Letter: Trotskyist? Leninist? (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Trotskyist? Leninist?

As my interest in politics is only about three years old. and my introduction to socialism began about one year ago. I cannot claim to know much about any other political parties, beyond the fact that their policies are opposed to the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Neither am I really clear about what is meant by Leninism. Trotskyism etc But I do know that the Socialist Workers' Party is regarded by its members and by previous contributors to the Socialist Standard as Trotskyist. So why does Steve Coleman refer to them as Leninist in the July Standard?

Grant Dixon

Chatham

Reply:

All Trotskyists are Leninists. The SWP claims to be both. After all, Trotsky was just one of the gang of leaders who hung around with Lenin and accepted his elitist outlook. Other Leninists are Stalinists — they defend the activities of the dictator Stalin as being a logical progression from Lenin's policies. At least they possess the merit of consistency: if you advocate Lenin's methods of achieving a dictatorship you might as well defend Stalin's tyrannical methods of maintaining it in being. As for old Leon Trotsky, he was just an ousted Bolshevik dictator who enjoyed the pleasure of criticising the state-capitalist nightmare which he had played a key part in bringing into being. When the sailors at Kronstadt told the Bolsheviks to stuff their dictatorship over the proletariat it was Trotsky who led the Red Army to massacre them. Trotsky never gave up the belief that Russia was a "workers' state", albeit a deformed one The SWP have advanced beyond Trotsky's analysis on that one: they say that Russia is state capitalist. But even here they are hopelessly mixed up. because they argue that Russia was socialist from 1917 until the late 1920s and then, once Trotsky had left the scene, it became state capitalist In other words, the SWP are terribly confused and Grant Dixon cannot be blamed for being baffled by the various labels used to describe these absurd leftist outfits.

Editors.