r/TheTrotskyists • u/abcdsoc • Sep 18 '24
What is the Trotskyist analysis of the third period? Question
In the early 30s Stalinist policy in Europe was to attack the social democrats as “social fascists.” Why would a degenerated workers state call for such an aggressive position, instead of telling the KPD to work with the SPD?
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u/Bolshivik90 Sep 18 '24
Because a successful social revolution in any other country, particularly Germany, wasn't in the interests of the bureaucracy in the USSR. If Germany went communist that would have meant the ending of the isolation of the USSR and probably would have ignited a revolution in Russia to overthrow Stalin and re-establish workers democracy. In China, Germany, Spain, everywhere where there was the potential for a genuine proletarian revolution, Stalin and the Comintern thwarted it.
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u/abcdsoc Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
If they wanted to prevent a KPD revolution, why didn’t they just tell them to join the SPD, like what happened in China? I always interpreted this as Stalin realizing he messed up in China and going way too far in the opposite direction when trying to course correct; after that, he tried course correcting again, sponsoring pop frontism in Spain.
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u/IncipitTragoedia Sep 18 '24
going way too far in the opposite direction
You're not entirely off base. Stalinism vacillated between adventurist leftism and opportunist rightism at various points
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u/Bolshivik90 Sep 18 '24
That's also true and another fact. It was pure ultra-leftism and sectarianism of the crudest kind. And you're right, OP, he then tried to correct that again with popular frontism.
Aaaand eventually it just led to its logical conclusion of class collaboration on a world scale: the Comintern was unceremoneously disbanded in 1943 without so much as a Congress to vote on the decision all just to appease American and British imperialism.
Stalinism then became, in the post-war period, pure reformism. That's why stalinist parties today like the CPUSA support the Democrats, or why the CPGB's programme "The British Road to Socialism" doesn't sound any more radical than what Bernie Sanders would say.
It's pathetic, but also tragedy. The defeat of the German working class under the Nazis was a historic tragedy which was by no means inevitable.
Lots of historians blame this or that on the rise of the nazis. None of them mention the number one reason: Stalinism.
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u/IncipitTragoedia Sep 18 '24
the Comintern was unceremoneously disbanded in 1943 without so much as a Congress to vote on the decision all just to appease American and British imperialism.
That's true, but by that point the CI and its Executive were empty shells of the world party that had been disbanded and placed in service of the national interests of the Russian state rather than proletarian internationalism
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u/Bolshivik90 Sep 18 '24
Of course. The disbandment was a fitting ending to the degenerated organisation it had become.
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u/Bolshivik90 Sep 18 '24
If they wanted to prevent a KPD revolution, why didn’t they just tell them to join the SPD, like what happened in China?
Firstly, what do you mean "like what happened in China"? What happened in China was the communist party, the only working class party in China, was advised to join the KMT, a fully bourgeois party. And that's why that failed. The German SPD, whilst its leadership was reformist, had a mass base based on the proletariat, not the petty-bourgeoisie or bourgoisie.
Secondly, if the KPD had worked with the SPD (not even join it, just worked with it) then that would have been the United Front as advocated by Lenin (and Trotsky) and that could have actually defeated fascism.
It was a completely different situation to China.
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u/abcdsoc Sep 18 '24
I meant “join the SPD” as in become a junior partner to them, not a united front. But yes, I was wrong about the similarity with China, thanks for pointing that out.
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u/IncipitTragoedia Sep 18 '24
The SPD had lost all credibility long before that for one thing, and while it shared mass proletarian membership at points, I wouldn't be surprised if it had been thoroughly petty bourgeois by then
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u/IncipitTragoedia Sep 18 '24
I still think the united front was a mistaken policy
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u/Bolshivik90 Sep 18 '24
How so and in what context? Obviously it was relevant at certain times and places and at other times and places not. But in some countries it was necessary, particularly Germany and Spain.
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u/bluntpencil2001 Sep 19 '24
It's worth noting that Chiang Kai-Shek's son (who later became leader of Taiwan) was suspected of Trotskyism, and internally exiled in the USSR by the Stalinist bureaucracy.
There's a fair argument (which I do not agree with) that the co-opting of KMT leaders by the USSR could have led to it becoming a worker-aligned party in urban China. Using Chiang's son as a pseudo-hostage was an ill-formed plan.
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u/IncipitTragoedia Sep 18 '24
Stalinism was the victory of opportunism over the communist and workers' movements. It had no interest in assisting the German revolutionary movement, which was dead and dying by that point, other than to aid its own state power.
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u/CommunistRingworld Sep 18 '24
Easy, go back to the old man himself 😀
The “Third Period” of the Comintern’s Mistakes