[The British Supporters of the ITO do not necessarily accept every position in this polemic (e.g. on the class character of the Eastern bloc today), but we print this review because we recognise that it generally attempts to defend Trotskyism against an organisation (Workers Power) that is sliding back towards state capitalism].

There are hundreds of introductions to Trotsky. A new one would be justified if it used new sources, if it commented on new books written about him, if it proposed a new critical approach to him, or even if it was making an objective and serious exposition of his life and ideas.

I have to confess that when my comrades pushed me to review Richard Brenner's "Trotsky, An Introduction" I hoped to find a work which set out to fulfil one or more of these tasks. This booklet was published, and very well promoted, by the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI). This is a current around the British Workers' Power group which in the past has produced very serious publications. For example, it's critical history of the Fourth International and its analysis of the post-war degenerated revolution where two of the best books published by any Trotskyist current in the eighties. Unfortunately, the booklet fails on all counts. Brenner doesn't use any new sources at all. There is no bibliography and its assertions and quotations are not referenced to any footnote. It also ignores all the major biographies produced on Trotsky. In recent years Broué, Volgakonov and other authors wrote big books on Trotsky in which they bring new information from previously unknown ex-KGB files or other materials. A new serious introduction to Trotsky should have made use of such new material and produced some critiques of their interpretations. There is no evidence that Brenner has even read them.

An Introduction should also be very instructive, clear, well structured and easy to follow. Yet any new reader interested in Trotsky would find Brenner very confused and confusing. The great majority of the books written by Trotsky are not mentioned. Not even a bibliography of Trotsky's main works is added as part of the pamphlet. The author ignores some very important organisations with which Trotsky was involved, and many of the acronyms of groups (like CNT, RSP, OSP, etc.) are not fully spelled out.

The way in which Trotsky's own life is presented is very messy. The reader is tangentially informed that he had a second wife only during the 1905 events and at the very end of the booklet. Trotsky's relations with family and other companions during most of his life are relegated to the background. Most of Trotsky's main collaborators (like Joffee, Preobaschenski, Rosmer, Shachtman, Cannon, Rivera, etc.) are ignored. Brenner couldn't even present a clear trajectory of the different places in which Trotsky lived. For example, Trotsky was exiled in his last twelve years to Alma Ata, Turkey, France, Norway and finally, Mexico. Brenner doesn't mention most of these places or that tortuous peril. Suddenly, in the middle of a chapter on the rise of Hitler, the reader is informed that Trotsky was in Turkey but with no specific dates. There is not even a chronology of Trotsky's life to provide some order to this chaotic presentation.

Nor does the booklet measure up in contributing to a critical debate on Trotsky or in presenting his life and ideas in a serious and objective way. The LRCI could have used the new Introduction to openly and honestly explain their critiques of Trotsky. The LRCI is increasingly distancing itself from its former orthodoxy and rejecting many ideas from Trotsky. Its official journal Trotskyist International has characterised Trotsky's positions on the Soviet Union as having 'revisionist' methodology and 'reformist' conclusions. For Brenner it would have been more honest and productive to openly critique Trotsky from the current positions of the LRCI. By contrast, for example, Ticktin and Cox's "The Ideas of Leon Trotsky" openly put in question a series of the positions of the founder of the Fourth International.

The basic problem of Brenner's Introduction is that it does not adopt a frank critique of Trotsky. Rather he resorts to a subjective and dishonest presentation of Trotsky's ideas. He tries to fabricate a different Trotsky, one that is suited to the LRCI's own politics. Some of Trotsky's most important contributions are heavily misrepresented or disregarded. For reasons of space I will choose to concentrate on four central areas only: the Fourth International, Stalinism, Imperialism and Party Building.

Brenner's booklet has a chapter on the Fourth International. Trotsky considered that it was his last major work. He dedicated a lot of his time and writing to advising sections all over the globe on organisation, tactics and strategies. This monumental contribution is disregarded by many academics although it is seriously studied by revolutionaries committed to extract the lessons for party building. Unfortunately, Brenner's pamphlet deprecates most of these lessons. He mentions that in 1923 the Left Opposition was set up and "for the next 10 years he fought to rouse the Communist workers of the world in a fight for the complete reform of the Communist International". Nevertheless, he writes only a few lines on this very important fight, and then suddenly jumps to Trotsky's break with the Comintern and his 1933 call for a Fourth International. However, the way in which this break is presented is not accurate at all: "The forces of the International Left Opposition (ILO) were small. One estimate suggests that at this time it had less than 6000 members world-wide. There was therefore no possibility of simply "declaring" the Fourth International, and setting it up based on the ILO groupings alone." What "estimate"? Like many of his claims Brenner doesn't present any evidence. The real reason why Trotsky didn't set up the Fourth International in 1933 is because he wanted to have regroupment discussions with other parties which came from different traditions. The number of comrades was not the main factor because the Fourth International was officially founded in 1938 with more or less 6000 members.

Brenner correctly observes that the ILO became the International Communist League (ICL) which made a block with the OSP, RSP and SAP for the Fourth International. For him, "the whole tactic of the Bloc of Four … succeeded in winning the RSP, and an important part of the OSP to the ICL." For Brenner then, the only reason why Trotsky didn't found the new international in 1933 and why he engaged in a block with other forces was to get sufficient numbers. But Trotsky was not in favour of a homogeneous international cult. Rather he was for the collaboration of close political currents despite their differences. What Brenner is expressing is the mentality of a small sect that only sees regroupment discussion as a smoke screen to try to recruit people from other tendencies and which declares a new international only when some minimum number of members are reached. Brenner doesn't mention the constitution of the Movement for the Fourth International in 1936. Of all the party discussions that Trotsky had in his last seven years, Brenner only mentions his debates with different components of the London Bureau and on entrism in France.

A part of this booklet claims to deal with Fourth International currents which where developed AFTER Trotsky's death. However, Brenner completely erased from the map many important anti-Stalinist groups which were analysed by Trotsky. It is shocking how the LRCI could ignore the US section. The Socialist Workers Party was by far the main Trotskyist party when the Fourth International was founded. It had around 40% of its membership and had a powerful influence over Europe and Latin America. In his last years Trotsky lived south of the US border, surrounded by members of the SWP and was participating regularly in the building of that party. In 1939-40 a very important debate occurred in the SWP. It was centred on the question of the nature of the USSR. Shachtman led a faction which denied that the USSR was any kind of workers' state and that it was a new "bureaucratic collectivist" system impossible to defend in a war. It caused a major split in the New International. One quarter of its International Executive Committee (including all the delegates from Latin America and the Caribbean) and more than 1000 members left with Shachtman. Arising from this fight came Trotsky's last book: "In Defence of Marxism".

It is quite revealing that the LRCI booklet doesn't mention that polemic nor any others that Trotsky made against all the other anti-defencist anti-Stalinist currents. The booklet omitted any reference to the LeninBund, the Bordigists, the Democratic Centralists and any other communists who considered the USSR a bourgeois or 'new class' state. These organisations were bigger than the Trotskyists in Germany, Italy, and possible at one time, the USSR. These debates were more fundamental and important than the one on the entrist tactic dealt with by Brenner. They didn't involve a tactical turn but rather a strategic view of how to understand international politics and how to relate to the massive communist parties.

Stalinism.

Why did Brenner choose to completely "forget" Trotsky's polemics against the Stalinophobes? It can only be because the LRCI is retreating to another form of anti-defencism. So, instead of making an open critique of Trotsky, Brenner decides to transform Trotsky into something he never was: a Stalinophobe. Trotsky's ideas on the USSR are grossly distorted. For example, Brenner says that for the leader of the Left Opposition: "The real, living contradiction of the USSR was one between the workers' forms of property established by the Russian Revolution, and the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy that held back their development." In this equation, what role is given to capitalism which dominates the entire globe, surrounds the USSR and was constantly trying to penetrate it and to dismantle the plan and all the proletarian relations? Simply none.

For Trotsky the real contradiction was between international capitalism and the proletarian struggle for socialism. The bureaucracy played an intermediate and parasitic role. Like a union bureaucrat the Stalinists where forced to maintain their social base against the bosses but also to betray the workers in order to obtain privileges. If somebody says that in a union the real contradiction is between the leadership and the rank and file, then obviously they are fatally "forgetting" that the bosses are the real enemy. Similarly, if the Stalinist bureaucracy is considered to be the main target, it would mean the capitalists are not the main enemy and that therefore collaboration or affability is possible with the bourgeois against the "main enemy".

Brenner claims that for Trotsky: "Without the Stalinists however, the planned economic base of the USSR would not only survive, it would go forward at an ever-greater rate." This is wrong. Trotsky had a different view. He recognised that the bureaucracy was distorting and undermining the plan and the march towards socialism. Therefore, it was necessary to fight for a political revolution to regenerate the state. However, if Stalinism were to be replaced by capitalism, it would be a historic defeat with international catastrophic consequences. After 1989 we saw the collapse of the Stalinist rule in the former Soviet Bloc but "the planned economic base of the USSR", instead of "surviving" and "going forward at an ever greater rate", was replaced by a capitalist counter-revolution. Brenner cheered on the capitalist overthrow of Communist Party rule in Eastern Europe: "Now that Stalinism has been fatally wounded, the job of rebuilding genuine communism will be thousand times easier in the years to come." That would be the case if Stalinism had been fatally wounded by the working class. Unfortunately it was overthrown by imperialism. This created a contradictory situation in which the working class is in a more disadvantaged position and more ideologically confused in the face of neo-liberal privatisations and cuts everywhere. In fact, Trotsky's method was quite opposite to the one that Brenner is putting in his mouth. It would be less dishonest if Brenner openly exposed his own differences with Trotsky.

In its last congress (August 97) the LRCI, after purging its left opposition, finally officially accepted the new analysis on the USSR proposed by Harvey and Brenner. According to the new theory, in 1927 a bourgeois counter-revolution re-created a bourgeois state in the USSR. In Eastern Europe, East Asia and Cuba the bourgeois state was not smashed but purged and perfected by the Communist Parties. They retained the term "degenerated workers state" but only as a lifeless economic category. When a bourgeois state adopts temporarily, in abnormal crisis circumstances, a nationalised economy, it cannot be described even in economic terms as a form of a workers state. It is a blatant contradiction to have a bourgeois state combined with any form of workers plan. Harvey's theory is therefore a hybrid offspring of Trotskyism and anti-defencist variants. However, it doesn't have any of their consistency. For Harvey a bourgeois state can expropriate its ruling class and later put it back in power, just as he can change his shirt.

For Marxists, however, the bourgeois state is a machine which is designed to protect the interests of the ruling property-owning class. It is inconceivable except for utopian reformists that this state apparatus could be used to eliminate its own ruling class. For Harvey, in China, Vietnam and Cuba, the state has been around for centuries. The Stalinists only made modifications which improved the existing bourgeois state. Harvey has a simple scheme: if there is no semi-state like the one Lenin described in The State and Revolution there is a bourgeois state. In that case he should be consistent and claim that it was Lenin who banned other parties in the soviets and other factions inside the ruling party, who re-created an officer body and a layer of privileged specialists and Nepmen, and therefore who re-built the bourgeois state. Harvey claims that Trotsky was wrong because Stalinism was from 1927 a counter-revolutionary force which smashed the workers state. To be consistent he should also argue that Trotsky made a mistake in characterising the Communist International (until 1935) as bureaucratic centrist and in trying to reform it (until 1933). He should have advocated a new party, a new international and a new revolution since 1927. In that sense, Trotsky's creation of the International Left Opposition (ILO), and his tactics to reorient the Communist Parties, should now be rejected. Instead of criticising the Fourth International for becoming centrist in 1951, the LRCI should now admit that the basis on which Trotsky built the movement was wrong after 1927 and that the Fourth International should have been proposed in that year. But Brenner doesn't explain how Stalinism was transformed from a bureaucratic centrist current into a counter-revolutionary force and does not give any adequate coverage of the process of building of the ILO. This is because Harvey and Brenner's new conception leads to different tactics which for some reason they don't want to reveal in the Introduction.

For Trotsky the strategy was to regenerate the USSR. In the most recent Trotskyist International this strategy is condemned as showing up a "reformist" and "revisionist" aspect in Trotsky. He should have advocated the smashing of the Stalinist state. However, in the Introduction the LRCI want to downplay Trotsky's supposed "softness" on Stalinism. Behind this ultra-left rhetoric is hiding a pro-bourgeois, stalinophobic, democratic adaptation to western middle classes which undermined the defence of the USSR. For Harvey the USSR was a bourgeois state with a fascist regime. As a consequence, the struggle for bourgeois democracy had a progressive role. While Trotsky was against the re-introduction of any parliamentary form in the USSR and rejected a bloc with the right opposition, the social democracy or any bourgeois force against Stalinism, the author of the New LRCI’s theories believes that Trotsky was wrong and that he should have advocated elections for a constituent assembly and a united front with bourgeois parties against Stalinist tyranny. It is revealing that Brenner only gives one example when it was correct to defend the USSR: against an external threat like the Nazis. He doesn't mention at all the necessity to defend it against INTERNAL counter-revolution. Brenner admits a process of "unfolding capitalist restoration in Russia in the years after 1991." However, when Yeltsin made his counter-coup and started that process, the LRCI supported him and called for an anti-Stalinist united front with all the capitalist parties in order to defend the bourgeois parliament. In 1992 they said that the Zyuganov Communist-Patriots were a fascist threat against democracy and for that reason they couldn't defend them against Yeltsin's repression. Inexplicably in the next elections they called for a vote for Zyuganov against Yeltsin. In fact, Harvey believes that the re-introduction of bourgeois democracy is a progressive step in those societies because it allows more freedoms. For Trotsky, however, those "freedoms" also came with the "freedoms" to accumulate capital and to sack workers, and, in that sense, bourgeois democracy was a social counter-revolution, and something even worse than Stalinism.

The LRCI's new theory is a radical change of all that this current wrote in 1980 and their path-breaking book The Degenerated Revolution. According to the new conception there is no distinction between a social and a political revolution, and even between these and a bourgeois democratic counter-revolution. The LRCI believes that the capitalist replacement of the bureaucracies was the starting point of the political revolution. With its new conception there is no clear distinction between a workers state and a bourgeois state. They imagine that a workers state could be ruled for eight years by a furious anti-Communist regime which destroys the plan and the state monopoly over industries, banking and foreign trade, which privatises most of the economy and which creates an ideological and repressive super-structure committed to the defence of a new bourgeoisie.

Thus until July 97 the LRCI believed that all the former "socialist" states east of Germany where workers states. One month later they admitted that the economically most prosperous were now capitalist, while the ones that are in the most financial trouble are still workers states. They also claimed that Serbian Bosnia was a workers state albeit ruled by Arkan fascists. But any form of workers state is incompatible with fascism, whose main aim is to physically exterminate the organised workers movement and to create a totalitarian state to serve financial capital. In Albania, which the LRCI still characterises as a workers state, Brenner's paper (Revolution 20) said that the incoming revolution should have "nationalis (ed) all the major industries and banks, owned by Albanian capitalists and foreign bosses." But that is the task of a social revolution which must smash the bourgeoisie and its state.

Another big absence in the booklet is the question of how Trotsky understood imperialism. The founder of the Fourth International gave a lot of attention to the development of North American and Japanese imperialism. However, none of these super-powers exist in Brenner's Introduction. He presents a Euro-centric Trotsky mainly confined to his native continent. All Trotsky's writings and thoughts on North and Latin America, Africa or Asia are simply disregarded. Only one and a half pages are given to the second Chinese revolution (1927). And Trotsky's subsequent works on the civil and later anti-Japanese war which he closely follow in his last thirteen years of life are ignored. Trotsky probably gave more attention to non-European nations than Marx, Engels or Lenin. He made brilliant predictions of the rise of the USA and the inevitability of a Japanese military defeat. Brenner's chapter on the permanent revolution only deals with Trotsky's thesis on the combined democratic and socialist tasks of the coming Russian Revolution. He does not mention that Trotsky developed the strategy of permanent revolution in the context of the anti-imperialist struggle, which was one of his most valuable contributions.

Trotsky proposed the unconditional defence of Guomindang China, semi-feudal monarchist Abyssinia and any other colonised nation against all kinds of imperialism (even the most "democratic" ones), while at the same time the native proletariat should maintain an intransigent struggle to overthrow its rulers. This important ABC of Trotskyism had been ignored by many groups who did not want to defend Argentina, Iran, the IRA or Iraq against imperialism. The LRCI used to be in the forefront of the orthodox Trotskyists in advocating a revolutionary defencist line in oppressed nations. Why then, is the LRCI now trying to ignore that in its Introduction? It must be because they are experiencing a radical change in their politics. As they renounce revolutionary defencism of the degenerated workers states, so too they are renouncing defencism in relation to the imperialised nations. In the most recent US military interventions, the LRCI said it would not defend those countries attacked by the Pentagon because they were not "democratic". In Haiti they condemned any kind of armed resistance against the US invasion. In Serbia they not only refused to defend it against the worst NATO attack ever, but they ask the super-powers to provide men, money and arms to back their local puppets.

The LRCI’s incapacity to endorse Trotsky's attitude towards imperialism is linked with its contradictory positions regarding its "home" imperialism. When Scotland and Wales were demanding their right of self-determination, Workers Power (July 96) wrote that they would fight against any degree of autonomy for them because it could weaken the United Kingdom which they saw as a guarantee of the unity of the working class. They openly advocated the necessity for centralised imperialist states. With that conception they are opposed to autonomy for any nations in western continental Europe. In the Basque country they don't want to critically defend ETA or Herri Batasuna against the Spanish imperialist state or to call for the unconditional release of their 500 prisoners.

Trotsky gave a lot of importance to the question of imperialism and wars. He was prolific on that issue and he was the only great Marxist who experienced two world wars. Brenner doesn't take into account Trotsky's work in relation to the preparation and outbreak of the Second World War and only makes a small reference to the First World War. Nowhere does he mention Trotsky's main strategy: revolutionary defeatism on all sides.

When Brenner covered Trotsky's writings on the Balkan Wars which preceded the First World War he misrepresented Trotsky's position. According to Brenner, Trotsky "distinguished at all times between reactionary wars fought for profit, and the justified resistance of nations [whose] fundamental freedoms were being denied." Actually, Trotsky only called for the defence of a country when it was the USSR or a semi-colony fighting against imperialism. During the two Balkan wars all the main states of that peninsula first allied against Turkey and later against Bulgaria. Trotsky never called for the defence of one nation that was suffering more than another. He didn't take sides in these wars and he denounced ethnic bigotry on every side. He advocated the unity of the region's proletariat to overthrow the existing regimes in order to achieve a Balkan federation.

During the two world wars he never called for the defence of Serbia, France, Poland or Czechoslovakia against the German invasion. The LRCI has another method. Their leadership openly disagrees with Marx and Engels' method on the national question. Some of their leaders say that Trotsky's writings on the Balkans showed that he hadn't broken with Menshevism. The LRCI has always has a tendency to defend any nation which they think is the victim, and which is fighting for it's freedom against a nation which is their victimiser. In these confrontations they can easily and frequently swap sides. For example, during the last Balkan wars (1991 onwards) the LRCI at various times supporting nearly every side. In the war between Croatia and Serbia they called for being simultaneously in the military camp of the Serbs when they had more than 50% of the population in one area, and for the Croats when they had the same in a neighbouring area. When Bosnia declared its independence in the spring of 1992, the LRCI opposed it and was against defending any side because all of them where characterised as reactionaries. In December 92 they decided o support the Muslims to recover all Bosnia. A few months later, they realised that the Muslims where only 44% of the population and were the majority of the population in less than 20% of the territory before the war, and so they decided to call for a Muslim victory in that portion of Bosnia only. With this strange methodology they finally lost their class compass. When Croatia wiped out Krajina, they called in the same Editorial for the defeat of all sides, for the defence of the Serbs communities who where fighting against the Croat incursion from the western front, and for the total victory of the Croat-Muslim forces who where attacking from the East.

On the question of party building an introduction to Trotsky should summarise its conceptions on how to construct the weapon that will lead the revolution. For more than four decades Trotsky produced materials on that vital point and his writings after 1917 are, alongside Lenin's, indispensable in building a revolutionary vanguard and in training cadres in organisational methods. However, the LRCI decided to omit that important aspect. When Brenner deals with Trotsky's organisational conflicts with Lenin he acknowledges Trotsky's mistake on the Party question. However, he does so by distorting Trotsky's position. For Brenner: "Despite his mounting recognition of the anti-revolutionary nature of Menshevism, Trotsky continued to campaign against division in the Russian party." This is wrong. First, Trotsky never referred to the Mensheviks before 1917 as counter-revolutionaries, and even less did he think that it was possible to include in a revolutionary party, enemies of the revolution. Trotsky and Lenin considered the Mensheviks at that time as opportunists. Until 1912 the Bolsheviks were a faction of the same Social Democratic organisation as the Mensheviks. Only after that did they decide to separate themselves into another party, a step that Trotsky did not understand until 1917. The idea that opportunism is the same as counter-revolution is natural for sectarians who only want to see life in black and white, and good and bad. On the question of how Trotsky set up the structures of the Fourth International and its sections, there is almost nothing in the LRCI booklet. For an international current based mainly in wealthy English-speaking democracies it is unpardonable to not even mention Trotsky's recommendations on how to build the US party.

Trotsky gave the SWP two strong pieces of advice. It is easy to see why the LRCI would not want to take this advice. First, it was necessary always to build the party based on blue-collar workers. Second, it was necessary to be very tolerant to internal opposition. Despite his huge differences with Shachtman, Trotsky wanted to keep this faction inside the Fourth International even giving them the right to publish their own differences in the press. By contrast Brenner's current hasn't been able to maintain any work amongst the industrial proletariat in 23 years of its existence. The LRCI rejects Trotsky's advice on class composition and deliberately makes their main orientation towards the intelligentsia. As a result they build small passive propaganda sects which are not active in the broader masses. On the question of opposition, inside the LRCI, Brenner was one of those who advocated a "homogeneous" and "centralised" organisation in which there is no room for internal (and even less open) factional debate. Suddenly people outside the LRCI noticed some new formidable change without warning about the discussions that were happening inside. Every comrade who has seriously questioned the zigzags in political line has been submitted to sanctions or moral charges. All the oppositional tendencies that emerged were trampled on or even expelled without having the right of defence or appeal. Members were forbidden to talk with the dissidents. When you have a confused group which doesn't allow serious opposition to constantly changing positions it is inevitable that a clique will emerge based on an authoritarian regime and under a supreme leader.

In conclusion, the LRCI is incapable of making a serious introduction to Trotsky. Its booklet doesn't have anything new to contribute. There are no new sources, no new comments on other works, and no new critiques of Trotsky. What we have is a messy mis-introduction to Trotsky's life and ideas.

The LRCI, instead of having the honesty to expose their different positions to Trotsky's critique, have attempted to ignore those of his contributions that they don't like, or to distort the ones that don't fit in their schemes. Brenner constantly flatters Trotsky in order to win his authority for pursuing this misrepresentation - a similar method employed by the Stalinists in relation to Lenin.

The LRCI doesn't have a clear method. It is rapidly departing from its previous method developed when Dave Hughes was its main theoretician and the Pacific sections had a lot of influence. Unlike Cliff, Matgamna or Ticktin, who make an openly critical (albeit wrong) assessment of Trotsky, the LRCI takes many contradictory positions. On the one hand it tries to maintain its previous image as an orthodox current while all its policies show it to be an erratic and heterodox one. Thisconundrum has led it to an impasse. The theoretical quality and the frequency of the LRCI's publications are deteriorating. In its documents it puts a lot of academic information but it cannot present consistent arguments and tends frequently to change its conclusions. This ideological decline is producing a more intolerant spirit which is also responsible for the losses of tens of cadres, branches and sections, and is pushing the LRCI to became a marginal and paranoid sect. If you want a serious introduction to Trotsky you will not be satisfied with this booklet. If you want to have an introduction as to how an orthodox Trotskyist group is moving far away from Trotsky, you should read between the lines of Brenner's pamphlet.