[We have translated the following book review from the November issue of the revolutionary-socialist bimonthly magazine Quatrième Internationale, which is published in Paris.]
Today's books always carry a blurb on their jacket designed to attract readers. The one on Léo Figuères's book Le trotskysme, cet antiléninisme (Trotskyism, This Anti-Leninism] is an example of honest labeling-any prospective reader is told right off that the theory and practice of Trotskyism are going to be elucidated "without blackening them ineffectively." One could not be more straightforward. Trotskyism must be blackened, that is, slandered, in order to drive the worker militants away from it, but it must be blackened effectively. This means that Figuères thinks that in the past Trotskyism was blackened ineffectively. It is true that in historical perspective, calling Trotsky a congenital traitor, a spy, and an agent of Hitler and the Mikado, and the Trotskyists saboteurs, cops, and a band of spies and assassins finally proved ineffective. However, Figuères shows little gratitude toward his elders and predecessors. He also shows a little forgetfulness about his own position. This practice of blackening was not ineffective, since it made possible the destruction of the entire Communist vanguard of the generation of October and the one following it, including virtually all of Lenin's companions. And this blackening made it possible to build up the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy over a paralyzed and gagged international workers movement.
Figuères's formula must be understood as an admission that this period is over and that in France in particular these practices are no longer accepted by the PCF [Parti Communiste Français — French Communist party] activists. For it is essentially to them that this book is addressed. In fact, even taking into account the half Jesuitical, half "artful-dodger" finesse that distinguishes this new anti-
Trotskyist hack, he still does not escape the lack of bal ance typical of Stalinist slander. Enormities crop up which subvert his cleverest inventions and give his shabby game away to anyone who merely thinks for himself. Slander too is an art. It requires a very delicate mixture of fact and fiction. Figuères shows himself capable of this in many parts of his work, and his task is made easier because his readers in general share his black-and-white view. Lenin is infallible. He is Good. Trotsky is Evil perpetual error. The party is the Holy Ghost of the and god Lenin, and so forth.
But while it was easy to completely rewrite history by following Stalin's blueprint, it is very difficult to concoct a version intermediate between that and the truth. During Stalin's life, no concession to the truth was made. Trying to defend Stalinism on the basis that its crimes were necessary, as Sartre attempted for example, got you only and denunciations. Figuères cannot get around insults his difficulty of blackening only partially. Today when hundreds of books and documents make it possible to know the truth about the history of Bolshevism and the USSR, and when the Trotskyist press is no longer utterly isolated, only "hopeless imbeciles," in Lenin's phrase, only those who take the Figuèreses at their word and respect their "index" of tabooed books could be taken in by such a job.*
Once a slanderer starts to argue, to offer quotations, to admit that what is involved is not a "crime" perhaps but an error, he is already backpedaling. A criticism of this book would be pointless. You either have to answer it, which would require a book of equal size at least, because it always takes longer to unravel a body of myths than it does to spin them off; or to limit yourself to considering the significance of such a book. The second is what I propose to do here.
It would be wrong to think that this work represents a step in the direction of opening a debate. Quite to the contrary; it constitutes a desperate attempt to halt the debate, which members of the official CPs are more and more forced to take up, on the past of their movement, its history, and those eternal "leftists," always despised, always on the verge of being pulverized but always the main and most dangerous enemy. This discussion cannot be avoided because everywhere, in the factories, in the shops, in the offices, in the streets, the "leftists," above
"Trotskyists," often seem to be right, even to all those be the most resolute fighters. And furthermore, the "leftists" make the same criticisms of the traditional leaderships that the CP militants themselves have in the back of their minds but never dare say aloud.
This book, then, is defensive. It says in essence: "This is what you must think about Trotskyism, and don't talk about it anymore." But, unfortunately for this bureaucrat, his miserable little book will not stop the march of history when it could not be stopped by Stalin's mass graves in which Communists were heaped by the hundreds of thousands.
The attempt to blacken the Trotskyists only by measured dabs of the brush is in itself nonsense. The suc-
Yvan Craipeau, Gilles Martinet, and J.-M.
Vincent. It is as if in making up a list of the principal members of the PCF we were to name Maurice Thorez, Andre Marty, J. Doriot, Barbe and Celor, Gitton, A. Lecoeur, Pierre Herve, Servin and Casanova, d'Astier de la Vigerie, Pierre Cot and Gilles Martinet. And we would still be closer to the truth because men like Marceau Pivert and Monatte never had anything common with Trotskyism. We should note the presence in his list of J.-M. Vincent as a Trotskyist. Vincent earned this through the crime of running as a PSU [Parti Socialiste Unifie - United Socialist party, a left Social Democratic formation] candidate in ... Leo Figures's district. All this provides a measure of the seriousness of the book.
cess of a lie does not depend, as Hitler thought, on its enormity but on this enormity being an integral part of the apparatus of terror that requires it. Without a defeat of the workers movement, there can be no ideological terror, and without ideological terror there can be no success for slanders. But now we are in a period marked by revolutionary advances which are producing promising, if still modest, gains for Trotskyism, that is, for
Declaration of the Fourth International
Bolshevism, for Leninism against Stalinism, this neo- Menshevism.
In this context, Figuères's book is destined to suffer the most ephemeral and shameful fate. We will take it, then, only for what it is— an interesting sign of the extent of the Stalinist retreat. And we might use it as a starting point for clearing up some historical and theoretical falsifications.
Notes
* Need I give examples? In his index of names, Figures provides a list of the principal French Trotskyists— Pierre Frank, Daniel Guerin, Lambert, Molinier, Monatte, Naville, Marceau Pivert, Gerard Rosenthal, Rosmer, Jean Rous, David Rousset, Boris Souvarine,