Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 20:53:54 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Felix Morrow on the end of WWII


Scott McLemee sent me a impressive article by one Peter Jenkins called
"Where Trotskyism Got Lost: World War Two and the Prospects for Revolution
in Europe". It is an analysis of the political fight between Felix Morrow
on one side and the leaders of the Fourth International on the other. I
will present Jenkins' account, which I am in complete agreement with, and
add some thoughts of my own. 

Felix Morrow was one of the top intellectuals of American Trotskyism. He
is the author of the superlative "The Civil War in Spain". During the
1940s, he and other of the leaders of the SWP were imprisoned under the
terms of the Smith Act for their vocal opposition to World War 2 as an
imperialist war. Morrow eventually became a journalist for Fortune
magazine after his release from prison.

In 1943 and 1944 the world Trotskyist movement expected the end of WWII to
usher in the same types of revolutionary cataclysms as WWI. The
International Resolution under consideration by the FI stated
categorically that the allies would impose military dictatorships. It
considered American capitalism to have begun an "absolute decline" in
1929. "This decadent system" said the resolution "has no programme for
Europe other than its further dismemberment and degradation, and the
propping up of the capitalist system with American bayonets".

The choice for the worker's movement was stark. Unless they made socialist
revolutions, they would face "savage dictatorship of the capitalists
consequent upon the victory of the counter-revolution." The workers would
rise to the task since it was "in a revolutionary mood" continent-wide.

This analysis of the world situation was strongly influenced by Trotsky's
conceptions from the start of the second world war which were of a
"catastrophist nature". He could not anticipate any new upturn in the
world capitalist economy based on Keynesianism and arms spending.
Trotsky's catastrophism can be traced back to the early days of the
Comintern. I recommend Nicos Poulantzas's "Fascism and the Third
International" as a critique of this tendency in the early Communist
movement. No Bolshevik leader was immune from this tendency to see
capitalism as being in its death throes. Stalin and Zinoviev incorporated
this thinking into their "third period" strategy. Stalin eventually
lurched back and adopted a right-opportunist policy. What is not commonly
appreciated is the degree to which Trotskyism has a lineal descent to the
unreconstructed ultraleftism of the early 1920s Comintern. 

This ultraleftism stared Felix Morrow in the face, who like a small boy
declaring that the emperor has no clothes, ventured to state that American
imperialism might not have been on its last legs in 1945. He argued
forcefully that the most likely outcome of allied victory was an extended
period of bourgeois democracy and not capitalist dictatorship. Therefore
it is necessary for revolutionists, Morrow advised, to be sensitive to
democratic demands:

"...if one recognizes the probability of a slower tempo for the
development of the European revolution, and in it a period of
bourgeois-democratic regimes -- unstable, short-lived, but existing
nevertheless for a period -- then the importance of the role of democratic
and transitional demands becomes obvious. For the revolutionary answer to
bourgeois democracy is the first instance more democracy -- the demand for
real democracy as against the pseudo-democracy of the bourgeoisie. For
bourgeois-democracy can exist only thanks to the democratic illusions of
the masses; and those can be dispelled first of all only by mobilizing the
masses for the democracy they want and need."

One of the main areas of contention between Morrow and the leaders of the
FI was how these differences in policy would play out against the
background of German politics. The SWP was convinced that the German
working-class would lead the rest of Europe in the fight for socialism. A
document states that "the German revolution constitutes the essential base
of the European revolution, that it alone can provide the indispensable,
genuinely harmonious political and economic organization for the Socialist
United States of Europe."

Morrow disagreed completely with these projections. He stated that the
document contains not "a single reference to the fact that the German
proletariat would begin its life after Nazi defeat under military
occupation and without a revolutionary party."

What was the source of these false projections? "To put it bluntly: all
the phrases in its prediction about the German revolution -- that the
proletariat would from the first play a decisive role, soldiers'
committees, workers' and peasants' soviets, etc. -- were copied down once
again in January 1945 by the European Secretariat from the 1938 program of
the Fourth International. Seven years, and such years, had passed by but
the European Secretariat did not change a comma. Exactly the same piece of
copying had been done by the SWP majority in its October 1943 Plenum
resolution in spite of the criticisms of the minority." Evidently
dogmatism is not just a recent tendency in the Trotskyist movement.

Morrow stood his ground against all attacks. He appeared as a heretic. One
of the charges against him made by Pierre Frank contained an interesting
thought. If Morrow was right, what implications would this have for the
world Trotskyist movement? Frank seemed to be thinking out loud when he
said:

"The false perspective of Morrow has a farther implication if it is really
drawn to its logical end. If American imperialism has such inexhaustible
powers that it can, as he thinks, improve the standard of living in
Europe, then of course there exists a certain basis, on however low a
foundation, for the establishment of bourgeois-democracy in the immediate
period ahead. From that we must assume the softening of class conflicts
for a period that the class struggle will be very largely refracted
through the parliamentary struggle, that for a time the parliamentary
arena will dominate the stage. If that were true, we would have to revise
our conception of American imperialism. And of course the Trotskyist
movement would have to attune its work to these new conditions --
conditions for a while of slow painful growth, propaganda, election
campaigns, etc., etc."

Frank's fears were of course grounded in reality. This would be the fate
of the Trotskyist movement and the rest of the left. The 1950s were not
even a period of slow, painful growth, however. They were a period of
decline. The FI only woke up to new realities when it shifted toward the
student movement in the early 1960s. After a period of sustained growth,
it returned to its "catastrophist" roots and proclaimed in 1975 that the
workers were ready to launch an attack on capitalist power in the United
States and the other industrialized countries. SWP leader Jack Barnes not
only led this return to Comintern ultraleftism, he did the early
communists one better and predicted war, fascism and proletarian
revolution nearly every year or so for the last 20.

The "catastrophism" of the Trotskyist movement is built into the manifesto
that created it, the Transitional Program. This is the political legacy of
Trotsky's uncritical acceptance of the perfect wisdom of the early
Comintern. How could it be otherwise, since at that time Trotsky itself
was one of the key leaders. He made it his business to straighten out any
wayward Communists, like the French, who stepped out of line. Meanwhile 
the organizational legacy of the Trotskyist movement is in Zinoviev's
schematic "Marxist-Leninist" model. The ultraleftism of the political
roots and the sectarianism of the organizational roots make for a powerful
inhibition to growth. As we struggle to create new political and
organizational paradigms, it will be important to shed ourselves of such
counterproductive models.

Louis Proyect






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