CENSORSHIP CHALLENGED
The American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], a conservative organization devoted to the preservation of. democracy, charged April 13 that the U.S. government is censoring domestic mail as well as alleged "Communist political propaganda" from 26 foreign countries,
Government censorship of foreign mail has long been an irritant to universities, publications and students of foreign affairs, The postal snoopers may destroy mail without notification, An editor is lucky if, after long delay, he gets an official notice telling him to sign a form stating he wants to receive the "subversive" literature addressed to him, otherwise it will be destroyed,
Apparently the ACLU has solid evidence about the domestic cen» sorship, since Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene R, Anderson, admitted that there had been ‘some screening" of mail,
The ACLU is challenging the censorship as a violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press, The organization seeks an injunction against the government to block delay in delivery or destruction of mail and a judgment declaring its legal base to be unconstitutional.
Attorney Anderson said that the "screening" of domestic mail involves "certain bookshops" or agents who import foreign "Communist" literature which is then remailed inside the main country of the "free world, -
DEUTSCHER'S VIEW OF THE -TROTSKYISTS
By J. Bs Stuart [Continued from last issue, z
In fact, the contradictions in these statements are entirely reconcilable from the Marxist point of view, The historic necessity for a new international being established in his mind, Trotsky sould not but take a long-range view of its role, It was necessary above. . all as a repository for unfalsified Marxism, for the continuity of the Leninist concept of the revolutionary organization, as the embodiment of the memory of the working class and the experience of the three internationals that had preceded it. Deutscher alludes to this conception in his account of Trotsky's thought. But then, he poses the question: why was the Draft Program Trotsky wrote for the founding congress "not so much.a statement of principles as an instruction on tactics, designed for a party up to its ears in trade~ union struggles and day-to-day politics and striving to gain practical leadership immediately"?
Deutscher does indeed imply the answer himself when, after digressing on the uninviting prospects for aetion and on the actual course of international developments in the ensuing decades diffor~ ent from that foreseen, he concludes’ this section (p. 429) with a summary of Trotsky's lessons from Marxism and particularly Leninism as applied to the new step taken. But, despite its correctness, Deutscher's account lacks the clarity of an explicit account. For, he fails to tie up the question he raised with the "directing and organizing functions of the party -- the functions that had been at the centre of Lenin's preoccupations" and with 1 Trotsky! s- conversion to Lenints view (which he mentions).
Trotsky could not conceive of the new international as one of parties merely proclaiming principles -- it could be viable, in line with his experience, only if it consisted of organizations that applied their principles in intimate everyday contact with the living masses, participated in the actual reality of the class struggle, . learned to adapt to new forms and new phenomena and to test ideas over and over again in the light of such contact and activity. That was the broad explanation for the nature of the Draft Program, (3)
(3) ty addition, it should be noted, Trotsky wrote the Draft Program after consultation with leaders of the Socialist Workers party which at the time was "up to its ears in trade union struggles" (rise and consolidation of industrial unionism), not to speak of skirmishes in various parts of the country with the incipient fascist movement headed by such figures as Mayor Hague and Father Coughlin,
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Whether an organization of this character would have immediate opportunities for successful practical leadership or not did not depend.on its ideas or its efficiency so much as on objective developments, The very nature of its principles assumes that revolutionary situations and revolutions are not made —- they arise from con= tradictions and conflicts in society. The task of the revolutionary organizations is to try to anticipate such situations and to prepare themselves to take part in order to assure success along the socialst direction, Trotsky and the organization he founded anticipated a development of this kind at the end of the second world war, it is true, In line with the character of combat organizations their anticipations were infused with optimism. Indeed, such optimism is indispensable to the whole assumption of combat, of struggle. But, even if it is not borne out and justified in the immediate period for which it is assumed, Marxists have been conditioned by the whole Long history of. their struggle to ad just to adverse turns in events. in the knowledge that.-their optimism is not misplaced -in the long run, based as it is on a-scientific analysis of the past and on the conception of their. theory. as one of successive approximations of reality as it develops, = .. .
Trotsky and the Trotskyists expected a revolutionary explosion in the West at the end of World War II that would open up immediately the prospect of a rapid advance to socialism and in the process eliminate the "cancer of Stalinism." Instead, what we have witnessed .is the relatively much slower erosion of imperialism, accompanied by. another stabilization and a surge of the capitalist. economy on the one hands and on the other, the slower disintegration of Stalinism, accompanied by a great new development of the planned economy of the Soviet Union, Both. of these variants taken by history carry within them the seeds. of great crises in the future, But even up to now the slower pace of denouement has. been punctuated by a continuing seriea of revolutions in the.:capitalist world at its periphery, at the weakest links in the chain, to use the Leninist metaphor (Yugoslavia 1944, (China 1949, Cuba 1959(4), Algeria 1962 are among the highlight s).
: io 4)In Cuba the revolutionary ‘overturn took place without the leader~ ship of a revolutionary socialist party, and so may be thought. to refute the Leninist conception at first flush, But the small group of revolutionary leaders, learning their Marxism in the fire of action and demonstrating the validity of the theory of permanent revolution in combat with the mightiest imperialism in the world, have not made a virtue of this lack of organization nor produced a new theory on it, On the contrary, they have adopted the Leninist concept as their own, and five years after their victory are still engaged in finding a proper form for it in their country... Although having to act in alliance with the Soviet bureaucracy and within fts sphere on the international arena as a matter of elementary self-defense, they have combatted Stalinism not.only -at home, but-in-all-of-Latin America, more than anything else on the very question-of the nature of the party and, by extension, of the international organization, They may
In the Soviet sphere we have witnessed revolutionary risings against the bureaucracy -~- that is, against Stalinism -- in Eastern Germany 1953, Hungary and Poland 1556, themselves ending in complete or pare tial failure but interlinked with de-Stalinization in the USSR and the breakeup of the Stalinist monolith, which began with the YUgoOw slav rebellion in 1948 and whose most evident expression is the * present Sino-Soviet conflict,
So, in spite of all the reservations and qualifications neces-~ sary, we can say: While in 1958 we had the proclamation of a new revolutionary international without the apparent prospect of revolutions, today we have a situation fraught with revolution on a worldwide scale without the realization of a new international. Under the influence of the existence of the Soviet Union, Red China and other workers states, revolution at the fringes of the world capitalist structure takes place without the leadership of a Leninist party. From the point of view of the actual difficulties encountered by this paradox, from the point of view of the dangers facing humanity, and from the point of view of the aims of Marxism, it can thus be said. that abstractly, objectively, the need for the Fourth International as Trotsky conceived it is not only de: demonstrated, but shown to be long . overdue,
If that is ‘so, what of the actual organization founded by Trote sky? To be sure it has not broken out of its shell to become a big force on the international political arena, ‘ Perhaps, as Deutscher says, not even a Trotsky would have been able to find "any effective role for himself" in the postwar period as "the practical man of action" ~~ if by that is meant leading a movement of.mass proportions, In any case, the Trotskyists who carried on the work were faced == where they had their most sizeable concentrations and most experienced cadres (in the West, that is ) -- by major obstacles resulting from the stabilization that came to be known as the "cold war," The Communist workers, under the impress of Soviet. survival and victory in the war, remained under the influence of Stalinism and its continued witch~hunt against Trotskyists and thus impervious to large reoruite_ ment; thé mass of the rest of the werking class, on the other hand, repelled by. the crimes of Stalinism, tended to identify Communism as such with it, and were thus similarly shut off as a source of reoruite ment on a broad scale,
Nonetheless, the organization of the Fourth International survived, adapting itself to the limited possibilities of participation in the class struggle, and registering modest gains, extending its contact to ever new countries in whose political life it plays a part and in. whose revolutions it is beginning to be involved, although still in the background, With the crumbling of the Stalinist mono
rightly regard this problem as even more crucial for the future, In-. herently, therefore, they confirm the Trotskyist idea on this subject, too.
lith, particularly since 1956, and the rise in the tide of the colonial revolution -= after Cuba, approaching the shores of the imperialist citadels -~ this whole picture is beginning to change, The coming period may therefore provide that impetus for the growth of the Fourth International as a link in the developments noted — which could confirm Trotsky's vision positively, concretely.
Deutscher notes in his postscript, Victory in Defeat, where he pays tribute to the timeliness of the views of his subject, that in the Sino-Soviet conflict of ideas both sides accuse each other of Trotskyism, and cites this fact as a demonstration of the vitality of Trotsky's ideas, Could we not assume also that the recent attacks in the Moscow Izvestia and Communist on the Fourth International, after twenty-five years! silence, are indications of the vitality of the organization Trotsky founded?’
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It is perhaps asking too much of Deutscher to deal with the Leninist concept of the party, necessary as it is to understanding Trotsky's motivation in proclaiming and working for the Fourth International, within the framework of this particular biography, which he has already had to expand to three volumes from what initially was to be a single book, It belongs properly to a Lenin biography ~ for the full treatment it deserves, Since Deutscher is engaged on such a work as his next great effort, perhaps he will do so there in the thorough fashion it deserves, and of which he as a Marxist scholar is certainly capable, and thereby throw further light on its relation to the present question.
As to the application by the Trotskyists of this Leninist concept after Trotsky's death and their role in the development of Trotsky's ideas, if we’ find the brief treatment Duetscher gives this aspect unsatisfactory and tendentious, we can grant that in a work such as he undertook it could not be dealt with in the detail the subject deserves,
Even so, it is difficult to understand Deutscher's cavalier dismissal of the American Socialist Workers party: "... the S,W.P. romained a tiny chapel, the members of which were zealously devoted to the letter of Trotskyt s writing, and later to his memory y but which was never able to acquire any political weight... '
The cadres of the SWP, like the rest of the mainstream of the Fourth International, were. won to the basic ideas of Trotsky and not just to "the letter of Trotsky's writing.'' They remained true to these ideas both as a view of reality and a method of evaluating new developments in it, including the need for a Leninist-type party in seeking effective action, . Their capacities along these lines are well illustrated, to take one outstanding example, by their views on Soviet reality which Deutscher could not consistently argue against,
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at least in the main outline, The same holds true of other aspeots .. of the world picture, including. America, on which new ideas have been elaborated that certainly build on Trotsky's thought, but are hardly chapel services in which Trotsky!s writings are taken as dogma, This is not the place to go into detail, although that would indeed be fruitful, Suffice it to mention that there are. indeed “ultralefta" calling themselves Trétskyists to whom Deutscher's stigma could apply; but. they are among the most vociferous in denouncing the SWP for departing from if not "betraying," Trotskyism,
For a “tiny chapel" devoted mainly "to the memory of Trotsky," the SWP has some rather interesting distinctions in numerous fields of activity. We will mention but one, to illustrate, Since 1948, the party has participated in presidential elections every four years in the United States, not to speak of annual local elections, Anyone familiar with the American electoral system, and with the McCarthyite witch<-hunt throughout these years, will understand that this in itself constituted no mean achievement for a revolutionary organization, In the course of the 1960 elections, on radio and television (aside from the press and public meetings), the SWP's was the only voice to come to the defense of revolutionary Cuba, It is true that there was no mass swing as a result, but hundreds of thousands if not millions heard that voice, . And, while only a few thousand . responded directly in sympathy, the message was not ignored; awakening thoughts were planted in many more minds, In any case, the embattled Cubans through their press did not fail to appreciate these acts of solidarity in the midst of the enemy camp, nor similar ones © at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion or the even greater crisis in October 1962, If the SWP is devoted to the "memory of Trotsky" - | it certainly demonstrated it in a way that did justice to him,
If-the SWP: has not acquired great political weight -- we oannot dispute Deutsoher. here -- it is certainly not less weighty than any other radical, left-wing organization in America today, but far in front in this *pospect. (5) .
Deutscher may have misjudged in this case because of insuffi cient familiarity with the American political scene, with its social fabric, It is not really his field, This mitigating factor comes to mind also in Deutscherts whole treatment of Trotsky in relation to America, Otherwise why would he have singled out on this subject CVyinaful, perhaps, “of Trotsky's qualifying introduction of his postwar forecasts — "twenty-five years in the scales of history. .. weigh less than an hour in a mants life" ~- Deutscher hedges on -his own critique of them: "Whether Trotsky!s prognostications about the Tadvanced West,! especially the United States, will look as unreal toward the end’ of this century as they did at its middle, must, of course, remain an open question." (Footnote, p, 428.) Gan: it’ be that this reservation on the wisdom of hindsight also includes the Fourth International, and perhaps the SWP, after all that is aaidelsewhere in the book?
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merely Trotsky!'s attitude toward the American intellectuals? The archives are undoubtedly full of far more pregnant ideas of his on the Negro issue, on the trade-union movement, eto, It is perhaps characteristic also that in the narrative of the 1959-40 struggle, while James Burnham and even Dwight Macdonald are given considerable space, the figure of Cannon receives little attention,
In this connection, it is pertinent to note that the great last struggle over ideas (with Shachtman and Burnham, see In Defense of Marxism) began on the concept of the party, within the Socialis Workers party, and that Trotsky did not initiate it but was drawn into it, as the discussion developed and broadened out politically with the signing of the Stalin-Hitler pact and the war in Finland, Deutscher'ts account of this struggle suffers from lack of verification and amplification with survivors, particularly with Cannon, (6) who played a major role in that period, In view of the author's conscientious efforts to obtain eyewitness accounts from so many others in relation to all kinds of events in Trotsky's last years, this represents a serious gap in his scholarly procedure, It is perhaps understandable from a human point of view why this came about; but just the same the work is bound to sufferfrom this defect,
In his postscript Deutscher reveals a view on a whole range of political problems since Trotsky!s day which most Trotskyists will find substantially the same as that of the mainstream of the Trotskyist movement. They elaborated their positions in the course of discussion and polemic within their organization, often revising | mistakes made and refining ideas at first crudely put, learning in the course of the discussion from each other and from writers out~ side the organization, including Deutscher, Deutscher, a Marxist scholar of great talent, arrived at his views by individual endeavor, although it would indeed be unusual for any Marxist not to be influenced by others too in the give and take of ideological exchange, even in that case, However that may.be, the similarity of basio positions evidently indicates similar concern to know the truth and Similar care in reaching this end despite the divergence of views on what to do about it. It would indeed be deplorable if this fact ~= which, in the nature of such developments, should lead to conscious endeavor at common understanding and joining of effort ~=- were to be obscured by. what. history. may one day regard as irrelevancies,
[The end.]
(6)peutsoher, while citing various documents pertaining to the 1939-40 discussion, does not even mention Cannon's Struggle for a Proletarian Party. Trotsky, who was not, as Deutscher knows, given to flattery, said of this particular work: "If the discussion had not produced more than this document, it would be justified," Perhaps, in this case, Deutscher overlooked it more because of his inadequate appreciation of the problem of the Leninist type of organization than out of insufficient familiarity with American matters,
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