“Heiden was a young socialist student in Munich when he first saw Hitler speak. It was 1923, the year of inflation and political chaos in Germany. Heiden was not impressed by what he saw: a self-centered demagogue at the head of what he calls the army of uprooted and disinherited.”
Richard Overy
“Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside those of the twentieth century, the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance, and savagery! Despair has raised them to their feet; fascism has given them a banner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.
Leon Trotsky-From What Is National Socialism
“fascism comes only when the working class shows complete incapacity to take into its own hands the fate of society.”
― Leon Trotsky, Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It
First published in 1944, Konrad Heiden’s superb biography of Adolf Hitler culminated in 20 years of study and political opposition to Hitler. The book covers from the 1920s up to June 1934. Heiden wrote and researched it in near real-time, and it is one of the best biographies on the subject of Hitler and the rise of German fascism. As Robert Gale Woolbert, in his review, correctly writes Heiden’s book is “A profusion of detail and brilliant psychological understanding. The analysis is not only of the man but of his movement and the economic, social, and intellectual disorder on which it fed and finally attained success”.[1]
While many modern-day historians, such as Daniel Goldhagen,[2] have placed the blame for the rise of German fascism and the Holocaust on “ordinary Germans,” it was, however, a shock to see Gale Woolbert’s 1944 review containing and defending the same right-wing theory. Wollbert writes, “Where many will feel that Heiden’s explanation breaks down is in his unwillingness to place responsibility for Nazism squarely on the German people or any important class or group among them. This ability to dodge the necessity of rigorous and honest self-criticism seems to characterize even the German liberals and German Jews who have suffered most at the hands of their countrymen.[3]
Despite being over eighty years old, Heiden’s book has a contemporary relevance. It should be read alongside Leon Trotsky’s The Struggle Against Fascism by all those who want to understand the development of fascism of the past and the present. The British Historian Richard Overy writes the introduction. Overy highly praises and defends the book against those who have sought to downplay its significance.
Since its publication over eighty years ago, there has been a veritable cottage industry solely devoted to the study of Hitler and German fascism with varying degrees of success. But as John Lukacs writes in his book The History of Hitler, “We are not yet finished with Hitler (“[wir sind] mit Hitler noch lange nicht fertig”), wrote two members of a younger generation of German historians, independently of each other, in the 1980s–and this is so in both the broader and the narrower sense of “finished.” The first of these should be evident. History means the endless rethinking–and reviewing and revisiting–of the past. History, in the broad sense of the word, is revisionist. History involves multiple jeopardy that the law eschews: People and events are retried and retried again. There is nothing profound in this observation since this is what all thinking is about. The past is the only thing we know. All human knowledge springs from past knowledge. All human thinking involves a rethinking of the past.
This is true in the narrower sense, too, involving the historical profession. The notion that once the scientific method has been applied accurately, with all extant documents exhausted, the work will be finished, and the result will be final (“the final and definitive history of the Third Reich, certified by German, American, British, Russian, liberal and conservative, nationalist and Jewish historians”) is a nineteenth-century illusion. There are probably more than one hundred biographies of Hitler, while there is no certainty that the 101st may not furnish something new and valid. What may matter even more than the accumulated quantity of the research (note the word “re-search”) is the quality of the revision. What is its purpose? In the broader sense, the purpose of historical knowledge is more than accuracy; it is understanding. In the narrower sense, the purpose of a revisionist historian may be exposé, scandal, sensation–or the more or less unselfish wish to demolish untruths. It may be his desire for academic or financial success, to further his advancement in the eyes of his colleagues, or, in the greater world, to gain publicity, or to further the cause of a political or national ideology–on which the treatment of his subject sometimes depends. There will be evidence in this book that this applies on this occasion–to the historical treatment of Hitler too.”[4].
Hitler has legitimately long fascinated historians, but the fascination of sections of the British ruling elite and aristocracy[5] who saw Hitler as an ally against Bolshevism is not so legitimate. Hitler’s Mein Kampf was a huge publishing success–in England and the United States, especially before the war. During my research for this article, I paid a trip to the London Library to find other work by Heiden on Hitler and the Nazis (a term that Heiden coined). I don’t know who was surprised more, me or the librarian, to see a copy of Heiden’s History of National Socialism published in 1934 in London by Meuthen and Co. Ltd with a gold embossed swastika on both the spine and cover. Perhaps all the more galling since Heiden was an active socialist. You can draw your own conclusions.
It would be a mistake to see this book as another Hitler biography. Heiden was an active socialist in opposition to Hitler and German fascism. He was a member of the German Social Democratic Party(SPD). Heiden, son of a German trade union official, had studied Hitler for 23 years. So much so that, according to Dorothy Thompson, he followed Hitler “like a Javert tracking down his man.”[6]
As David North writes in his excellent review of Goldhagen’s book “ The History of the German social democracy, in the years when it represented a revolutionary mass movement of the working class—that is, from the 1870s to the outbreak of the First World War I in 1914—is one of unrelenting struggle against anti-Semitism. The exigencies of the political struggle in the working class required an intransigent attitude toward all forms of anti-Semitic propaganda. Aside from democratic principles and moral considerations, the Social Democratic Party saw the association of anti-Semitism with demagogic anticapitalist rhetoric as an attempt to disorient the working class and subordinate it to the political representatives of the middle class.”[7] Heiden completely agreed with the program of the SPD and fought for it with every waking moment. The Gestapo hunted him, and he only just escaped with his life.
I have been unable to ascertain whether Heiden read any of Leon Trotsky’s writings on German fascism, but some of Heiden’s analysis of the class nature of German fascism would not look out of place in the work of Trotsky. Heiden writes, “They drew to them “the flotsam, the stragglers living on the fringe of their class . . . the unemployed . . . the declassed of all classes.” In all ages, this has been the way of counterrevolution: an upper layer that has lost its hold in society seeks the people and finds the rabble. The officers were out to find a demagogue, of whom it could be said that he was a worker. They found their leader in the lowest mass of their subordinates. The spirit of history, in its fantastic mockery, could not have drawn an apter figure.[8]
Perhaps Heiden’s most important contribution has been to understand and explain the nature of Hitler’s hatred of the Jews. Hitler’s anti-Semitism was, according to Heiden, a by-product of his all-consuming hatred of the proletariat. Hitler, he explained,” hated the whole great sphere of human existence which is devoted to the regular transference of energy into a product, and he hated the men who had let themselves be caught and crushed in this production process. All his life, the workers were, for him, a picture of horror, a dismal, gruesome mass. Everything that he later said from the speaker’s platform to flatter the manual worker was pure lies. Herein lies the key to an understanding of Hitler’s demonic obsession with the Jews. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained how his conversion to anti-Semitism flowed from his encounters with the labor movement. It was among the workers that Hitler first came into contact with Jews. He then discovered, to his amazement, that many Jews played prominent roles in the labour movement. “The great light dawned on him,” wrote Heiden. “Suddenly, the ‘Jewish question’ became clear. … The labour movement did not repel him because it was led by Jews; the Jews repelled him because they led the labour movement.” Heiden concluded, “It was not Rothschild, the capitalist, but Karl Marx, the Socialist, who kindled Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitism.”[9]
It would be fair to say that history has not been very kind to Heiden’s Marxist analysis of the rise of Hitlerite fascism. The modern-day Marxist writer David North rescued Heiden from the “condescension of history.” Apart from North, Heiden has largely been ignored, and his opposition to the right-wing historiography that is so loved today that “ordinary Germans” were responsible for fascism has been written out of today’s history books. Heiden shared the same fate when he wasWhile still alive. His Heiden’s books and Marxist analysis came under heavy attack.
In an article called The Mass-Man: Hitler, Hans Kohn starts by praising Heiden’s work, saying, “Mr. Heiden’s extremely well-written book is based on expert knowledge of the biographical material and the political background of Hitler’s rise to power. The dramatic terseness and vividness of its narrative have lost nothing in the excellent translation. Its brilliant analysis of German and, curiously enough, also of Russian politics makes the book not only a journalistic masterpiece but an authentic work of historical scholarship.
Kohn’s real opposition to Heiden comes to the fore when he writes, “Yet the crucial question of the essentially German nature of Hitlerism is not answered: Mr. Heiden seems to regard Hitler as representing the mind not only of the German masses but of the modern masses everywhere. Though he perceives the deep tie binding Hitler to the German masses and them to him, he often writes as if Hitler had to conquer the German masses against their innermost will. Hitlerism then appears as an international movement which could have happened anywhere and which found in Germany only its accidental starting point. Such an opinion underrates the deep roots of Hitlerism and Stalinism in the intellectual soil and the social structure of Germany and Russia, and at the same time, the intrinsic strength and the survival value of Western civilization.”[10]
Perhaps the most provocative and repellent review of Heiden’s work comes from the pens of the New York Times. They claimed Heiden was a propagandist and uncritically reported: “To the leaders of the Third Reich. Heiden was a hated and sought-after enemy. One of the Nazis’ acts upon taking over a country was always to ban and burn his books. The writer was a propagandist of a special kind-one who used objectivity and documents to destroy the object of his derision…. In 1932 his first book, History of National Socialism, was publicly burned by the Nazis, who were then on the brink of gaining power. When they took over… In 1933, he fled.”[11]
Despite giving world governments significant examples of the Nazi’s intentions and his books contained some of the earliest first-hand reports of Jews who fell victim to torture and internment at Dachau near Munich, Sachsenhausen or Oranienburg near Berlin, or Buchenwald near Weimar following the mass arrests of 1938 western capitalist governments did nothing to prevent the subsequent Holocaust.
Heiden is well worth reading today, and it is to David North’s credit this great historian of the 20th century can be read in the 21st century.
Further Reading
How To Read Hitler- Neil Gregor
The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (Merit S.) Paperback – Illustrated, 1 Jun. 1971by L. Trotskii (Author), George Breitman (Editor)
Heiden’s Selected works
History of National Socialism (Berlin, 1932)
Birth of the Third Reich (Zürich, 1934)
Hitler: A Biography (Zürich, appeared in two volumes, 1936–1937)
The New Inquisition (New York City, 1939)
Der Führer – Hitler’s Rise to Power (Boston, 1944)
[1]Der Fuehrer-Reviewed by Robert Gale Woolbert-April 1944
How Socialists Might Inspire a Broad Section of the Working Class to Fight Once Again For Socialism. Some preliminary comments
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out and, seeing a better country, sets sail.”
Oscar Wilde
Socialism is not an empty word to me. It means different things to different people, but for me, it is about a better world. In this world, there is no war, poverty, manmade diseases, oppression, manipulation and exploitation. Humans enter into a completely different set of relations where they associate freely to decide what is needed, how it should be produced and how it is distributed. We (the people) democratically control the vast resources of the world and set them to work for the benefit of the many. As Wilde comments, there is a place here for Utopia, Imagination and Vision.
How this new world might come about in the 21st century is problematic but not impossible. Utopian thinkers have been given little respect in the Marxist movement of the 20th century and this one and I believe they should re-examine Marx’s relationship, Lenin’s relationship also to this. Marx and Engels had huge respect for the Utopian Socialists and Lenin thought that not enough “useful dreaming” occurred within the party of what a future society would look like. What Marx did not respect were the sterile sects that followed the great Utopian thinker. There is confusion and a misunderstanding of Marx within some sections of the Marxist movement and what passes as the Revolutionary Left.
The world is a crazy and irrational place. But what is particularly crazy is this, and this really is what has been taking place. Ask a Socialist what Socialism looks like, and they won’t be able to tell you. They might say, “We don’t have a blueprint for Socialism”, “It is not our job to prescribe this sort of thing but to be fought out by the workers themselves”. This is a terrible state of affairs, and if socialists don’t have a clue about what a future society will or could look like, then how the hell is the working class going? This is the product of an objectivist outlook very common in sectarian organisations and has nothing in common with a dialectical philosophical outlook that Marx, Engels or Lenin used.
Speaking about a better world should not be a taboo subject. Speaking about the ills that we face under this system of commodity production where a ruling class exploits without the blink of an eye, what could be done to replace this and how to replace it should be given priority and a hearing. What we are facing right now and what we have lived through these past 30 years is crazy. It has been one crisis, war, disaster or scandal after another. The average person is absolutely fed up and is crying out for leadership and political representation that reflects their wishes, and that is up to the task of inspiring the working class and leading it to victory. Right now, we don’t have that.
The nineteenth century was imbued with an entirely different spirit, as we see in Oscar Wilde’s work. We see it in William Morris, too. Morris was even brave enough to write the novel “News From Nowhere” which wants to express some ideas about what a future society might look like. Where are our modern day equivalents to Wilde and Morris? They don’t exist. But I anticipate a renewed interest in these writers. Just like Gerrard Winstanley was rescued from obscurity, other writers and thinkers will hopefully be rescued. I hope to be a part of that rescue mission. But what does it have to say to us in the 21st century?
The human spirit is a tremendous force that can endure and overcome, but it has to be imbued with hope. I want to say that where there’s a will, there’s a way, but the reverse is also true. Where there’s a way, there will more likely be a will. The socialists are not showing the way or giving inspiration because they choose to look away and engage in constant debates and arguments that the working class doesn’t give a shit about. The working class has no time to wade through 1000 pages of some tract without immediate alleviating wisdom. It is too worn down to constantly hear about the betrayals and losses right now. That’s for the revolutionary to bring to the working class.
In all the jobs I’ve had, they are front-facing with members of the public. I do not see myself as separate from them, for I know I face the same struggles. I don’t shy away but want to understand the patient in my chair and ask how has this disease process taken hold, what is the aetiology of this and the pathogenesis of that? When we understand the enemy, we have a chance at treatment, but the success of that will depend on many things and will depend on how inspired the patient is and how confident they are at winning. Without hope, my patient may not be fair too well!
The socialist movement is no different. The last great movement we had that was guided by a belief in a better world was in the ’60s. Where are the equivalents of Martin Luther King and JFK? Where are our musicians that are equivalent to Jimmy Hendrix, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain or Tupac? Where are the equivalents of Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein or Oppenheimer? Where are they? Where are the Historians that are equivalent to Hill or Thompson? What about new Orwells, Steinbecks or Millers? We have lost something, and it was a faith, passion and vision that the future could be different. There is a total malaise around this, with the Marxist movement also contributing by failing to correct this by keeping a vision of a better future alive by examining how the productive forces could be used creatively to meet real wants and needs. Whatever your politics or beliefs are is not my concern. All I can hope for is that I am read with an open mind and given the basic right to express an opinion. One thing I can agree on is the question of dead dogs. A whole load of dead dogs also lie on the bodies of Utopian thinkers that have been placed there by so-called Marxists. They ignore these thinkers, unlike Marx and don’t know how to deal with them. The movement is sterile now and impoverished due to adaptation to objectivism and ignoring the subjective factor. Marxists have to win over both hearts and minds and if it chooses (the revolutionary Marxist movement) to ignore the heart of humans.
Then fascism will appeal more confidently as it knows better how to exploit repressed emotion. It’s not a game anymore, and just like Orwell talks about in The Road to Wigan Pier, we still have the same problems. The working class is not attracted to asceticism or sectarianism, nor am I. What I propose to do in my writing is rescue some branches of thought and ideas, give them a hearing and try to appeal to those that are more thoughtful.
I recently contacted a revolutionary party and asked what socialists would do about the dark web. I wondered what the banking system would look like under socialism. I have received no reply, and it must have been three months ago that I wrote in. I have questions that are not being answered. I am not surprised that they are not being answered, but I’m surprised that I might have to answer these myself. I know I don’t have all the answers but I sure know I will have to try and find some. There was also something that troubled me recently. It was a podcast and the host (posturing as a revolutionary) commented on someone liking Ska music and that that should be seen as a red flag. How the movement will attract the working class when it holds such prejudices is cause for major concern. They will remain a closed club, and Orwell knew this all too well.
As mentioned, I would like to rescue some thoughts, writers and thinkers from a pile of dead dogs and start to assimilate their thoughts and answer some of my very own burning questions. A burning question for me is why was it that Gerrard Winstanley was able to cut a path to a revolutionary road and his peers didn’t quite get there. What was peculiar to Winstanley that was absent in others? The same can be applied to Lenin. Why was Lenin able to see further? What is it about these human personalities and their experiences that enabled and gave birth to this? I believe the world is knowable and I believe that coincidence is just the measure of our ignorance. There is a reason for everything even if we don’t fully grasp what those reasons are right this moment, the searching shouldn’t stop. It is not enough for me to say that it was just the genius of Winstanley. I would love to examine the genesis of his thought, but his collected works are £300, and I don’t have that spare. What is interesting to me is that he replaced the word god with reason. I believe that since he married the daughter of a surgeon, being around the medical profession at that time had some bearing on him. It is a special profession with its Hippocratic oath and scientific method. It is also a profession that was not alienated from its own labour, and there was no division in the surgeon but a unity of manual and intellectual labour working for the greater good. This gave them a certain outlook that was quite separate and peculiar to other branches of activity. It is just a theory and yet to be fully explored, but Winstanley was different and I don’t see it just as an accident in that it can’t be explained. This is just my opinion, of course. Thanks for reading, and serious comments are welcome. This is just a piece of prose, and footnotes can be provided. I am just interested in getting things down on paper at this stage.
Some of the thinkers and trends I would like to comment on in the future or have an interest in reading are as follows: Wiliam Morris, Erich Fromm, Freud, William Blake, The State of my Profession, The NHS, Trump, state of reason, the cultural level, P Diidy, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, John Potash, Shaun Attwood, John Wedger, the dark web, the Cabal/Illuminati, Q-Anon, Maggie Oliver, Judy Mikovich, Anthony Fauci, Andreas Moritz, Dr Robert Malone,Marcuse, Hegel, what appeals to me most about Marx’s thought. The Salem Witch Hunts, children’s literature, Anna Freud, Bruno Bettleheim, Marshall Berman and Oliver James. I will want to express what I have found interesting in their thought and why it is so. I can reflect on myself and ask what is piquing my interest. What is it that I am relating to?
Here’s an example: I believe and live by this as closely as possible. I don’t allow much into my house that I don’t find beautiful or useful. I hate waste, and I hate junk. William Morris was the same. Having been around art and design, I can relate well to Morris in what he has to say, and I would like to discuss his relevance but also ask why I am like this, too. Over the past 18 months since my child left to study a degree in chemistry I have had much freedom to explore and listen to many podcasts and spend more time socialising. There are trends and things happening in our world that I have not had the chance to explore or knowledge of. They should not be dismissed but given a hearing by the widest possible audience. I don’t know what I believe regarding some of it, as there isn’t enough evidence yet to make an informed conclusion, but I have been astonished by some of the things I have learnt. The question isn’t wheter it is true or not but is a fight to get access to information that will verify such questions. I will argue that revolutionaries should be a part of that fight if only they would listen. I write……………………….. to be continued.
I would like to draw attention to a paragraph from Christopher Hill’s “The World Turned Upside Down.”
“Each generation, to put it another way, rescues a new area from what its predecessors arrogantly and snobbishly dismissed as “ the lunatic fringe.” Hill goes on to thank many people for their work, for without them and their work, subjects such as alchemy, astrology and natural magic can now take their place as reasonable subjects for rational men and women to be interested in. Further still, Hill says
“Historians would be well-advised to avoid the loaded phrase “lunatic fringe”. Lunacy, like beauty, maybe in the eye of the beholder. There were lunatics in the seventeenth century, but modern psychiatry is helping us to understand that madness itself may be a form of protest against social norms and that the lunatic may in some sense be saner than the society which rejects him”.
With that being said by such a respected historian, I hope that what I wish to discuss will be given the same respectful and open-minded treatment as Hill is urging for here, as there is much to be gleaned and learnt if one could just drop the arrogance and snobbishness. Hill echoes Erich Fromm here, who was a Freudo-Marxist who thought that when his patients were experiencing psychosis, they were fleeing into this peculiar state of thinking because they were escaping the insanity around them. In other words, the patient retreated into this state because they were sane but couldn’t square themselves to the conditions they were experiencing because the patient was actually more sane and found it intolerable. The protest couldn’t be expressed outwardly but was turned in on itself. It has to go somewhere, and that disturbance is felt within the psyche.
Now, just for a minute, think here. Out of all the words Hill has written, this chimes with me and out of all the other other possible paragraphs I choose this. That’s not an accident. Christopher Hill is good company to be in, and I’ve only just started to read him in the past 4 weeks. I have talked to many people in my life due to the work I have undertaken and come up against some very difficult positions and attitudes. They have to be understood, not dismissed outright. It won’t lead to anything new by dismissing it. Back in the 90’s, I was lucky enough to visit the Hayward Gallery, where the Prinzhorn collection was being exhibited. When the pieces are examined, and you know what you are looking at, Hill makes even more sense. The Prinzhorn Collection is for another time. But it is a collection of over 5000 pieces of art drawn by inpatients of psychiatric institutions. It is troubling what is being expressed visually but it finds expression nonetheless and is not as insane as one might think.
The Portuguese Workers’ Revolution 1974-5 pamphlet by Mark Osborn has been re-published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution of 1974-5. The labour movement led by the syndicalist CGT, which belonged to the Portuguese anarchists, FARP, the Socialist-led Portuguese Worker Federation, and the small Inter-Sindical Commission led by the Communist Party, entered an unholy alliance to betray the revolution. The Pabloite groups, along with the pseudo-lefts, who covered up this betrayal, acted as secondary agencies of imperialism. While purporting to examine the politics of the Portuguese worker’s revolution, this pamphlet covers this betrayal up. Despite playing only a minor role in the betrayal, Workers Liberty has workers’ and students’ blood on its hands. The betrayal of the revolution is all the more pertinent since, had the revolution succeeded, it would have delivered a mighty blow to the solar plexus of international capital and inspired revolutionary movements worldwide.
On April 25 1974, a coup by lower-ranked army officers overthrew Portugal’s fascist Estado Novo government. The coup opened the way for a massive mobilisation of the working class, which had not been seen in Portugal before. It was one of the most important revolutions since the Second World War and caught the international bourgeoisie completely by surprise. It would take nearly two years to defeat the revolution. With relatively little violence or bloodshed, the Portuguese bourgeoisie could take back power at the expense of a few limited reforms. The popular front government established by the revolution, which contained a significant Communist Party presence under the leadership of Álvaro Cunhal, handed over power without a murmur from the numerous Pseudo left groups.
The coup was started by young military captains in the national armed forces. In her book, Raquel Varela[1] emphasises that these were only captains, as if this made them unconscious socialists. Rank and file soldiers did indeed come over to the revolution, as experienced by Bob Light, who saw first-hand soldiers giving the clenched fist salute and waving red carnations. Slogans such as ” the soldiers are sons of the workers” and “down with capitalist exploitation” were also heard on the streets. But despite these sections of the rank-and-file soldiers won the revolution, the Portuguese bourgeoisie would still control the army.
The Carnation Revolution was the latest of a line of revolutionary movements betrayed by Stalinism and Pabloism. Beginning in May 1968 in Paris, the 1969 ‘hot autumn’ in Italy, strike waves in Germany and Britain in the early 1970s and the struggle in Greece against military rule in 1973-4. International Socialist leader Tony Cliff argued that ‘Portugal, the weakest link in the capitalist chain in Europe, can become the launching pad for the socialist revolution in the whole continent.’
Cliff’s remarks were pure bravado as his International Socialist movement ensured this did not happen. Instead of being ‘the launching pad of the socialist revolution’, the defeat of the Portuguese revolution paved the way for various neoliberalism regimes. Varela’s book is a political amnesty for the betrayals of the Stalinists and radical groups such as the IS.
Although the revolution originated in Africa, the 1974 revolution was ultimately shaped by Portugal’s belated historical development. As Paul Mitchell describes in his 2024 article, “By 1973, there were some 42,000 companies in Portugal—one-third of them employing fewer than ten workers—but about 150 companies dominated the entire economy. Most were related to foreign capital but were headed by a few wealthy Portuguese families (Espirito Santo, de Melo, de Brito, Champalimaud). For example, the de Melos’ monopoly company Companhia União Fabril (CUF) owned parts of Guinea-Bissau and produced 10 per cent of the gross national product. Despite this industrialisation, a third of the population still worked as agricultural labourers, many in large estates or latifundia. An estimated 150,000 people lived in shantytowns concentrated around the capital, Lisbon. Food shortages and economic hardship—wages were the lowest in Europe at US$10 a week in the 1960s—led to the mass emigration of nearly 1 million people to other European countries, Brazil and the colonies. The 1960s also saw the emergence of liberation movements in the Portuguese African colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Fighting three guerrilla movements for over a decade drained the Portuguese economy and labour force. Nearly half the budget was spent on maintaining more than 150,000 African troops.[2]
He continues, “Compulsory military service lasting for four years, combined with poor military pay and conditions, laid the basis for grievances and the development of oppositional movements amongst the troops. These conscripts became the basis for the emergence of an underground movement known as the “Movement of the Captains.” The continuing economic drain caused by the African military campaigns was exacerbated by the world financial crisis that developed in the late 1960s.”
In the 1970s, the Portuguese ruling elite confronted a massive strike wave at home and uprisings in the colonies. Nearly one half of the national budget was spent keeping 150,000 troops abroad fighting the national liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. Compulsory military service combined with low pay intensified grievances in the army. It stimulated an oppositional movement amongst the troops known as the “Movement of the Captains,” which later developed into the Armed Forces Movement (MFA).
The Armed Forces Movement (MFA) or “movement of the Captains”, glorified by Varela, became an important bulwark against revolution once it was in power alongside the PCP. To stop the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class, the MFA invited the Communist Party (PCP) into government. The Communist Party was asked to take part in the First Provisional Government in May 1974 and took part in all six provisional governments. These governments were popular fronts containing trade unions, the Socialist Party, the Church, and the upper hierarchy of the armed forces.
The Socialist Party and the Church initially did not want the Communists in the government. Still, military sections knew the PCP would be useful in controlling rank-and-file soldiers and the working class. As Varela herself points out, “’The Portuguese Communist Party was prepared to abandon its radical army supporters (and a great many others) in exchange for a continued stake in government. The military left had become a burden on the Communist Party because its performance undermined the balance of power with the Nine and peaceful coexistence agreements between the USA, Western Europe and the USSR. Some 200 soldiers and officers, plus a handful of building workers, were arrested’ (p.246).
The PCP was outlawed, and its leadership was imprisoned or driven into exile. Following the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, the party had been purged in 1929, and Bento Gonçalves, who had only joined the organisation the previous year, was installed as General Secretary.
Cunhal joined the PCP in 1931 whilst studying law at university and left for the Soviet Union to attend a congress of Communist youth in September 1935. It was at this time that the Stalinist bureaucracy began to advance its policy of building “popular fronts” with “democratic” bourgeois governments and liberal-reformist elements worldwide, supposedly to combat fascism and defend the USSR. Cunhal, who came to epitomise the policy of popular frontism in Portugal, became the leader of the youth organisation and joined the Central Committee of the PCP in 1936 at 22.
One of the most important questions of the revolution concerned the political nature of the MFA and its “armed intervention” unit, the Continental Operations Command (COPCON—Comando Operacional do Continente)
COPCON was composed of 5,000 elite troops. Its leader was Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. To cover over its real intentions, the MFA said it was in favour of an “alliance of the MFA and the people.”The PSP, PCP, and Pseudo groups never challenged this blatant lie. Instead, the PCP declared the MFA was a “guarantor of democracy” and developed close relations with Carvalho, General Vasco Goncalves and other members of the Junta.
The fact that the various popular front governments could operate with impunity is down to the role played by pseudo-Lefts like the IS. Readers need to know the history of the IS. As Mitchell points out, the “International Socialist (IS) organisation (today’s Socialist Workers Party in Britain) was represented by the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP—Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado). The founders of the International Socialists had broken from the Fourth International in the 1940s, claiming that the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and its satellites was a new class in a new social system (state capitalism). This granted the Stalinist bureaucracy a certain legitimacy, not due to its parasitic character, but expressed a prostration before the post-war stabilisation of imperialism. The IS’ radical phraseology, its glorification of trade union syndicalism combined with a semi-anarchist stance, served only to conceal its refusal to challenge the political domination of the working class by the social democratic and Stalinist bureaucracies.”
The promotion of the popular front by the IS had nothing in common with orthodox Marxism. The following is its analysis of the popular front: “Poder Popular (popular power), underpinned by the Aliança Povo-MFA (an alliance of the people and the MFA), emerged as the ideology for the MFA. It set out to unite the military with workers, land workers, tenants and slum-dwellers. The military made use of the prestige acquired through carrying out the coup against the regime. Popular power was perceived as the living alternative to the bourgeois focus on parliamentary democracy. This is not to say that the army and workers were always united, but the impact of the people’s movement on the armed forces, and vice versa, came to be an integral part of the Portuguese story. But the slogan “Unity of the people and the MFA” was double-edged: not only did the people influence the army, but also the revolutionary movement’s reliance upon the radicals in the army was to be part of its undoing”.
The reader should compare the statement above with how Leon Trotsky described and evaluated the Popular Front: “The question of questions at the moment is the Popular Front. The left centrists seek to present this question as a tactical or even as a technical manoeuvre to be able to peddle their wares in the shadow of the Popular Front. In reality, the Popular Front is the main question of proletarian class strategy for this epoch. It also offers the best criterion for the difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism, for it is often forgotten that the greatest historical example of the Popular Front is the February 1917 revolution. From February to October, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who represent a very good parallel to the ‘Communists’ [i.e., Stalinists] and the Social Democrats, were in the closest alliance and were in a permanent coalition with the bourgeois party of the Cadets, together with whom they formed a series of coalition governments. Under the sign of this Popular Front stood the whole mass of the people, including the workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils. To be sure, the Bolsheviks participated in the councils. But they did not make the slightest concession to the Popular Front. They demanded to break this Popular Front, destroy the Cadets’ alliance, and create a genuine workers’ and peasants’ government.”
To conclude, the fact that after 45 years of the revolution, its “memory” is still in dispute is down to the treacherous role of the various Pabloite and Pseudo Left groups such as Workers Liberty. As Paul Mitchell points out, the Portuguese Revolution “would have been a mighty blow to international capital and inspired worldwide movements in the 1970s. Only the International Committee of the Fourth International and its Portuguese supporters, the League for the Construction of the Revolutionary Party (LCRP), called for the PCP and PSP to break from the bourgeois parties, the state machine and the MFA. It demanded the dissolution of the army and the creation of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets in opposition to the MFA and its proposals for a Constituent Assembly.
Further Reading
The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal’s Dictatorship Fell Hardcover – 4 April 2024 by Alex Fernandes
[1] A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution
I have just received John’s comment on my WordPress website [1]. “ How does publishing through Amazon (of all of places) square with the general view here? The simple answer to this question is that publishing on Amazon does not square at all with my politics. From the age of sixteen, I considered myself a Marxist, and I will eventually die a Marxist.
If it has escaped John’s notice for a long time, it has been impossible for a revolutionary Marxist to be published. The Writer George Orwell, who was not a Marxist, found it very difficult to find a publisher for his book Homage to Catalonia. Orwell was savvy enough to know that “Freedom of the Press” had been “ Something of a fake because, in the last resort, money controls opinion”.
This was true in Orwell’s time and is even more true today. Unless you have access to a revolutionary Marxist party with its own printing press, you will not get published. No small or big publishing house will publish an orthodox or classical Marxist. The use of Amazon as an avenue to get my work published and reach a large audience does not endorse Amazon as a capitalist enterprise.
It may have escaped John’s notice, but all publishing houses, big or small, are run on capitalist lines. To accept or decline an offer from one of these or to publish on platforms such as Amazon does not mean one denies one’s politics it is but a means to an end. If every author turned down the opportunity to be published because the publishing company was a capitalist nothing of worth would have been published. John’s argument is false, and I do not accept it.
The publication by Mehring Books of Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North is extremely prescient. The election of a fascist as president will be a trigger point for a massive escalation of the attacks on the working class.
As Joseph Kishore points out, “Trump’s reelection signifies the violent realignment of American politics with its underlying social reality: a society dominated by staggering inequality and ruled by a capitalist oligarchy. This realignment is expressed not only in Trump’s appointments but in the Democratic Party’s swift accommodation to—and even embrace of—the incoming regime. Trump is assembling a government that epitomizes the naked rule of the rich. Each appointment reflects two overriding criteria: personal loyalty to Trump and an unwavering commitment to a program of war, repression and social counterrevolution.”
This new book contains the speeches delivered at the International Committee of the Fourth International’s Online May Day celebrations from 2014 to 2024. In the foreword, King’s College historian Thomas Mackaman writes, “This volume consists principally of the speeches with which David North has opened the May Day rallies of the past ten years. Also included are essays related to the May Day events written by North. This compilation merits careful study for those who wish to understand the causes of imperialist war and how to fight it. The central theme of North’s speeches is that the struggle against militarism and war must be revolutionary, i.e., only through the overthrow of capitalism by the working class in a world socialist revolution can the drive toward catastrophe be stopped. There is no other way.”[1]
North’s use of the Marxist method is an antidote the the rubbish that has come from writers and historians over the last twenty years. The sharpest expression of this reaction came from the pen of Francis Fukuyama, whose essay entitled “The End of History?” was published in the journal The National Interest. He wrote: “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.[2]
North replies, “ Fukuyama’s analysis combined bourgeois political triumphalism with extreme philosophical pessimism. It might have been appropriate for the publisher to insert in every copy of Fukuyama’s book a prescription for Prozac. If the existing capitalist reality was, for all intents and purposes, as good as it could get, mankind’s future was very bleak. But how realistic was Fukuyama’s hypothesis? Though he claimed to draw inspiration from Hegel, Fukuyama’s grasp of dialectics was extremely limited. The claim that history had ended could make sense only if it could be demonstrated that capitalism had somehow solved and overcome the internal and systemic contradictions that generated conflict and crisis.”[3]
The speeches in this volume are not just a testament to the power of the Marxist method but give us a perspective and a guide to fight. The book deserves the widest readership.
Despite being subtitled “The Untold Story of Gerry Healy”, this book contains nothing new and is a rehash of all the old lies and slanders that have been heaped on Healy and the Trotskyist movement for decades. The historian Thomas Carlyle was fond of saying that he had to clear a large pile of dead dogs off the body of Oliver Cromwell to reach the real person underneath. The same could be said of Beatty’s book. However, once all the dead dogs have been removed from this book, all you are left with is a worthless pile of crap.
While Beatty’s book is probably his own work, Pluto Press must be held accountable for publishing this hack work. As David North writes, Beatty’s book is a political hit job, not a scholarly biography. There are many questions about the writing of this piece of hack work. There is good reason to believe that Mr. Beatty is not the sole author of this work and that he had substantial assistance in collecting this mass of odoriferous material. As it is published by Pluto Press, which is affiliated with a political tendency hostile to the International Committee, one can reasonably assume that it provided Beatty with substantial support in the “researching” and writing this volume.”
I did ask Pluto Press for a review copy and was granted one by James K, to whom I gave my address. The book never arrived. The non-arrival coincided with the publication of David North’s review on the World Socialist website.
Pluto Press, who are largely made up of renegades from Marxism, has its own axe to grind against orthodox Trotskyism. It gave free rein to the political scoundrel Paul Le Blanc to write on the back cover saying, “’Displaying scant sympathy for Gerry Healy, the substantial groups that Healy led, and the Leninist-Trotskyist traditions that Healy claimed to represent, Aidan Beatty nonetheless produces a very readable, meticulously documented take-down that will be seen as a “must-read” source on left-wing politics from the 1930s to the dawn of the twenty-first century.’
This book is so bad it is difficult to know where to start. Writing a biography is an extraordinarily complex and time-consuming event. Writing a political biography is an art form. At 148 pages long, Beatty’s piece of art barely rises above second-grade level. There are many examples of excellent biographical writing. Currently, I am reading Bernard Crick’s biography of George Orwell[1]. It took Crick ten years to write. Whether Crick agrees with Orwell’s politics or not, it is a superb read and deserves every plaudit it has got. Honestly, Beatty is not fit to tie Crick‘s shoelaces.
The Marxist writer David North writes, “ Historians who undertake the arduous task of writing a serious biography—among the most difficult of genres—often introduce their work with an effort to explain to their readers why they embarked on a project that usually requires years of intensive research. When the subject of study is a political figure, the interactions of the individual and the epoch in which they lived are immensely complex. There is a profound truth in the adage that a man resembles the age in which he lives more than he resembles his father. A vast amount of work is required, not to mention a command of the historical landscape and intellectual subtlety, to understand the historically conditioned personality, psychology, motivations, aims, ideals, decisions, and actions of another human being.
Whether the writers admire or despise their subject, they are still obligated to understand in historical terms the person about whom they are writing. When the author genuinely admires his subject, they must still retain a critical distance that avoids a descent into hagiography. The great biographies of political figures—Samuel Baron’s study of Plekhanov, J.P. Nettl’s two volumes on Rosa Luxemburg, and Isaac Deutscher’s Trotsky trilogy—managed to maintain an objective attitude toward subjects for whom they clearly felt great empathy. Perhaps even more challenging was the task confronting Ian Kershaw, who devoted years of work to the study and explanation of the ideological, political, and psychological motivations of one of the worst mass murderers in history, Adolf Hitler.”[2]
The Psuedo Left community has welcomed Beatty’s book. Jacobin’s David Broder, from the main pseudo-left journal of the pro-genocide Democratic Party, interviewed DSA member Aidan J. Beatty. Beatty was allowed free rein to spew out his slanderous allegations against Gerry Healy and the British Trotskyists that they employed violence against political opponents and party members.
Beatty writes, “There is quite a notorious incident in 1966 when Ernie Tate, a Northern Iridefenceer of the International Marxist Group, was very violently attacked by a group of Healy’s supporters outside a party meeting in London; Healy was present for this and essentially supervised the assault. The attack was bad enough that not only was Tate hospitalized, but Healy was later forced to appear at a meeting with Isaac Deutscher and apologize. This assault was unplanned, but as I say in the book, “Healy propagated an aura of total ruthlessness but could benefit from that aura, since potential followers believed he was ruthless, in a kind of feedback loop. One former member told me that he never questioned that the party had to be structured in a very top-down, authoritarian manner because that would be needed to carry out a revolution in Britain. In general, I think many people who stuck with Healy accepted the verbal and physical abuse because they believed it was necessary to maintain discipline or because the revolution was more important than their own personal well-being.”[3]
Beatty supplies no new evidence and repeats every slanderous accusation against Healy and the SLL. David North replies to this piece of garbage history, “Libelous” is the appropriate word. Healy and the Socialist Labour League went to court to demand that two publications that had printed the allegations—Socialist Leader and Peace News—retract the story and issue a public apology to Gerry Healy. “A conscientious historian, adhering to the appropriate standards of scholarship, would have carefully researched all available sources to uncover what actually occurred in 1966. But Beatty is not a principled scholar. His book is anti-Trotskyist hack work”.[4]
Beatty’s biography relies heavily on oral history. However, his interviews are all with former members of the SLL/WRP who have personal axes to grind or are renegades from Trotskyism, such as Tariq Ali, who is an outright political scoundrel with a history of betrayal as long as my arm. Beatty’s interviews were not conducted critically, and the majority, if not all, testimonies in the book are unreliable. North says, “ The relation of the interviewee to the subject must be carefully appraised. The historian must be able to distinguish between flattery and slander, between facts and gossip, and between truth and lies. The historian must determine whether the claims of one or another interviewee are reliable, whether they are supported by evidence of a more objective character, i.e., documents”.
Suffice it to say Beatty did not ask me for an interview, which I would have refused and told him where to go. On a personal note, I joined the WRP in 1982/83. I think my probation period was nine months, a record inside the Trotskyist movement. The first few years were difficult for me, and I left just before the split occurred. I had no idea how politically sick the WRP was at the time. Perhaps the highlight was being taken to Vanessa Redgrave’s house just before the split. She was supposedly downsizing and wanted to get rid of her Library. I paid her a lot and got many books, including the proof copy of One Long Night: A Tale of Truth by Maria Joffe, translated by V. Dixon. If Mr North is reading this article, I would like to donate it to your Library where it belongs.
After the split, I joined the Minority and had the best time of my life, politically speaking. As Lenin was fond of saying, “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” That is exactly what happened during the split.
I only met Healy twice. He was cordial and polite. The first time was at an international Workers’ school in Derbyshire before the split. There was a lot of confusion there, and I left early. It was probably the worst decision of my political career as I missed the opportunity to meet and talk to the international comrades from the ICFI. I heard Healy speak three times twice before the split and once after it. Despite the political degeneration that was taking place, Healy was still a fantastic speaker. To see him in his prime would have been a sight to behold. The third time I heard him was after the split. He was a broken man, both physically and politically. He was the leader of the Marxist Party, and they held a public meeting in London. The ICFI wanted to tape the meeting and had planned an intervention. During Healy’s speech, I cannot remember what he said a member of the French section of the ICFI got up and accused Healy of capitulating to Pabloite opportunism. Suffice it to say you could have heard a pin drop. Unfortunately, my tape machine hidden inside my jacket ended, and a very audible click was heard. I was immediately manhandled out of the meeting by a phalanx of goons, and my machine was stripped of its tape. Before Professor Beatty rips this story out of context and uses it to justify his lie that Healy was a violent maniac, I would like to say that at no time in my albeit brief time in the WRP did I feel threatened or witness any violence towards me or others.
This brings me to Beatty’s motive for writing such a book. It must be said Beatty’s book is not the only diatribe written against the Trotskyist movement. Beatty’s soulmate in anti-Trotskyism is John Kelly, who is still an avowed Stalinist and has written two books recently.[5]
Beatty’s book is different in the respect that it is factionally motivated. North explains, “ What then is the connection between Beatty’s so-called Healy biography and his denunciation of the SEP and WSWS in the Epilogue? It is a dishonest attempt to link Healy’s abusive behaviour in the 1970s and 1980s to the Marxist class-based politics of the Socialist Equality Party.
Beatty writes: “The SEP has its roots in the Workers League that had once been led by Tim Wohlforth and closely influenced by Gerry Healy. Developing the ideas it learned from the WRP, the SEP’s privileging of class over all else has ended up not just downplaying race and gender, but outright sexism and racism.” [6]
North says, “By this point, the political motivations underlying Beatty’s book become all too clear. He is writing not as a historian but as a political flack for the Democratic Party. He denounces the SEP for its “ultra-leftist perspectives on current events and bad faith attacks on the recent crop of democratic socialist politicians, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez especially, but also Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn.” What he calls “bad faith” is the well-known Marxist critique of the middle-class political agents of imperialism.
The last words of this article should be from David North. “Whatever the truth may be, one thing is certain: with the writing of this miserable book, Mr. Beatty has dealt a blow to his professional reputation from which it will never recover. Despite the tragic character of his final years, Gerry Healy will be remembered as a significant figure in the history of the British working class and the international struggle for socialism. All that he contributed to the defence of the revolutionary perspective against the betrayals and crimes of the Stalinists and social democrats over many decades will not be forgotten. But unhappily for Beatty, the fate of books and their authors are inextricably linked. The evil men write lives after them. This is the book for which Beatty will be remembered.”.
[1] George Orwell: A Life Paperback – 30 July 1992
[2] Biography as demonology: Aidan Beatty’s The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/18/nizy-s18.html
[3] The Damage Gerry Healy Wrought-Jacobin.com/2024/09/gerry-healy-trotskyism-wrp
Contemporary Trotskyism: Parties, Sects Social Movements in Britain by John Kelly. Routledge-2018 295 pages
This new book on the history of contemporary Trotskyism is the first of its type by an academic. In my original review of this book, I said it is commendable for a major publisher like Routledge to produce such a book, but I now retract that sentiment. Kelly’s book is a lightly researched hack work. It is also a bit rich for an avowed Stalinist to write a book on the history of contemporary Trotskyism. A member of the British Communist Party during the 1980s Kelly still seems to have kept all the ideological baggage of his membership. His political friends in the Stalinist Morning Star concur: “It is an almost impenetrably confusing picture, which the author does his best to unravel. It’s an uphill task given the characteristic sectarian feature of Trotskyite organisations, resulting in frequent splits and divisions at both a national and international level[1].
One striking aspect of the few reviews that have appeared so far in the Pseudo Left press is their mild criticism of an author who is ideologically hostile to Trotskyism. Any serious Trotskyist organisation would have to defend its ideas from this type of hostile source. Ian Birchall, a member of the SWP, perhaps sums up the complacent and defensive attitude towards Kelly and his downplaying of the possibilities of any Trotskyist group leading a revolutionary struggle: “Now it looks doubtful that any of the small groups (what the French used to call groupuscules) described here will lead a revolution. But for all that, I don’t think it was just a waste of breath. For our generations, Trotskyism, at its best, was the form taken by what the American Marxist Hal Draper, in his magnificent pamphlet The Two Souls of Socialism, called ‘socialism from below’ – the belief that socialism, if it comes, will be the product of the self-emancipation of ordinary working people through mass action; it will not be the result of relying on elected representatives or liberation by ‘progressive’ armies. What form it will take in the future cannot be predicted. Still, history always works by continuities and ruptures, and somewhere amid the acres of print that Kelly has scrutinised, the spark of human liberation still lives”[2].
Birchall is supported by another SWP member, Joseph Choonara, who writes, “It should also be said, it is hard for me to hate a book that portrays me as an instance of “younger members” reaching “leading positions” in the Trotskyist movement (even if I have “done little to disturb oligarchic rule”).[3]
Kelly’s main problem is that his Stalinism heavily influences his conception of Trotskyism. His understanding of its history is limited, as we shall see later in this review, coloured by his politics. According to Kelly, only when Trotskyist organisations ditch their program and history do they achieve some limited success.
He writes: “The paradox of those success stories is that they were achieved precisely because Trotskyist groups set aside core elements of Trotskyist doctrine and focused on building broad-based, single-issue campaigns around non-revolutionary goals.” The whole focus of the book is given over to try and persuade the Trotskyists not to be Trotskyists. Kelly damns Trotskyism for not building “a mass Trotskyist party anywhere on the planet or led a socialist revolution, successful or otherwise”. It is according to Kelly a “rigid and unhelpful doctrine” and has a “millenarian, revolutionary vision”.
This theme of not leading a socialist revolution runs through the entire book. Two things strike one when reading the above comments. Firstly, as Kelly conveniently notes, capitalism has survived in no small way thanks to the betrayals and treachery of the Party he belonged to. Secondly it is just not true that Trotskyists have not led significant struggles throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. If Kelly had bothered to interview some orthodox Trotskyists of the SEP, he would have found this out. His ideologically driven flippancy also leads him to underplay the enormous internal struggles the Trotskyist movement has gone through, which in many respects were, in fact, life-and-death conflicts which impacted the lives of millions of workers around the globe.
Three significant struggles come directly to mind. The first is James P Cannon and Gerry Healy’s opposition to Pabloite revisionism, which led to the Open Letter’s issuing and the founding of the ICFI(International Committee of the Fourth International in 1953). Secondly Healy’s defense of Trotskyism against Cannon’s reunification with the Pabloites in 1963. Thirdly David North’s struggle against the Betrayal of Trotskyism by the WRP(Workers Revolutionary Party) 1984-85. These tremendous political conflicts have little interest for Kelly. A fact represented in the low coverage they received in this book.
Another theme running through Kelly’s book is his obsession with the size of the Trotskyists parties and the fact that there are so many. If Kelly had bothered to do a little more research and drawn from history namely the Russian revolution he would have found out that the Bolsheviks were small, tiny in fact at the beginning and they led a successful revolution.
While it could be said that Kelly is hostile to all Trotskyist parties, he has a particular distaste for the parties that make up the ICFI (International Committee of the Fourth International). In perhaps the most accurate statement of the whole book, he identifies the SEP (Socialist Equality Party) as orthodox Trotskyists. He sarcastically writes in a true Stalinist style that despite having only 50 members, it is “the sole political tendency on the face of the planet that sets as its aim the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class against imperialism”.[4]
Kelly, as already has been mentioned is incapable of understanding the history of the different tendencies. Either Kelly has not done enough research, or most probably due to his Stalinist politics, he does not care. This forces him to come up with ridiculous names for the different parties, like “institutional Trotskyism” and “Third Camp Trotskyism”. Kelly’s idea behind these strange names, which have no history in the Trotskyist movement, is to belittle these groups to be shunned like religious sects.
Kelly is backed up by Alex Callinicos of the SWP, who, instead of challenging this slander, writes, “It is perhaps appropriate here to consider why it was that the Trotskyist movement should so often have displayed the characteristics of religious sectaries.”[5]
Kelly believes Trotskyism has been isolated from the mass worker’s movement because of its almost religious adherence to principles and perspective. However, this so-called isolation is coming to an end. With the collapse of the old organisations, including his own, there was a changed relationship between Trotskyism and the working class. A point made by the ICFI when it correctly predicted: “the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the irrevocable discrediting of Stalinism, together with the political bankruptcy of the social-democratic and reformist parties and trade union organisations, would lead to a fundamental change in the relationship between the Trotskyist movement and militant sections of the working class and youth, radicalised by the deepening crisis of American and world capitalism”.[6]
It is quite striking that all Kelly draws from the centenary year of the Russian Revolution in his introduction is that the Trotskyist movement has not led a revolutionary struggle anywhere in the world, so why would they celebrate this revolution?If Kelly had bothered to leave his secluded university in London, he would have found some struggles that involved the Trotskyists in a significant way. Another thing that needs to be challenged by Kelly’s introduction is that the “Stalinist terror” was a product of the October Revolution. This lie has been peddled by academics sympathetic to Stalinism for decades.
It must be said that Kelly has approached the subject of contemporary Trotskyism from an entirely nationalist standpoint. Perhaps one of the most critical discussions inside the worker’s movement was the struggle to build a section of the Fourth International in Britain. The most crucial need during the early years of British Trotskyism was to accept the international perspective of the fourth international . As Trotsky wrote in 1938, “The present conference signifies a conclusive delimitation between those who are really IN the Fourth International and fighting every day under its revolutionary banner, and those who are merely ‘FOR’ the Fourth International, i.e. the dubious elements who have sought to keep one foot in our camp and one foot in the camp of our enemies… Under the circumstances, it is necessary to warn the comrades associated with the Lee group [the WIL] that they are being led on a path of evil clique politics, which can only land them in the mire. It is possible to maintain and develop a revolutionary political grouping of serious importance only based on great principles. The Fourth International alone embodies and represents these principles. A national group can maintain a consistently revolutionary course only if it is firmly connected in one organisation with co-thinkers worldwide and maintains a constant political and theoretical collaboration with them. The Fourth International alone is such an organisation. All purely national groupings, all those who reject international organisation, control and discipline, are in their essence reactionary.”[7]This struggle receives scant attention in Kelly’s book.
Chapter 1 -Theoretical Perspectives Kelly asks this question: “Trotskyists often describe their organisations as revolutionary vanguard parties built on the principles of ‘democratic centralism’ whose political aim is to destroy the capitalist state and the capitalist mode of production “.Having not been in a revolutionary party, it is beyond Kelly’s comprehension to understand that these parties are unlike any other party. Not only from an organisational point of view but, more importantly, from a perspective standpoint.
While accepting to a certain extent that Trotskyist parties are different from mainstream bourgeois parties, he goes on to slander these organisations, believing they are akin to religious sects that insist on upholding doctrinal purity. Given that Kelly belonged to a party that in the past took its orders from Stalin, who murdered more Bolsheviks than the Nazis and betrayed more workers struggle than any other organisation, it is a little rich for Kelly to try to take the political high ground.
It is also extraordinary that in this chapter Kelly has little to say on the history of his Party. He might want to note that the betrayals carried out by his organisation would have something to do with the isolation of the Trotskyists from the mass workers’ movements. These betrayals were done in the name of the October Revolution and discredited in 1917 in the eyes of many workers.
Chapter 2 Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism In this chapter, Kelly questions whether contemporary Trotskyist groups can describe themselves as the continuation of Leninism or Bolshevism, primarily because Trotsky changed his position on many issues. When someone makes such a statement in academia, it is standard practice to back it up with proof. Kelly does not do this. Why? Because to do this he would have to explain his hostility to Trotsky and his politics.
Kelly repeats some slanders of Trotsky’s position that have been the stock and trade of academics who have perpetrated a “Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification”. As the Marxist writer Wolfgang Weber explains, “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, historians of this school—including Dmitri Volkogonov (Russia), Richard Pipes (US), Geoffrey Swain and Ian Thatcher (both UK)—rehashed the old Stalinist lies and falsifications about Trotsky to cut off the younger generation from the ideas of the most consistent Marxist opponents of Stalinism”[8]
Chapter 3, Development of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain, part 1: 1950–1985 and Chapter 4, Development of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain, part 2: 1985–2017. While these two chapters cover much history, it is surprising that Kelly says next to nothing about the 1940s. The 1940’s are instrumental in understanding the subsequent trajectory of all the Trotskyist groups in Britain and internationally.
To discuss the years 1950-1985 in chapter three and then in chapter four, 1985-2017 would be a big ask for anyone. To say that Kelly’s analysis is simplistic would be an understatement. Kelly does not devote enough care and attention to the complex issues confronting the Trotskyist movement during this time.
The treatment of the SLL/WRP again reveals his political bias and does not contain a shred of objectivity. His treatment of the complex expulsion from the WRP of Alan Thornett is a case in point. To Kelly, this was just a power struggle between Gerry Healy, the leader of the SLL and Thornett. If Kelly had bothered to consult the documents of the Split in the WRP in 1985 produced by the ICFI, especially How the WRP Betrayed Trotskyism, he would have given his readers a far more balanced understanding.
As the above document states, “It was the height of political duplicity for Thornett to conspire against his own Party and then denounce the leadership for violating the constitution. Healy, who then had accumulated 45 years of experience within the communist movement, could recognise an anti-party clique when he saw one. However, it is another matter entirely whether the leadership was politically wise in acting to expel Thornett on organisational grounds before an exhaustive discussion of the political differences, regardless of their origins. This is not a question of being wise after the event. The Trotskyist movement had, before Thornett emerged on the scene, acquired a great deal of experience in dealing with unprincipled minorities — of which the most famous was the Shachtman-Burnham-Abern tendency. Experience has taught the Trotskyist movement that the political clarification of cadre must be the overriding priority in any factional struggle — even one involving a disloyal clique.”
Also, in these chapters, Kelly wastes excessive space on what it means to “assess trends in the membership of the Trotskyist movement over time”. The constant fixation with size belittles the Trotskyist movement’s importance and discourages a severe examination of the program and history.
Chapter 5 Doctrine, orthodoxy and sectarianism It is debatable how much Marx, Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin Kelly has read. Clearly, from this chapter, it is not enough. The early Marxists understood very early that the program builds the Party. From Marx’s time, orthodox Marxists have attached the highest importance to defending the Marxist method and program from attack by revisionists.
Kelly calls this defence dogmatic and sectarian. It must be said that the Trotskyist movement has survived greater insults than Kelly can produce. There is nothing new in Kelly’s stance. The Stalinists have been attacking Trotskyist conceptions since the late 1920s. Kelly is just rehashing their political positions and slanders.
Chapter 6 Party Recruitment In this chapter, Kelly again berates the Trotskyist movement for its low membership. Kelly does not explain what happened to the Labour Party and Communist Party politically regardless of whether they have grown or declined. Both of these organisations are organically hostile to the building of a revolutionary party and have spent their entire existence trying to prevent the growth of such an organisation.
Chapter 7 Party Electoral Performance Throughout his career, it would seem Kelly has been heavily critical of Trotskyist parties such as the SEP for not ditching their “ doctrinal” attitude towards elections. In his article Upbeat and the Margins: the British Trotskyist Left and their exceptionally poor election results[10], he states, “The extremely poor electoral performance, therefore, created a significant dilemma for these party leaders. On the one hand, an open acknowledgement of an extremely poor vote implies very little support for their programmes and potentially calls into question their main policies and possibly their core ideology. Moreover, an open admission of unpopularity could threaten the positive attachment of activists to their respective parties. On the other hand, the denial of poor electoral performance or claims that it constitutes some form of success, 1/3 potentially threaten the credibility and authority of the party leaders. The research was therefore undertaken to understand how Trotskyist party leaders constructed accounts of their electoral performance which identified positive achievements in the face of meagre vote shares”.
Kelly’s article shows some things. Firstly, Kelly has no faith that Trotskyism can win the working class to its banner with a revolutionary program. As Stalinists have advocated, they should ditch building a revolutionary party and concentrate on electoral politics. Failing that, Kelly encourages groups to liquidate their parties and work within popular front organisations, which many Pseudo Lefts groups have all in but name done.
Chapter 9 Working in the Trade Unions Kelly correctly states that “Trotskyists have always attached enormous importance to working inside the trade union movement because of the belief that it represents the most organised and class-conscious section of the working class “. Kelly intimates that the trade union question has been a vexing issue for the Marxist movement.
For Kelly, the issue is straightforward; he is uncritical of the trade union leadership. He cannot understand why orthodox Marxists are profoundly critical of the trade leadership’s betrayal but have reservations about the organisations.
As David North from the SEP states, “In the history of the Marxist movement, there are two political issues, or “questions,” that have been the source of exceptionally persistent controversy, spanning more than a Century. One is the “national question”, and the other is the “trade union” question”. One would think that there is something to be learned from so many unfortunate experiences. But like the old fools found in the tales of Boccaccio, the ageing and toothless radicals today are only too eager to play the cuckold again and again. Thus, the present-day “left” organisations still insist that the socialist movement is duty-bound to minister loyally to the needs and whims of the trade unions. Socialists, they insist, must acknowledge the trade unions as the worker’s organisation par excellence, the form most representative of the social interests of the working class. The trade unions, they argue, constitute the authentic and unchallengeable leadership of the working class — the principal and ultimate arbiters of its historical destiny. To challenge the authority of the trade unions over the working class, to question in any way the supposedly “natural” right of the trade unions to speak in the name of the working class is tantamount to political sacrilege. It is impossible, the radicals claim, to conceive of any genuine workers movement which is not dominated, if not formally led, by the trade unions. Only on the basis of the trade unions can the class struggle be effectively waged. And, finally, whatever hope there exists for the development of a mass socialist movement depends upon “winning” the trade unions, or at least a significant section of them, to a socialist perspective.
To put the matter bluntly, the International Committee rejects every one of these assertions, which are refuted both by theoretical analysis and historical experience. In the eyes of our political opponents, our refusal to bow before the authority of the trade unions is the equivalent of lèse-majesté. This does not trouble us greatly, for not only have we become accustomed, over the decades, to be in opposition to “left-wing” — or, to be more accurate — petty-bourgeois public opinion; we consider its embittered antipathy the surest sign that the International Committee is, politically speaking, on the correct path”[11].
Chapter 11 The proliferation of Trotskyist Internationals.The problem with this chapter, like all the rest of the book Kelly presents large numbers of statistics but very little analysis of how the different Trotskyist groups started and where they have finished. As I said earlier, there is a reason why Kelly does not in any detail discuss not only the international origins of the Fourth International but its origins in Britain. Everything Kelly examines he does so from a nationalist standpoint point. How could it be any different? He is, after all, a Stalinist. Anyone reading this chapter would be better off closing the book and purchasing a copy of the newly updated history of the Fourth International called The Heritage We Defend by David North.
This is a hack book written by a Stalinist who long ago made peace with capitalism and has no interest in a revolutionary struggle. Eternal waves of shame go to Routledge for publishing such a wretched book.
[4] Report to the Third National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK)- [5] Alex Callinicos-Trotskyism-
[6] Socialist Equality Party holds founding Congress-19 September 2008-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/09/cong-s19.html
[7] Founding Conference of the Fourth International 1938 On Unification of The British Section- [8] A blow against the Post-Soviet School of Historical Falsification-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2011/12/lett-d31.html
[9] How the Workers Revolutionary Party Betrayed Trotskyism
[11]Why are Trade Unions Hostile to Socialism? -Two vexed questions By David North
The Twilight of World Trotskyism John Kelly London: Routledge, 2022. 144 pp., $59.95
My first duty is to correct a mistake I made in reviewing John Kelly’s book on British Trotskyism on this website. In that review, I praised Routledge for publishing a book about Trotskyism. I will not make the same mistake with this review. It says a lot about Routledge that they paid Kelly to spew his hatred of Trotskyism over two books. Kelly’s anti-Trotskyism goes way back. Kelly’s first so-called “critical investigation of Trotskyism” dates back to one of his earliest major books, Trade Unions and Socialist Politics (1988). The book was written as a defence of trade union Syndicalism while he was still a CPGB member and a Labour Party supporter.
As David North has written, “ The Labour Party, 118 years after its founding, is a ruthless instrument of British imperialism, led by a cabal of right-wing warmongers dedicated to the dismantling of even the limited reforms implemented by Labour governments in the years immediately following World War II. One can safely assume that Mr Kelly is a devoted follower of Jeremy Corbyn, the political eunuch who epitomises the impotence of the contemporary practitioners of pseudo-left, anti-Marxist and anti-Trotskyist politics. Swept into the leadership of the Labour Party with massive popular support, Corbyn proceeded to return power to the Blairite right wing. Outside of Britain, similar examples of political bankruptcy were provided by Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.[1]
One of the first things the reader will notice of The Twilight of World Trotskyism – is how short it is at a mere 124 pages. This is an insult, given the history it purports to cover. Kelly’s central theme is that Trotskyist parties are too small to trouble global capitalism. Kelly also believes social revolutions are undesirable and impossible in today’s political climate. People who want change should forget about challenging poverty or social inequality or, god forbid, socialist revolution. Instead, according to Kelly, they should look to parties like Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party), which offers limited radical reform with the promise of changing working people’s lives.
As Guilherme Ferreira shows in his excellent article, the reality is slightly different. He writes, “The policies of the first year of Lula’s administration represent a continuation and deepening of the attacks on the working class and people with low incomes promoted during the 13 years (2003-2016) in which the PT was the preferred Party of the bourgeoisie in Brazil. In 2024, in addition to cuts in social spending due to the prospect of a worsening world economy and the implementation of the new fiscal regime, it is expected that social spending will be even further decreased with the proposed “zero deficit target” for the year’s budget that the PT managed to get Congress to approve in December. To meet this target, the budget includes a freeze of up to 56 billion reais (11 billion dollars), and there is a threat to end the constitutional limits on health and education.
What is emerging with increasing force is the certainty that the reactionary anti-working class policies of the new Lula government will pave the way for the strengthening of the extreme right and its possible return to power in the next elections. This political phenomenon was already seen in the election of the fascistic Bolsonaro amid the popular discrediting of the PT after it implemented capitalist adjustment programs and its leading role in vast corruption scandals. More recently, the same phenomenon has been seen in Argentina, where the fascistic Javier Milei used the enormous discrediting of Peronism to pose as a political alternative.”[2]
Chapter 1, ‘The Origins and Content of Trotskyism’, Kelly spends some time examining the “core elements’ of Trotskyism”. While he mentions every Pseudo Left organisation under the sun, he does not discuss the orthodox Trotskyist parties contained within the International Committee of the Fourth International. (ICFI). He makes no mention of its global publication, the World Socialist Website(wsws.org), which is the largest publication of its kind on the web. Kelly continuously uses the generic term Trotakyist without examining the history of various pseudo-left groups that use the term Trotskyist only as a cover for their opportunist politics. But it is clear that when he calls for Trotskyists to drop their adherence to Marxism, he is talking about the Orthodox Marxists inside the ICFI.
Chapter 2 ‘A Brief Account of the Four Main Centres of World Trotskyism: You would have thought that someone at Routledge would have told Kelly that it was not a good idea to try and explain the origins and history of the world Trotskyist movement using only four countries. But it seems that the editors at Routledge have given Kelly free rein to write any half-arse things that come into his head at any given moment. Kelly exhibits a shocking degree of academic laziness; his aversion to including in his supposed look at the origins of world Trotskyism, the orthodox Trotskyist on the ICFI, is akin to leaving Jesus out of the bible. Any honest account of the origins of world Trotskyism would have to at least look at and consider David North’s monumental contribution to the Fourth International Heritage We Defend[3]. The Heritage We Defend was first published in book form in 1988. Its origins lie in the political struggle waged by the ICFI and the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party of the United States, from 1982-1986, to defend Trotskyism against the nationalist opportunism of the ICFI’s former British section, the Workers Revolutionary Party.
It was written as a polemic against Michael Banda, the former WRP General Secretary, and his document, “27 Reasons why the International Committee Should be Buried Forthwith and the Fourth International Built.” It establishes the continuity of the fight for orthodox Trotskyism in the political conflicts that arose inside the Fourth International in the 20th Century. Kelly’s hatred of orthodox Trotskyism is clear, and he deliberately ignores its history and program. And for good reason. In this respect, Kelly is not stupid enough to go up against the ICFI. He knows that the ICFI has a track record of dealing with and exposing Stalinists like him.
In Chapter 3, ‘The Current State of World Trotskyism’, In this chapter, Kelly exhibits the same light-mindedness and ignorance he showed in chapter two. He has no interest in the political differences between the orthodox Marxist parties within the ICFI and the various pseudo-left groups. Kelly is not interested in the programme but solely in membership and electoral results.
In chapter 4, ‘The Dynamics of World Trotskyism, ’ Kelly argues, and not very well, I might add, that the Trotskyist movement has not led major protests or revolutions in the Twentieth Century and has become an irrelevance’ for struggles today. He asks, ‘Why have Trotskyist groups repeatedly failed to build mass organisations, despite almost a century of organising effort in over 70 countries across six continents?[4]
Marxist writer David North writes, “Two points must be made. While sarcastically dismissing the failure of the Trotskyist movement to lead a socialist revolution, Kelly ignores the counter-revolutionary actions, frequently involving murderous violence, taken by the mass Stalinist and social democratic party and trade union organisations in alliance with the state to isolate and destroy the Trotskyist movement and defend the capitalist system. Kelly pretends the Trotskyist movement was conducting its revolutionary work in ideal laboratory conditions.
The second point, actually a question, is this: What are the great political successes achieved by those organisations and their leaders engaged in what Kelly calls “serious”, i.e., non-revolutionary politics? Mr. Kelly informs his readers that he was a member of the British Communist Party during the 1980s. What were the great and lasting achievements of this Party, which was implicated in every crime and betrayal carried out by the Stalinist regime in the Kremlin from the 1920s until the catastrophic dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991?”.[5]
Chapter 5, ‘Explaining the Marginality of World Trotskyism’, is much like previous chapters in that it does offer no real analysis. Instead, it has chapter headings like ‘Reforms are no longer possible; the choice is between ‘socialism or barbarism!’, ‘Party and electoral programs: We demand everything!’, ‘Parliamentary elections decide nothing’, ‘Lamentation replaces analysis’, ‘Ideological certitude, electoral delusion and millenarian fantasy’. Kelly believes that adherence to program and history is debilitating and doctrinaire. (page 80)
After Kelly’s book, one is left to ask: If the “Trotskyist movement has an unparalleled record of political failure”, why did Kelly and a major global publisher release two books on the subject? The professor has devoted excessive time and study to a movement and a man that he considers “irrelevant?”
As David North points “ Why have the two volumes of Kelly been published by Routledge, among the largest publishers in the world with annual revenues of between $50 and $100 million. Why does this powerful capitalist publishing house expend resources on publishing books about an irrelevant organisation? It should be recalled that in 2003 Routledge also published a biography of Leon Trotsky. I had the honour of exposing its author, Professor Ian Thatcher, as an intellectually unprincipled slanderer. Evidently, Routledge’s preoccupation with Trotsky indicates that it is by no means convinced of his “irrelevance.”
Now that we are approaching the midpoint of the 2020s have events tended to vindicate Kelly’s ridicule of the prognosis of the International Committee five years ago? What has been the predominant tendency in the economic, social and political structures of world capitalism since the start of the new decade? If Professor Kelly’s criticisms of Trotskyist “doctrinairism,” blind to the realities of the contemporary world, are correct, he would have to demonstrate, with appropriate empirical documentation, that the past four to five years have witnessed an organic strengthening of the world economy, a diminution of social instability—that is, a lessening of class conflict—and both a decline in global geopolitical tensions and growing vitality of bourgeois democratic institutions”.[6]
[1] Opening report to the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US)
Normally, I would not be caught dead writing about, let alone reviewing, a book by a murderous and racist parasite such as Prince Harry, but something caught my attention. It was not anything written in the book but in a tweet from Harry’s ghostwriter.
The tweet quoted our royal genius saying, “Whatever the cause, my memory is my memory…. There is just as much truth in what I remember and how I remember it as in so-called objective facts.” The quote would not have looked out of place in George Orwell’s 1984 or Harry’s friend Donald Trump.
But as John Adams, the second US President, once said in 1770, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”[1] The ghostwriter and editor did not oppose this garbage is extraordinary.
As one writer said, “This crime is compounded if ghostwriters are complicit and editors are lazy or amoral. Every memoir should be put through a fact-check in the interest of credibility, not only so that readers are not misled but also that the other people and events featured in it are given a fair deal. Spare has not been fair, and there could be several reasons why it remains riddled with inaccuracies, putting a question mark on the gamut of his claims and complaints.”
When it comes to making things up as he goes along Prince Harry is an amateur. Certainly, the most damaging attack on the concept of historical truth has come from what I term the post-modernist school of historiography. It would not be an understatement to say that post-modernist historians have been extremely hostile in academia to the concept of historical truth. The last few decades have witnessed the emergence of post-modernism as the dominant force in university life. This philosophical and historical outlook has replaced what passed for Marxism inside universities all over the world.
The chief characteristic of the post-modernists is the use of debatable philosophy, to blur over the difference between truth and lies, and in doing so, commit a falsification of history. The practice of lying about history has been taken to a new level by the various schools of post-modernism. It would not be an overstatement to say that the impact of this school of history has been as David North put it “nothing short of catastrophic”.
There is, of course, a connection between the falsification of history and the attack on the struggle for objective truth. One of the most outlandish post-modernist thinkers and an opponent of objective truth is the German Professor Jorg Baberowski b (1961)[7]. A student of Michel Foucault, Baberowski describes his method of work in his book (The Meaning of History)
“In reality, the historian has nothing to do with the past but only with its interpretation. He cannot separate what he calls reality from the utterances of people who lived in the past, for there exists no reality apart from the consciousness that produces it. We must liberate ourselves from the conception that we can understand, through the reconstruction of events transmitted to us through documents, what the Russian Revolution was. There is no reality without its representation. To be a historian means to use the words of Roger Chartier to examine the realm of representations”.
Accepting this premise that truth is not objective but relative sets a very disturbing precedent. Aside from the moral and intellectual damage this may do to the individual historian, this kind of false philosophy will poison the well that future young historians and people interested in history have to drink out of.
The logic of this philosophy of history is that truth is whatever goes on in someone’s head. Smoking is good for you, and hard drugs are not dangerous. Hitler is misunderstood and was a good guy. No person who wants to function and live effectively cannot do without some sense of truth’s objective correspondence to reality. I believe that Objective truth is possible but not without a struggle. The first stage in that struggle is telling the truth about history.
A Trumpet of Sedition 