of reaction is beginning to set in.
Instead of a series of advances a series of set-backs are likely. Nor has the tension between the imperialist nations and the USSR lessened because of the silence of the Comintern. On the contrary it has increased. The existence of the Soviet Union still remains a threat to the capitalist world. Its territory is needed by the imperialists during the present period of their decay and it is the one power all of them wish to destroy. But now political conditions for intervention have shifted in their favor. The Soviet Union’s first line of defense (the possibility of effective workers’ resistance in other countries and particularly in Germany) has been temporarily weakened.
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