When the working class had conquered power in, say, Germany, Britain, and finally the United States, it would make available to the Soviet Union all the industrial and technological resources of these very advanced countries. The fraternal collaboration of the working class of the West with its Soviet brothers would ensure the relatively rapid development of genuine socialism. The first attempts by the international proletariat to break the isolation of the Soviet Union ended in a series of tragic defeats—especially in Germany, where Luxemburg and Liebknecht were murdered on the orders of the Social Democratic regime in But these early experiences did not deter Lenin and Trotsky from intensifying their efforts to develop an international Marxist vanguard of the working class.
Herein lay the significance of the founding of the Third Communist International and the historic congresses which were convened in Moscow between the years and But during the interval between the conquest of power by the Russian working class and the extension of the revolution, the isolation of the Soviet Union created enormous social contradictions.
The backwardness of the economy meant the persistence of social inequality despite the victory of the working class. Brought into existence by objective social processes, the bureaucracy forming within the state apparatus and the Bolshevik Party itself rapidly acquired an ever clearer consciousness of its own material interests. While distributing and allocating scarce material necessities, those employed within the bureaucracy, including many who had at one time been genuine revolutionists, became increasingly concerned that the largest portions would wind up on their own plates.
The tendencies toward bureaucratism were strengthened by the consequences of the New Economic Policy that had been adopted by the Bolshevik Party to prevent, in the aftermath of the Civil War, the complete economic collapse of the USSR.
In an admitted retreat, the Bolsheviks decided to permit a partial revival of capitalist market relations to restore agricultural production and rebuild the shattered links between town and country. The adoption of the NEP soon produced an improvement in the economic situation inside the USSR, and within sections of the Bolshevik Party an uncritical attitude toward the long-term implications of the policy began to develop.
By the first serious clash over the course of policy occurred when Stalin proposed to weaken the state monopoly of foreign trade and permit the creation of direct economic connections between international capital and petty-bourgeois elements in the city and countryside. Upon learning of this proposed concession, Lenin immediately sought to prevent it and sought the assistance of Trotsky.
Stalin retreated and abandoned the plan. At about the same time, near the end of , Lenin became aware of arbitrary abuses of authority by Stalin and saw in his methods of work an expression of bureaucratic degeneration within the party. His plans to politically destroy Stalin were thwarted by a severe stroke which Lenin suffered in March , ending his political life. But the struggle was developed by Trotsky, who in October of that year wrote a letter and a series of articles analyzing the growth of bureaucratic tendencies within the Bolshevik Party.
It was at this point that international developments intervened to shape the future course of the struggle inside the Bolshevik Party. In October , a revolutionary crisis of unprecedented dimensions in Germany, which had been building uninterruptedly for nearly six months and which seemed to guarantee the speedy victory of the working class, ended in the worst of all possible ways. In some cities, where workers did not learn of the last minute change of plans, actions went ahead as isolated struggles and were quickly crushed.
The German bourgeoisie, which had been totally demoralized, and whose ministers had, in expectation of their overthrow, been burning state papers, recovered its nerve. Instead of socialist revolution, Germany entered a new period of capitalist stabilization. This tragic defeat produced powerful political reverberations inside the Soviet Union. The confidence of the Soviet workers in the perspective of world revolution—in the conception that the path to socialism in the USSR passed through the struggles of the international working class—was shaken.
Within the Bolshevik Party, those who were already adapting themselves to the empirical successes of the NEP were inclined to accept the conclusion that the socialist development of the USSR did not depend upon the outcome of a world revolution in which they believed less and less. It was in this climate that Stalin, borrowing the ideas of Bukharin, proclaimed that socialism could be built in a single country.
This marked a decisive turning point in the development of the struggle within the Bolshevik Party: the essential political lines were now drawn. Against this conservative and reactionary policy Trotsky defended the perspective of world socialist revolution, based on the scientific theory of permanent revolution—which held that the long-term survival of the USSR and its transition to socialism could not be achieved except through the conscious efforts of the world proletariat.
The socialist revolution, he insisted, necessarily began on a national scale, but could only be secured and completed on a world scale. He warned that the program of socialism in a single country would inevitably produce disasters for the international working class and lead to the destruction of the Communist International. Far from resolving the problems of the USSR, Trotsky explained that the consequences of such defeats would be intensified isolation, which in turn would weaken its international position while producing ever-more dangerous social contradictions within it.
It is necessary to point out that while Stalin and Bukharin were oblivious to the growing dangers posed by the NEP and advocated ever-greater concessions to the peasantry, Trotsky insisted that the socialist development of the USSR depended upon a faster tempo of industrialization inside the Soviet Union.
There existed the danger that the proletariat, supported by only a meager and unproductive industrial sector, would be drowned by the rising tide of petty capitalist relations in the countryside.
Trotsky and the Left Opposition, which had been formed in , advanced a comprehensive program for the development of heavy industry, which included, among other things, proposals for the strengthening of the position of the USSR in the world economy. Trotsky rejected the notion that the USSR could develop without any reference to the world economy, or that it could ignore international standards in relation to the quality and price of the products of Soviet industry.
Within the framework of the monopoly of foreign trade, Trotsky encouraged the strengthening of the economic bonds of the USSR with the world capitalist market.
He did not propose the expansion of Soviet trade with the imperialists as a substitute for revolutionary internationalism. The opposite is the case, for as the Platform of the Left Opposition declared:. No domestic policy can of itself deliver us from the economic, political, and military danger of the capitalist encirclement. The domestic task is, by strengthening ourselves with a proper class policy, by proper relations of the working class with the peasantry, to move forward as far as possible on the road to socialist construction.
The internal resources of the Soviet Union are enormous and make this entirely possible. In using at the same time the world capitalist market for this same purpose, we bind up our fundamental historical calculations with the further development of the world proletarian revolution.
Its victory in certain leading countries will break the ring of capitalist encirclement and deliver us from our heavy military burden. It will enormously strengthen us in the sphere of technique, accelerate our entire development in town and country, in factory and school.
It will give us the possibility of really building socialism—that is, a class-free society, based upon the most advanced technique and upon the real equality of all its members in labor and enjoyment of the products of labor. Thus, for Trotsky, all the problems of socialist development in the USSR hinged, in the final analysis, upon the progress and fate of the world socialist revolution.
But it was here that the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party was to have its most catastrophic impact. The policies pursued by Stalin led to an unbroken chain of political defeats of the international proletariat: of the English working class in , of the Chinese working class in , and finally, and most disastrously, of the German working class in The victory of Hitler and the destruction of the most powerful labor movement in Europe were the products of the criminal ultraleft policies bureaucratically imposed upon the Communist International by the Stalinists.
Within the USSR, the Stalinists, when confronted with the terrible consequences of their prolonged adaptation to the wealthy sections of the peasantry, swung suddenly and recklessly to a program of super-industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture. This was done without any criticism of the previous line which had led to disaster.
Simultaneously, and to a large extent as a consequence of this wild shift in domestic policy, the Stalinists repudiated, but without any critical analysis, the previous false policies of the Communist International—which had promoted opportunist subordination of the proletariat to trade union reformists, petty-bourgeois agrarian radicals, and, in the backward countries of the East, to the representatives of the national bourgeoisie.
In its place, Stalin imposed an adventurist line which denied the existence of any qualitative differences between the reformists of Social Democracy and fascism, and, on this basis, rejected any struggle to form a united front of working class organizations to defeat the fascists while exposing the treachery of the reformists.
The Left Opposition considered itself a faction of the Communist International. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in international studies and linguistics from the University of Oregon. Regardless of how old we are, we never stop learning. Classroom is the educational resource for people of all ages. Based on the Word Net lexical database for the English Language. See disclaimer.
About the Author Evan Centanni specializes in world cultures and human geography. Related Articles. When Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, his German counterpart, signed a Non-Aggression Pact between the two nations on August 23, , Trotsky was scarcely surprised.
In a steady stream of articles and interviews, he condemned the role of the Soviet Union, a state that, at least in its rhetoric, had sided with the colonized against imperialism. The betrayal of the principles of Red October had reached a new level of treachery. Perhaps Stalin, Trotsky surmised, now seemed content with partitioning Eastern Europe with the German fascists. The Soviet attack on Finland in November , the beginning of the Winter War , made him wonder how far Stalin was willing to go to create a sphere of interest for himself.
While he again damned Soviet aggression, Trotsky, at the same time, despised Marshal Mannerheim, the right-wing Finnish leader rallying his people. This was a huge dilemma for Trotsky. How could one support social revolution in areas under Soviet control without giving any ground on his anti-Stalinism?
An even bigger problem posed itself. Trotsky had no doubt Hitler would do so at the earliest opportunity. His answer was absolutely unequivocal. Socialists and workers everywhere must rally to the defense of the Soviet Union.
The achievements of the Bolshevik Revolution had to be defended. This position, which alienated many of his adherents, coexisted with another claim — the new world war would mean the end of the Stalin regime. Trotsky predicted that the workers and peasants of the USSR, their revolutionary energies revitalized, would put an end to the Stalinist bureaucracy.
The revolution he outlined in The Revolution Betrayed would itself form part of a gigantic wave of revolutionism engulfing the Axis powers and the capitalist democracies. Like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini would meet the severe justice of the proletariat. The latter, in turn, would form part of a World Federation of Socialist Republics. This would have amounted to the greatest geopolitical revolution in human history with socialism becoming a truly global societal form.
Trotsky held to this radical perspective even as Stalin signed a commercial agreement with Hitler in February , then seized Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania, and annexed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
At the end of February, Trotsky wrote a final testament, fearing death was near. It was led by the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, once a friend of Rivera, but now a convinced Stalinist. Miraculously, Trotsky and Natalia survived.
So did their grandson, Esteban Volkov, who had been living with them. In August, after delays and missteps, he fulfilled his deadly mission. Among the papers next to where Trotsky struggled against his assassin was a long, unfinished manuscript, a biography of Stalin he penned to expose his enemy.
He was a hangman whose noose could reach across oceans. In retrospect, it is astonishing just how confident were Trotsky and his supporters like Victor Serge, Isaac Deutscher, and James Cannon in a coming proletarian revolution that would sweep away the Stalin regime. For many, Marxism became irrevocably defined by and identified with Stalinism. Victory did not mean in this case, though, validity for the system Stalin molded.
On April 21, , two political parties united, creating a single, dominant party in what became East Germany. American personnel faced a humanitarian catastrophe when they liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Joseph Stalin was a hangman whose noose could reach across oceans. September 12, Top image: Leon Trotsky. Credit: Cambiopolitico.
Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. Article Type. Stalin believed in 'Revolution in one country' establish power in Russia first, and then perhaps conquer the world. Trotsky believed in world revolution, going straight out and fomenting revolution in other countries all over the world.
Trotsky was a brilliant speaker and a THINKER he write lots of books on the theory of Communism ; many historians write that he was opinionated and not well-liked. Trotsky broke himself to bring in the revolution, and was a sick man particularly in the years immediately after the death of Lenin.
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