Vol. 72/No. 25      June 23, 2008

The excerpt below is by Leon Trotsky, a central leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. It was addressed to the Soviet delegation to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) some months after the sixth ECCI plenum in March 1926. The Communist International, or Comintern, was founded under Lenin’s leadership in 1919.

Trotsky takes up the interrelation between the Stalinists’ bureaucratic practices, opportunist policies, and their break with revolutionary internationalism, codified in the theory of socialism in one country. Copyright ©1980. Reprinted by permission.

BY LEON TROTSKY

The USSR and the Comintern
1. The theoretical untenability and practical danger of the theory of socialism in one country is quite obvious, or at least is becoming more and more obvious, to every revolutionist who has at all assimilated the Marxist view of the fundamental problems of historical development. Politically speaking, this theory is a completely uncritical camouflaging of what exists in the USSR and of everything that is coming into being, in all its contradictions and in an elemental and chaotic way. In this sense the theory of socialism in one country weakens and blunts the vigilance and alertness of the party in regard to capitalist tendencies and forces in both domestic and world development. It nourishes a passive fatalistic optimism, beneath which bureaucratic indifference to the destinies of socialism and the international revolution is able to hide more successfully than otherwise.

2. No less fatal a role would be played by this theory, if it is legitimized, in relation to the Comintern. If Soviet socialist construction is viewed as an inseparable component of the world revolution, as a process inconceivable apart from the world revolution, then the relative importance of the Communist parties, their role, their independent responsibility, would increase and come more to the fore. If on the contrary the same old point of view is upheld that Soviet power, resting on the alliance of workers and peasants, will build socialism absolutely independently of what occurs in all the rest of the world—on the one condition that the Soviet Republic be protected from military intervention—then the role and significance of the Communist parties is immediately moved to the background.

The assurance that socialism will be fully victorious in our country regardless of the course of the revolution in other countries means that the chief task of the European Communist parties in the immediate historical period—a task that will be adequate for the victory of socialism—is not to win power but to oppose the interventionist attempts of imperialism… .

The problem of taking the fullest possible advantage of every genuinely revolutionary situation is pushed into the background. A false and consoling theory is constructed according to which time, in and of itself, “works in our favor.” However, we cannot forget that we are living in conditions where we have a chance to catch our breath and by no means in conditions where the victory of socialism “in one country” is automatically assured.

We must take advantage of the breathing spell as fully as possible. We must prolong it as long as possible. But to forget that what is involved is precisely a breathing spell—i.e., a more or less prolonged period between the 1917 revolution and the next revolution in one of the major capitalist countries—means to trample underfoot the worldwide laws of historical development; it means in fact to renounce communism.

3. The ultraleftists charge that the united front policy means a retreat by foreign parties from independent revolutionary positions to the line of assisting the Soviet state by building an imposing “left” wing within the working class in each country. The theory of socialism in one country meets the ultralefts’ criticism half-way, nourishes it, and within certain limits justifies it. The left deviations, without ceasing to be manifestations of “infantile disorders,” receive new nourishment, for their leaders appear as defenders of the independent revolutionary role of the Communist parties and of the responsibility of those parties not only for the fate of their own country but also for that of the Soviet Union, against the bureaucratic optimism according to which the cause of socialism in the Soviet Union is assured in and of itself, if only nobody “interferes” with it. In this aspect, which will inevitably become a more and more prominent one, the struggle of the left groupings becomes a progressive factor and may accordingly transform the best elements among them.  
 
On the Comintern Program
It follows from the above that we now have a new and decisive confirmation of the idea that a correct orientation, not only of the policies of the USSR and of those of each Communist Party separately but also of the Comintern as a whole, is only conceivable if it begins with the world economy, which, in spite of its contradictions and the barriers that divide it—in fact, to a significant extent, because of them—is a single worldwide unit… .

What is needed is a concrete analysis of the complex of world economic relations viewed as an internally coherent process, with an indication of the interrelated perspectives for Europe, America, Asia, etc. This is the only Marxist way to pose the question and would in passing strike a deathblow at the anti-Marxist theory of socialism in one country.  
 
 
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