This was first published in Socialist Appeal in Sept 1937

This is the fifth of five writings included in the Classics of Marxism vol II, recommended by Marxism.org

Trotsky starts off by warning that they were in a reactionary epoch and it must be resisted. The reaction would have been against what the Soviet state had become in practice versus what the promise of socialism was.

The reaction against Marxism and Bolshevism
Trotsky says great defeats provoke a reconsideration of values that goes two ways: for the true vanguard, defeat enriches his experience and causes him to fight to the death to hold on to his principles; for the rest, they go backwards in their search for answers.

There have been many examples of the defeatist mentality. They aren’t interested in searching for the causes of defeat.  

Former Austrian communist, Willi Schlamm, wanted to create a new socialism that would insure against defeats, but he is apparently unaware of the history and development of socialism, so he would return to a pre-Marxian socialism. He denounces class struggle and dialectics and hopes to transform society with realizing certain moral truths.

His entire analysis is to look at the defeats and say they were a product of class struggle and dialectics.

“Back to Marxism”?
Trotsky says Marxism found its highest historical expression in Bolshevism, and that the first victory of the proletariat and workers’ state was established under the Bolsheviks.  

Since the Revolution, the triumph has been of the bureaucratic state, repression, plunder, and falsification. Based on this, many have jumped to the conclusions that Marxism leads to Bolshevism leads to Stalinism.

But others, not believing that Marxism inevitably leads to Stalinism, want to return Bolshevism to Marxism. But what does that even mean? The Bolsheviks read the classics too- but how do we get from Marx and Engels to a practical state? The Bolsheviks knew the classics well, and it still resulted in the degeneration of the Soviet state and the Moscow trials.

Is Bolshevism responsible for Stalinism?
Stalin himself claimed this. The Bolsheviks outlawed other socialist parties and set up a dictatorship of the Bolsheviks, therefore the dictatorship could only result in a dictatorship of the bureaucracy.  

Trotsky says the flaw in this is in the identification of Bolshevism, October Revolution, and Soviet Union.

The state built by the Bolsheviks reflected both the ideology of the Bolsheviks, but the cultural history of the country, which was backward and barbaric. It would be unfair to think that the barbarism was purely an invention of Bolshevism. (Fair point)

Trotksy then argues that Bolshevism can’t really be identified with the October Revolution or the Soviet state it produced. It was only one of the factors, even if a really important one. (I don’t know how Trotsky can claim this. Clearly they weren’t the ONLY factor, but the structure of the government was ALL them. Furthermore, the concentration of the power in a few hands, which they felt necessary for keeping the reins on the ideological decisions that would need to be made, was the exact thing that made it possible for a dictatorship. To my mind, they are nearly 100% responsible for the disaster that followed.)  

Trotksy also argues that while the state took power, and that did give them outsized influence, it doesn’t transform them into sovereign rulers over the historical process. (This is true)

Trotsky does admit that while Stalinism grew out of Bolshevism, it did so not as a revolutionary affirmation, but a reactionary negation. (This seems to me a complete revisionist explanation, meant only to disavow the horror that came out of what the Bolshevists established.  

Bolshevism’s basic prognosis
Trotsky says that without a corresponding socialist revolution in the west, the revolution in Russia would degenerate and then fall. He quotes Lenin as saying that history is decided by masses, and the Party was not the decisive factor. Without a corresponding revolution in the west, the proletariat lost some faith and the political gravity shifted from the proletariat to the bureaucracy.

Stalinism and “State Socialism”
Trotsky addresses the anarchist argument that the state socialism that arose is the real problem, and that Marxism and Bolshevism lead to it.

Trotsky agrees that the state as an apparatus of coercion is an evil, and that real history will begin with the abolition of the state. This is a theoretical goal of Marxism, so Trotsky uses the evil of the Soviet state as a proof that Marxism is right.

The political sins of Bolshevism as the source of Stalinism
Trotsky addresses the arguments of the rationalists, who claim Stalinism was a result of the errors of Bolshevism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was replaced by the dictatorship pf the party. Trotsky claims one can make these arguments, but for all their “apparent effectiveness”, they are empty.

Trotksy says the proletariat can only take power through a vanguard. The necessity of state power is derived from the insufficient cultural level of the masses. But without the vanguard, the working class has no way to achieve power, and no one has shown how else they could take power. It’s true that the domination of politics by a single party has been the entrance point of the Stalinist regime though. And certainly the Bolsheviks applied not only conviction but compulsion in a severe degree.

Questions of theory
The Bolshevists were extremely doctrinal. Stalinists are purely practical. Trotsky claims they are absolute revisionists of Marxism.

Questions of morals
Trotsky defends the Bolsheviks against accusations that they “maliciously exaggerate differences, are incapable of loyal collaboration, and by their intrigues disrupt the unity of the worker’s movement”.  

I’m not sure of the third, but the first two are absolutely true. We read in Lenin’s piece on “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, where he accuses those who disagree with him of being opportunists, etc. He relentlessly put down all but his own version of Marxism.  

As for the second- incapable of loyal collaboration, that is also true, as we read in Lenin’s own work. He states that in the early stages of gaining power, it would be necessary to compromise with others, but in due time, they could be discarded after they had served their purposes.

Then Trotsky goes on to defend the “moral qualities of Bolshevism” as flowing from “intransigence in the service of the oppressed”. Right after this he notes that when intransigence and flexibility are applied by a police apparatus in the service of a privileged minority, they become a force of demoralization and gangsterism. He then goes on to accuse Stalin and his regime of being reactionary and violating the revolution. But it was the Bolsheviks who set the table for this very thing to happen, and apparently it all hinged on the most pure and moral people being in charge… but who the Bolsheviks thought of as pure and moral were in fact rigid ideologues who would act outside of legal measures if they deemed it necessary, in order to accomplish their goals.  

The traditions of Bolshevism and the Fourth International
Trotsky complains that about all the critics offer is platitudes about purity. But none of them have any real idea about what it takes to wrest power from the bourgeois, and then actually run a society.  

I have no doubt this is true, but to be honest, neither did the Bolsheviks themselves. In the name of liberation, they enslaved even more people. They did it on the basis of an untested theory based in foolish thinking about human nature. And all they really had to go on was that they truly, religiously believed it would work. Then their sense of real-politick grabbed power, allocated everything to themselves that seemed good at the time, and when they had implemented this, it predictably was turned against them in a play as old as time. The American founders knew that if you concentrated power, it was an open invitation to the power-hungry to try their hand. So they spent a lot of time devising a system of checks and balances.  The Bolshevik fools took the opposite approach and did what was necessary for them to grab power, but the entire system was doomed to failure from the start, and Trotsky details the inherent contradictions in this treatise.  

As he mentions, how else could power be grabbed? Clearly, it couldn’t. But once it was grabbed in this illegitimate manner, the rest was predictable. Marxism is for fools.