Conversations with Earle Birney

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American Problems

Question: Was the Cannon-Shachtman slogan of “No discussion for six months” [in the Workers Party] correct?

Trotsky: Mainly. Compare the Dutch fusion. There any focusing upon “discussion” immediately after the merger would only have split the party again. It was necessary there, and in America, to concentrate on practical mass work and on discussion of the problems arising directly from that work. It was the sectarian Oehlerites who always wanted more discussion. A sectarian is always like a drinker of salt water; the more he swallows the thirstier he is. Because the sectarian proceeds from the conviction that he cannot be wrong, that he has nothing to learn from action, that everyone will agree with him if only he can just talk to them long enough.

Question: Is there a danger of political “gangster” psychology affecting our American movement?

Trotsky: There seems to be. In general, although America had the privilege of preceding Europe economically, she has inclined to tail behind Europe politically and in the most exaggerated manner to repeat the worst mistakes and splits. All the sects generated in Europe eventually end up in the United States.

Also, our own movement still has a large proportion of intellectuals. Disputes among intellectuals assume a sharpness out of proportion to the seriousness of the differences. Organizations not deeply entrenched in the masses are therefore not disciplined by the masses. The latter move slower than ideas. The worker is more patient in dealing with questions which become sharp and bitter with intellectuals; the worker is used to dealing with materials which do not yield quickly, with wood, iron, steel.

Our comrades in America and everywhere should not think that “gangsterism”is confined to the American movement. Stalinism has introduced police tactics and bureaucratic centralism into the whole international radical movement. Even the fights between the Bolsheviks and the anarchists and Narodniks were on an entirely different plane from this. Even in the vacuum of emigre politics — in the Bolshevik past — there has never been such corruption as Stalinism has brought to the workers’ struggles. It is natural that our comrades should react sharply to any evidence that this is creeping into our own movement, and it is better at the present time to exaggerate “democracy” than to tolerate tendencies to Stalinist methods. Headlong split action must be avoided; it is easy to break sin arm — it takes only a second — but the bone may take months to knit together again.

Trotsky: Eastman talks about the revolutionary who sets about to create a revolution as an engineer conceives a plan and builds a bridge according to it. Engineers! Bridges! Revolution! Eastman knows nothing about them. He knows nothing about bridge-building. Does an engineer build a bridge out of his head or does he receive a command from the capitalists whose economic needs require the bridge? Does he form the plan out of his head or is it the product of the accumulated knowledge of years of bridge-building, incorporated in textbooks?

Is the engineer of value as an individual or because of his creative power when, in accepting that command, he coordinates in the best interests of those who command him the elements of nature and science, which exist independently of him?

If Eastman meant “engineer” in this sense, we could accept his definition. But he thinks of the revolutionary genius as a man who conceives a plan a priori and then gives orders. No, there are many “engineers” and many “plans.” The mass does its own selecting among them and chooses the engineer and the plan that answers its historic needs. It was this that Marx explained and that Eastman never understood.

International Lineups

Question: Will the Italo-Ethiopian War lead directly to world war?

Trotsky: That is not at all certain. The great powers are not yet clearly drawn up in opposing lines, but the Ethiopian invasion is serving that purpose. It is realigning the states and preparing the minds of people for war much in the manner that the Balkan War served as the overture to the opera of 1914.

Question: Which of the European powers really dominates the situation at present?

Trotsky: None of them. Yesterday Prance was too economically dependent, its geographical basis too small. It was only a center of equilibrium for the moment. Then Germany reached a point in the restoration of its productive forces where it could openly rearm. From that moment France became a secondary figure. Hitler spoke openly of colonies, of expansion. This in turn gave Italy its opportunity. Mussolini was able to force panicky France into a common front against Hitler’s threat to the west and south, and to utilize the alliance for an African attack. But then Britain mounts the stand and begins to referee, to hold the balance of power as in the old days. It was for this advantage that it had allowed Hitler to rearm. Britain moves to protect its own interests in Africa and to upset the Franco-Italian bloc. Hoare threatens military sanctions. Italy can win all Africa, and Mussolini become its Negus — but he will not be able to come home, for Britain will have his metropolis. This is the problem for Italy; but French capital is too desperate from internal crisis either to oppose Britain or to accede completely. France can do nothing but delay, and seek to appease Mussolini with the evidence that it sabotages. “Look, we postponed the Geneva performances and gave you time to attack. Now we save you from Britain’s military sanctions.” But Mussolini replies: “Your ‘financial’ and ‘economic’ sanctions can lead only to war. What are you going to do?”

But neither France nor Britain can supply the answer. Baldwin can only say: “Yes, we will blockade,” and “Italy must then capitulate or fight — but first we must ask Uncle Sam.” This is the real hierarchy now. Italy asks France, France asks England — and Baldwin whispers to America. Uncle Sam, knowing he is on top, sticks his hands in his pockets and says to Mr. Baldwin what Mr. Baldwin used to say to Europe: “Wait and see.” The USA has no immediate interest in sanctions; it does not need to keep the Mediterranean open for the passage to India. It has its own garden to tend, in the Pacific. So Britain, having allowed Germany to rearm to secure the balance of power from France, now finds that it must itself spend many pounds sterling on further battleships not only to keep Germany on its side (for that matter Germany has much need of Britain for its proposals regarding Russia), but also to meet the threat of combined action by Italian and French battleships. In the meantime, the war does not end in Ethiopia; the restlessness of all exploited African natives increases, there are serious reactions in Egypt — and Uncle Sam continues to do nothing. Whether the workers are to have another breathing space or whether they are to proceed from this to a world war will be decided — so far as it can be by any one power — by American capitalism.

Question: Do you think that the USA will eventually line up with Britain in a world war?

Trotsky: No. This was the view of Lovestone, who argued that the U.S. and Britain would unite to avoid the destruction of our planet. Lenin and I argued against him that these two powers, despite their diplomatic amenities, represent the most fundamental antagonisms existing between capitalist states in the world today.

War, the USSR, and the Red Army

Question: In War and the Fourth International (sections 44-5), we read: “It would be absurd and criminal in case of war between the USSR and Japan for the American proletariat to sabotage the sending of American munitions to the USSR.”

May not this formulation provide the entering wedge for social patriotism? ¹

Actually, in such a situation, American workers would have no means of knowing where arms shipments went to, once they left America. And we would have to remind the less class-conscious that American arms manufacturers were undoubtedly shipping supplies to both sides, and — much more important — that the American bourgeois government could never be trusted to aid the war against Japan if at any moment American capitalism stood to gain more by not doing so. If, for example, the San Francisco dockers had reached the high stage of militancy necessary, under such conditions, for them to be on the point of declaring for a strike against the export of all war supplies — and we persuaded them not to, because the shells were labeled “Russia” — it might happen that before the ship crossed the Pacific, the USA (whether still neutral, or an ally of the USSR) made a deal with Japan, in order to prevent a proletarian revolution in Japan, or because of threatened war with Britain, or etc. Then those munitions would be diverted to the killing of Japanese revolutionaries or British workers.

The brochure states that “the policy of a proletarian party in an ‘allied’ as well as an enemy imperialist country should … be directed towards the revolutionary overthrow” of its own bourgeoisie. But the concessions made immediately preceding, by the same brochure, are precisely those which would deflect and perhaps even betray that policy.

Trotsky: It is not a question of subordinating strikes or the revolutionary movement in countries allied to the Soviet Union in the interests of the effectiveness of that alliance for the Soviet Union. They must be encouraged and developed if they are part of the revolutionary uprising. The question is one of military aid on the part of the most advanced section of the American working class to its ally, the Soviet Union. Naturally, the American proletariat must do everything possible to fight against its own boss class, but in an organized fashion, by a general development of strikes — not in an anarchistic fashion.

However, suppose that in the event of a Japanese-Soviet war, an American factory is sending an important war machine to Japan and we know it. It is not a question of the American revolution but of military strategy. We would, through a central committee, send a group of courageous comrades to destroy that machine. It is true that such action might prejudice the American movement to some extent, but it is an act of military importance on the part of an ally of the Soviet Union.

If on the other hand goods are destined for the Soviet Union, and you know it, you must do everything in your power to ship that material. It is a question of special measures, of sacrifice, if necessary, to help the Soviet Union or hinder its enemy. In the long run, the victory of the Red Army, whatever it meant to Russia, would be an aid to us in our own revolution.

Suppose we do not know where goods are going. We must rely upon the Soviet agents in America, who should have information, since the Soviet Union would have buying agents for war materiel in the USA. We would need a united front with the Soviet bureaucracy on this. If we agitated against the loading of war goods bought by the Soviet Union in America, we would be having a united front not with the Soviet agents but with Japanese agents, who would no doubt be represented in the working class movement.

If there was no way of knowing where goods were going to, we would have to take a chance. Risk cannot be avoided; danger, as Clausewitz said, is the main element of war. But in our actions we would find it much easier to organize the American workers, among whom there would be considerable general sympathy for Russia — and among the petty bourgeois too.

Question: In the same brochure (War and the Fourth International, section 46), there is some emphasis laid upon the strength of the Red Army. In view of recent analyses by military and economic observers (especially even from those friendly to Russia) is it not possible that there is here a dangerous overestimate of Russia’s strength to resist attack — and by implication an underestimate of the need for building a new International?

Trotsky: It is true that, until two years ago, conditions in the Soviet Union were unfavorable to the growth of morale in the Red Army. But in the last two years a very important economic improvement has taken place, both in agriculture and industry. As a result, not only have the privileged sections secured more privileges and the bureaucracy added new top layers, but also the lower strata are better off than before. Moreover, the situation of the poor peasants and workers had been so bad that a slight improvement (comparatively) made for a large improvement in their minds.

This in turn was reflected in both the technology and the psychology of the Red Army. Greatly improved technical equipment in the army has engendered a confidence in its personnel somewhat comparable to the change that advanced mechanization introduced into the Prussian army before 1914. Even the development of mass parachuting, though it has been utilized by the bureaucracy to divert attention from politics, is a new and important step in popular military education.

The general increase of confidence which arises from these things is aided by the knowledge that the two main immediate enemies of the Soviet Union, Japan and Germany, are the most hated countries in the world today. It is impossible to think that the Russian peasant, however disaffected he may still be, would be willing to see his own bureaucracy replaced by Hitler or the Mikado.

This does not mean, unfortunately, that the future of the workers’ state is secure because the Red Army is strong. On the contrary, a victory for the Red Army would mean another step backwards toward state capitalism and the increase of private capitalism. After a successful war, the military leadership would no doubt replace the old bureaucracy with one much more capitalistic in its policies.

All this could happen without a civil war, for the latter would depend upon the Marxist understanding and the courage and capabilities of the workers. It was, if you like, an omission from my article “(The Workers’ State,] Thermidor and Bonapartism” that I did not suggest that a military coup d’état, following or during a successfully prosecuted war of defense, could lead, equally as well as a counterrevolutionary victory in a civil war, to the overthrow of the workers’ state. Of course, a proletarian revolution in the country defeated by the USSR would have tremendous repercussions upon the Soviet Union itself. But without such an event, all the centrifugal forces at present working in the Soviet Union would be irresistible. Feudal powers defeated Napoleon, but the result was the introduction of capitalism into the victorious feudal countries. The victory for socialism in the USSR is not, as Stalin says, “assured,” “accomplished,” etc., and cannot be assured until the productive forces in the Soviet Union are higher than in any capitalist country, until the proletarian state can, in a sense, “undersell,” when its own level of living is higher. In the meantime, war approaches steadily, and in that war the Red Army, although it will be a very powerful war instrument, will not and cannot save the workers’ state.