The power of socialism as an ideology, and its more specific trotskyist flavour, has ensured the continuing existence of active Trotskyist groups throughout post-war British history. But the leading British Trotskyist organisation, the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), typically polarises opinion. As a result, movement analyses of contemporary protest tend to focus soley on the SWP, or else entirely ignore or argue against the SWP and its kindred spirits. Yet a more objective view must include the various revoluntionary socialist organisations alongside the diversity of other key players within recent protest.

The revolutionary socialist frame identifies a set of ideas whose interconnection flows partly from the history of communist and Trotskyist activism in the UK. This chapter offers a brief discussion of that history, singling out those periods that seem to have had a lasting effect on the beliefs and behaviour of Trotskyists today. For instance, Trotskyists have had to broaden their understanding of the social base of revolution. This results from both the need for Trotskyist organisations to come to terms the strength of the students’ movements, womens’ movements, movements of sexual identity and so on, and the simultaneous economic restructuring that shrunk the industrial working class base. While Trotskyist discussion often continues a focus on the power of the working class, Trotskyists can now be found agitating and recruiting in universities as much as in the industrial workplaces.

Nevertheless, at the core of the revolutionary socialist frame lie a range of ideas that will likely be espoused wherever a society can be described as capitalist. These include:

• a class-based analysis of exploitation;
• the value on equality of political power, justified through human nature;
• the need for a sudden (and perhaps violent) moment of change;
• the need for a vanguard organisation at the centre of a mass revolutionary movement; and
• a belief in the scientific truth of Marxism.

Beyond that core of beliefs spin-off a range of less central and/or more practical ideas about society and how to change it. This chapter explains these, and importantly their interconnections, in some detail. Despite the focus on Trotskyism in this introduction, I also argue that these ideas are more broadly influential. Many people who are not members of such organisations utilise many of the core arguments in their political discussions. Indeed, some ideas, such as the value on power equality, seem ubiqitous throughout contemporary movements. Certainly, this idea is widely espoused. But, equality is coloured with different hues depending on the context of surrounding beliefs.

Download C3: Inside the Guiding Star

Despite their different political flavours, the three frames set out above deal with a number of very similar issues. This is hardly surprising given that each worldview developed over the same period, within the same political and social context and in relation to the same emerging problems and opportunities. So, we find that each frame addresses themes such as democracy, power, economic and political institutions and the appropriate methods for social change.

This chapter outlines some of the points at which each frame, or a particular combination of them, find agreement on certain points. However, I stress more explicitly those places where sharp divergence in understanding is evident, since these points help to draw the boundaries around each frame, aiding understanding of their contents and extents. The chapter also stresses the tactical and strategic differences, more often than the philosophical. The strategic and the philosophic aspects are completely intertwined, since to provide a plausible strategy for social change one must base it on a plausible understanding of the social structure that is the target of that change. However, since proponents of the different frames mostly come into contact in the planning and carrying out of political action – it is in the realm of strategy that their divisions are most easily perceived.

In exploring the points of agreement and disagreement we find out, among other things, what exactly is meant by radicalism or reformism (depending on who is using the word), why the united front tactic of trotskyist organisations is so divisive, and how the notion of direct action has come to be applied in apprently inappropriate situations.

Download C6: Conflict and Convergence

“Timid, at the outset, Socialism spoke at first in the name of Christian sentiment and morality: men profoundly imbued with the moral principles of Christianity – principles which it possesses in common with all other religions – came forward and said – “A Christian has no right to exploit his brethren!” But the ruling classes laughed in their faces with the reply – “Teach the people Christian resigantion, tell them in the name of Christ that they should offer their left cheek to whosoever smites them on the right, then you will be welcome; as for the dreams of equality which you find in Christianity, go and mediate on your discoveries in prison.”
Kropotkin, P., c. 1882, “The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution.” An address delivered in Paris, translated by Henry Glasse.

Revolutionary socialists, in the main, depend on international organisation, for one of the key lessons that many (following Trotsky) took from the Russian experience is that socialism cannot exist in one country, but requires a wave of revolutions across the globe. Workers struggle requires, therefore, solidarity and coordination.

International Socialism Today

My favourite wikipedia article of the moment presents the current state of play in the international organisation of socialism. For historical reasons, very briefly described below, Trotsky’s attempt at international coordination, started in 1938, became known as the Fourth international. I’ve stolen the following list of organisations from this Wikipedia article, most of them trace their roots to Trotsky’s fourth international:

* Collective for an International Conference of the Principled Trotskyism -Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International -Organizing Committee of Principist Trotskyism (Fourth International)
* Committee for a Marxist International
* Committee for a Workers’ International
* Communist Organisation for a Fourth International
* Co-ordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International
* Coordination Committee for the Construction of the International Workers Party (KoorKom)
* Fourth Internationalist Tendency
* International Bolshevik Tendency
* International Centre of Orthodox Trotskyism
* International Committee of the Fourth International
* International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)
* International Liaison Committee for a Workers’ International
* International Secretariat of the Fourth International
* International Socialist Tendency
* International Trotskyist Committee for the Political Regeneration of the Fourth International
* International Workers League (Fourth International)
* International Workers’ Unity (Fourth International)
* Internationalist Communist Union
* League for the Fifth International
* League for the Fourth International
* Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International
* Movement (Movimiento)
* New Course
* Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International
* Trotskyist-Posadist IVth International
* United Secretariat of the Fourth International
* Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International

Solidarity – Yeah! Coordination – Right on!

The Preceding Internationals

This rather sorry state of affairs is a probably partly a product of the decreased cost of global communication. But its pretty obvious that the history of ‘socialist internationals’ is one of splits and factions.

The first international (Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association) managed about a decade’s existence, although it was somewhat weakened by a clash of ideology and ego between Marx and the anarchist Bakunin. The second international managed about a quarter of a century before it was riven by splits as nobody could agree on an analysis of the first world war.

The third international (Comintern) was begun by Lenin after the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. The authority this leant to Lenin and Trotsky, and the undoubted attractiveness of ‘success’, has meant that it was this period that has had the most enduring influence on the far-left. But the third international also was marred by splits and factions, mostly of Lenin’s creation.

Lenin first followed a tactic of splitting national workers organisations so that the reformists would see the ideological purity of the revolutionaries, and presumably, be so impressed that they would give up on their remformist organisations alltogether. This patently failed, and in the process dramatically weakened the domestic strength of workers organisations across Europe. So, Lenin stole and possibly misunderstood the ‘united front’ tactic from German unionist Paul Levi. Under Lenin’s instruction, for the international organisation was exceedingly disciplinarian, national member organisations were encouraged and sometimes coerced into taking part in ‘united front’ action with organisations they labelled as bourgeois reformists. The idea, again, being to demonstrate the validity and ideological purity of the revolutionaries in order to draw the workers into the fold. One wonders if the fact that united front organising was coupled with screaming, public denunciations of the organisations they were working with as corrupt traitors, betraying their own class for a pocketful of coppers contributed to the patent failure of this tactic. (See Trotsky on the Fabians for a good example.)

Trotskyism then and now.

Stalin eventally took complete control of Comintern which, given his professed belief in ‘socialism in one country’ was unlikely to create the domino effect that became so feared by the MaCarthy era Pentagon. So, in 1938, Trotsky organised is ‘Left Opposition’, previously a persecuted faction within the Comintern, into the fourth international. While Trotsky wholeheartedly believed in the united front tactic, there was a new development, born of necessity by the numerical weakness of the Trotskyists, of entrism. Here Trots would join reformist organisations, no longer as equals under a united banner, but as members who would organise themselves into factions and ‘tendencies’ and attempt to influence the direction of the organisation. The ideas was, quite literally, that wherever there were at least two active communists within an organisation they must coordinate in order to make the biggest possible impact. Among many other effects, entrism was the tactic used by the trotskyist Militant tendecy within the British Labour party that resulted in it looking so utterly shambolic when its left wing finally managed to gain some serious influence in the 1980s. Surely any sane left politico would, with the benefit of hindsight, have preferred a certain amount of negotiation, even capitulation to have avoided the resultant lurch to the ‘electorally appealing’ right under Blair et al.’s modernisation agenda. So, I don’t want to be sectarian, but …

“nowadays the most reactionary grouping in Great Britain… These pompous authorities, pedants and haughty, high-falutin’ cowards are sytematically poisoning the labour movement, clouding the consciousness of the proletariat and paralysing its will. It is only thanks to them that Toryism, Liberalism, the Church, the monarchy, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie continue to survive and even suppose themselves to be fairly in the saddle.”

Leon Trotsky, quoted in J. Callaghan, 1987, The Far Left in British Politics. p.10.