Marxism after Trotsky: introduction to brand new volume of Ted Grant's writings – read it here!

We publish here Rob Sewell’s introduction to the brand new, third volume of the Collected Writings of Ted Grant. Rob explains Ted Grant’s unwavering struggle in defence of the genuine method of Marxism in the aftermath of the Second World War, despite the immense confusion of the other leaders of the Trotskyist movement internationally, after Trotsky’s death.

Volume three of Ted Grant’s Collected Writings is available to preorder from Wellred Books here.

The long-awaited third volume of Ted Grant’s Collected Writings contains a treasure trove of outstanding material from the immediate post-war period, which will be a source of knowledge and inspiration to all students of revolutionary Marxism. This volume covers the final stages of the Second World War, which ended in May 1945 in Europe and September 1945 in Japan. The end of the war ushered in an entirely new balance of forces internationally. This completely new situation, which was not predicted by anyone, brought with it new challenges, as well as unforeseen theoretical problems that confronted the Fourth International and gave rise to an intense debate.

Ted Grant was the first to fully grasp the implications of what was happening internationally. By this time, he had established himself as the main theoretician of Trotskyism in Britain. His contributions and explanations had been vital in growing the Workers’ International League (WIL), which had fused with the remnants of the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) in March 1944 to form the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The formation of the RCP was a colossal step forward that prepared the comrades for the storms ahead.

Having been outside the ranks of the Fourth International, of which they considered themselves for many years to be the ‘bastard child’, the WIL completely dominated the fusion with the International’s official section in Britain, the RSL. As a result, through the founding of the RCP, Ted Grant and the comrades of the WIL became the new official section of the Fourth International in Britain.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the headquarters of the Fourth International had been transferred from Paris to New York. Given that most of Europe was occupied by the Nazis, this left the WIL in Britain as the only Trotskyist organisation in Europe that could function openly in wartime. The RSL, the official section of the Fourth International during the war, also existed, but given its sectarianism it withered on the vine and disintegrated. During these years, the WIL had applied Trotsky’s Proletarian Military Policy^[1] more successfully than any official section of the International. By the time the International Secretariat (IS) of the Fourth International was re-established in Paris towards the end of the war, the newly founded RCP was clearly the most developed and successful section of the Fourth International on the European continent.

Of course, the RCP, as expected, faced many challenges, including the arrest of several of its leaders soon after its formation in April 1944. Despite this, the party rose to the occasion, waging a successful campaign for their release. Building on the successes of the WIL, the RCP inherited not only a national organisation, but an impressive leadership had been forged during the war, which included Ted Grant as its key theoretician and Jock Haston as the new charismatic General Secretary.

Ted, as editor of Socialist Appeal – the newspaper of the RCP – wrote its main editorials, and as Political Secretary he furnished the main documents and political line of the party. These contributions covered a wide range of subjects, analysing the last stages of the war, dealing with and commentating on a whole host of questions, as well as giving important political direction to the work of the party as a whole.

Ever since the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, the world Trotskyist movement, including the WIL, had been based upon the perspective outlined by Trotsky, that the Second World War would be a cataclysm that would transform the entire world situation. Trotsky predicted that the war would give rise to a revolutionary wave that would put that of 1917-19 into the shade. Consequently, it would also decide the fate of the Soviet Union, either through capitalist intervention and restoration, or a victorious political revolution that would end Stalinism and restore workers’ democracy.

While things turned out differently in relation to Stalinism, with the Soviet Union in fact emerging strengthened for particular reasons, Trotsky’s perspective of a revolutionary wave was certainly borne out by events, especially in Italy, France and Greece.

In July 1943, the removal of Mussolini had unleashed a revolutionary situation in Italy. Following the collapse of the Italian fascist regime, power was in the hands of the armed partisans and the working class of northern Italy. Luigi Longo, a leading member of the Italian Communist Party, wrote:

Given the extent of the mass movement, there existed in many regions a de facto duality of power: the organs of the fascist authorities, which were becoming increasingly discredited; and the anti-fascist executive organs, existing illegally [were] enjoying great popularity among the people.^[2]

In March 1944, in the Italian territory occupied by the Germans, a general strike was called which involved over a million workers.

France too was convulsed by revolutionary events. By August 1944, the greater part of France, including Paris, had been liberated by the armed forces of the resistance, with the support of the masses. This was achieved without the intervention of the Allied armies, which were some fifty miles away from the French capital. The Liberation Committees that had sprung up became organs of workers’ power. This could have led to the overthrow of capitalism in France, which General Charles de Gaulle especially feared.

Following the forced retreat of the German occupation in October 1944, Greece was in the grip of revolution. The attempt by the Allies to disarm the resistance led to an armed uprising that placed power in the hands of the workers in Athens and Thessaloniki. Even Britain, with the massive victory of the Labour Party in the 1945 general election, was touched by the hot breath of revolution.

Unfortunately, this revolutionary wave was betrayed by the leaders of the reformists and Stalinists, who rushed to prop up the old order. They were terrified of the independent movement of the working class and did everything in their power to curtail it. While the reformist leaders were wedded to the capitalist system, the Stalinists simply followed the orders from Moscow.

Stalin had already agreed with the imperialists to divide Europe into different spheres of influence, and he was determined to maintain his side of the bargain. Revolution was the last thing that he or the Soviet bureaucracy wanted. The ‘Communist’ Parties were cynically used as a tool of Stalin’s foreign policy. They had long before lost any revolutionary perspective. For good measure, the Communist International had been dissolved by Stalin as a goodwill gesture to the imperialists on 15 May 1943.

Togliatti, the General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, had been collaborating with Marshal Badoglio’s government ever since the fall of Mussolini.^[3] This eventually led Togliatti to enter the government as Minister of Justice and Vice-President, while other ‘Communists’, like Scoccimarro and Pesenti, were made Finance and Treasury Ministers, while Gullo was made Minister of Agriculture.

“We remain faithful to the line of war, national unity and constructive democratic action”, explained Togliatti. In early 1947, he proudly announced that Italy had fewer strikes than other European countries. The ‘Communists’ were to remain as ministers until they were expelled from the De Gasperi government in May 1947.

In August 1944, Paris was liberated by a general strike and an insurrection. Fearing a new version of the Paris Commune, de Gaulle rushed to Paris and established his ‘Free French’ government. He was supported in this manoeuvre by Maurice Thorez, the General Secretary of the French Communist Party. They quickly disarmed and suppressed the resistance militias in the name of ‘law and order’ and merged them with the French armed forces. To bolster de Gaulle’s position, five ‘Communists’ became government ministers, including the General Secretary of the party, Thorez, who became Vice-President of the Council of Ministers. In the name of ‘patriotism’, they supported the demands for increased production and an end to strikes. As respectable ministers, these ‘Communists’ oversaw France’s savage colonial repression of Algeria, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the war against the Vietnamese people. Having done the dirty work, they were duly dismissed from the government in 1947.

Similarly, in Greece, the so-called ‘Communist’ leaders preached the need for ‘public order’, while the government moved to disarm the Communist-led resistance movement (ELAS), which provoked a mass movement. British troops, under Churchill’s orders, were then dispatched to put down the uprising.

Even before the end of the war, given the actions of the Stalinist and reformist leaders, together with the weakness of the parties of the Fourth International, Ted Grant had come to realise that the revolutionary wave was going to be derailed and betrayed. In August 1943, Ted examined the Italian experience in an article entitled ‘The Italian Revolution and the Tasks of the British Workers’, in which he stated:

All the objective conditions for a socialist revolution are present. And the taking of power by the Italian workers would instantly provoke the overthrow of Hitler and inaugurate the socialist revolution throughout Europe. All the conditions? No. The subjective conditions for the revolution are not yet present. Instinctively, and almost automatically, the Italian working class has taken the correct steps on the road to workers’ power. The socialists and Stalinists are already preparing to betray the movement by turning it into the channels of bourgeois democracy.^[4]

Furthermore, Ted went on to generalise this conclusion in regard to the European revolution as a whole. By October of that year, he produced a perspectives document for WIL’s national conference, which explained:

In the absence of experienced Trotskyist parties, with roots and traditions among the masses, the first stages of the revolutionary struggles in Europe will most likely result in a period of Kerenskyism or Popular Frontism. This is already presaged by the initial struggles of the Italian workers and the repeated betrayals of Social Democracy and Stalinism.^[5]

Ted had developed a profound grasp of Marxism. As was always his method when faced with a new problem or situation, he set out to re-examine the classic writings of Marxism, to see what light could be shed onto the subject. In this case, he drew on the writings of Trotsky, especially Problems of the Italian Revolution, written in 1930, which illuminated the process taking place. “Does this mean that Italy cannot, for a certain time, again become a parliamentary state or become a ‘democratic republic’? I consider – in perfect agreement with you, I think – that this eventuality is not excluded”, wrote Trotsky.

But then, it will not be the fruit of a bourgeois revolution, but the abortion of an insufficiently matured and premature proletarian revolution. In the event of a profound revolutionary crisis and mass battles, in the course of which the proletarian vanguard will not have been in a position to take power, it may be that the bourgeoisie will restore its rule on ‘democratic’ bases. Can it be said, for example, that the present German republic is a conquest of the bourgeois revolution? Such an assertion would be absurd. What took place in Germany in 1918-19 was a proletarian revolution, which, for lack of leadership, was deceived, betrayed and crushed. But the bourgeois counterrevolution nevertheless was forced to adapt itself to the circumstances resulting from this crushing of the proletarian revolution, and to assume the form of a parliamentary ‘democratic’ republic. Is the same – or about the same – eventuality excluded for Italy? No, it is not excluded.^[6]

As events unfolded, things became even clearer to Ted. In the RCP’s March 1945 perspectives document, ‘The Changed Relationship of Forces in Europe and the Role of the Fourth International’, which he drafted, he outlined a broad estimate of the new situation. In relation to those areas of Europe occupied by the Red Army, his analysis was clearly conditional, as the process was still unfolding. However, although the Stalinists had retained private ownership, he put forward a bold prognosis that:

… the bureaucracy will be forced, against its own wishes and at the risk of antagonising its present imperialist allies, to nationalise industry in the permanently occupied countries, acting from above and, if possible, without the participation of the masses.^[7]

This actually took place a few years later, and will be covered in the next volumes of Ted’s writings.

In relation to the broad European perspective, for the first time, Ted explained that due to the betrayals of the old workers’ parties, it was likely that there would be a period of relative political stability opening up in Western Europe. However, he did not think this would be long-lasting. He described the general process as a “counter-revolution in democratic form”. It was a “counter-revolution” in as far as the ruling class had been able to survive the first revolutionary wave, due to the betrayals of the Stalinists and reformists. And it was “democratic” due to the weakness of the forces of reaction and the pressure of the masses, which forced the ruling class to rest on the authority of the leadership of the workers’ parties:

… all the objective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism and the introduction of socialism are clearly in existence. But the subjective factors are not yet established. The mass revolutionary parties of the Fourth International have not yet been created. To transform the small Trotskyist groups and parties into the fighting leadership of the working class is the most important question facing our comrades in Europe. Without mass Trotskyist parties, the masses, blindfolded by social democracy and particularly by Stalinism will batter their heads in vain against the ramparts of capitalism.

Only the numerical weakness of the cadres of the Fourth International and the isolation of our comrades gives the ruling class the possibility of a breathing space.^[8]

The betrayal of the revolutionary wave was underlined by the agreements at Yalta and Potsdam, in particular between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, which served to divide up spheres of influence between them.

Ted explained that there were no grounds for pessimism, but this new situation clearly necessitated a change to the 1938 perspective and a reorientation of the parties of the Fourth International. The original perspective of a revolutionary wave, leading to a crisis in the old workers’ parties and the rise of mass Trotskyist parties, had been cut across for the time being. This required a change in tactics. Ted Grant and the leaders of the RCP grasped what was taking place and took the necessary measures to re-orientate the cadres of the Party.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International, who stubbornly clung to the original perspective of 1938, which had now been largely falsified. Incapable of applying the Marxist method, they simply denied reality and buried their heads in the sand. By their actions, they turned Marxism from a science into a dogma.

It is certain that if Trotsky had lived, he would have recognised the new reality and revised the 1938 perspective accordingly. He never treated perspectives as fixed for all time, but simply as working hypotheses, to be altered where necessary, as events unfolded. If needed, the whole perspective would be discarded and a new one developed in its place. Trotsky was fond of saying that those who sought exact predictions of concrete events should consult an astrologist. Unfortunately, Trotsky was not there to correct the ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International, who lost their bearings entirely, with disastrous consequences.

No one could have predicted the way in which the Second World War developed, including Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, not to mention Hitler. In the end, the World War turned out to be a life-and-death struggle between the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, armed with the resources of Europe. The imperialists, who were largely onlookers, had hoped that the contending forces would be mutually exhausted, and the Americans and British could step in and take the spoils.

However, despite the crimes of Stalinism, the Soviet masses rallied to defend the gains of the October Revolution. With determination and heroism, they repelled the Nazis, and went on to inflict a crushing defeat on Hitler. This transformed the entire situation. Instead of the demise of Stalinism, this victory strengthened the Stalinist regime for a whole historical period. This authority, in turn, allowed them to betray the postwar revolutionary wave.

The United States, untouched by the destruction of war, also emerged as a victor and was economically in a position to underwrite European capitalism.

The ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International refused to accept reality. As a result, they made one mistake after another, saying black was white. From then on, the British RCP developed fundamental political differences with the international leadership. For instance, James Cannon, the leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in America, went as far as to claim that despite the defeat of Germany and Japan, the Second World War had still not ended. According to Cannon, Trotsky said that during the war Stalinism would be done away with in one way or another. As this had not happened, the war must still be going on. In November 1945, Cannon stated:

Trotsky predicted that the fate of the Soviet Union would be decided in the war. That remains our firm conviction. Only we disagree with some people who carelessly think that the war is over. The war has only passed through one stage and is now in the process of regroupment and reorganisation for the second.^[9]

The outcome of the war had produced a new balance of forces. The Soviet Union emerged strengthened, not weakened. But according to the International leadership, Stalinism had been weakened. They even went so far as to say that it was so weak that capitalism could be restored in the Soviet Union without the need for military intervention “simply through the combined economic, political and diplomatic pressure and the threats of American and British imperialism.”^[10]

These so-called ‘leaders’ then went on to say that, after the war, there was no possibility of restoring bourgeois democracy in Europe. The only possible development would be “military-Franco type regimes”. Pierre Frank, now a member of the International Secretariat, argued that only Bonapartist governments (‘rule by the sword’), or military dictatorships could exist in Europe. He ridiculed the RCP’s idea that there was a counter-revolution in a democratic form. The June-July 1946 issue of the Workers International News, theoretical journal of the RCP, carried Frank’s article arguing their case: a muddled non-Marxist approach. Ted’s reply appeared in the August issue, which provided a devastating Marxist critique. While there were elements of Bonapartism in the situation, Bonapartism as such did not exist, and there was no basis for it. What existed were unstable bourgeois democratic regimes, a product of the betrayed revolutionary wave.

The erroneous position of the International Secretariat was taken even further by the German group, the International Communists of Germany (IKD), which believed the experience of fascism had thrown European society back centuries, such that a ‘democratic revolution’ was on the order of the day. They explained that in this ‘revolution’, the bourgeoisie could play a progressive role. They concluded that, in Europe: “national oppression has remained, only the uniforms of the oppressors have changed”. In other words, the Allied forces were exactly the same as the Nazis. The IKD comrades were answered by Ted in a series of articles, especially in ‘The Character of the European Revolution’, which argued that Europe stood “not on the threshold of the struggle for ‘democracy’ and ‘great national wars of liberation’ but on the struggle for the proletarian revolution and revolutionary wars against all attempts at capitalist intervention.”^[11]

One ludicrous mistake from the ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International simply led to another. Following from their perspective of Bonapartism in Europe, they then claimed that there could be no economic recovery on the continent. They stated in a resolution put forward by the IS for the PreWorld Conference of April 1946 that:

The most probable perspectives of the evolution of the world economy may be outlined as follows: The revival of economic activity in capitalist countries weakened by war, and in particular continental European countries, will be characterised by an especially slow tempo which will keep their economies bordering on stagnation and slump.

In effect, their position was that production had reached a ceiling in 1938, and the productive forces could not develop beyond this. This position was similar to the nonsense put forward by the Stalinists during the Third Period about the so-called ‘final crisis of capitalism’.

Because Trotsky had argued before the war that capitalism could no longer develop the productive forces, the ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International felt they could not contradict Trotsky, and therefore simply parroted what he had said. Rather than use the method of Trotsky, namely the method of Marxism, they stuck stubbornly to certain formulations by Trotsky, ripping them out of the context they were made and treating them as gospel, despite the clear concrete evidence that an economic revival was taking place before their very eyes.

To counter this foolish perspective from the IS, the RCP submitted a statement as an amendment to the draft IS resolution to the International Conference that explained:

… the laws of capitalism … ensure the upswing of economy and make a new ‘boom’ inevitable. Particularly in view of the fact that this crisis is not a crisis of over-production … It is not excluded that particularly for Western Europe (with the exception of Germany and Austria) the production figures can even reach and surpass the pre-war level in the next period … all the factors on a European and world scale indicate that the economic activity in Western Europe in the next period is not one of ‘stagnation and slump’ but one of revival and boom.^[12]

The betrayals of the post-war period rescued capitalism and laid the political basis for an economic recovery. How long this recovery would last was not possible to predict. However, the RCP believed that the boom would not last long. Nobody at that time could foresee the unprecedented upswing that was going to take place.

The RCP’s amendments were, of course, rejected by the International leadership and the Conference. In the debates, the RCP’s leadership was accused of being ‘eclectics’, ‘empiricists’ and even ‘revisionists’.

In the end, following the Conference, the IS issued finalised documents that deleted or changed parts of the drafts, without any explanation whatsoever. No mistakes were recognised, but simply passed over in silence.

This was the rotten method of these ‘leaders’, who sought to gloss over and cover up their mistakes. As the leaders of the RCP commented:

This form of activity: to defend a position with great vigor, drop it overnight and adopt another idea, comrades, is the method of eclecticism; to defend an idea with great vigor, and when events refute it, to adopt another on the basis of new experience, without explanation, is precisely comrades, the method of empiricism.^[13]

In 1945, with the support of Cannon and the International ‘leadership’, a minority faction had been established within the RCP, led by Gerry Healy. This faction slavishly followed the false line of the International leadership on every question. Without giving any thought to their politics, Healy had entered into a secret bloc with James Cannon and the ‘leaders’ of Fourth International – Pablo, Frank and Mandel – to undermine and remove the ‘anti-internationalist’ leadership of the RCP.

The so-called ‘leaders’ of the International orchestrated a campaign against the British comrades / Image: public domain

Cannon had held a spiteful grudge against the RCP/WIL leaders ever since 1938, when he had attempted to forge an unprincipled fusion of the different British Trotskyist groups. By 1943, a minority faction within the SWP, around Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman, had come into being. Morrow and Goldman challenged the perspective being offered by Cannon and the International leadership. Their criticisms were certainly heading in the right direction. They realised there was a new ‘democratic’ phase opening up, as part of the revolutionary awakening of the masses, and therefore placed heavy emphasis on democratic demands. Whatever their deficiencies, Cannon feared these criticisms were similar to the RCP’s position, and put two and two together, claiming they were in an unholy alliance.

At a meeting of the SWP National Committee on 6-7 October 1945, Cannon launched an all-out attack on Morrow, Goldman and the RCP. Cannon ended his speech, which was vitriolic in content, with the following words:

That is the regime in the RCP, who are supporting Goldman and Morrow against our regime, and with whom they have concluded a bloc. And I challenge them to deny it. Talk about unprincipledness. You will deny it, and we will prove it, because we have the dope on you. You are helping Haston and Grant to fight Healy right now. You are sending personal letters to Haston to help them in a fight against Healy – to utilise against Healy. You are in a bloc and you are already ashamed of it openly, but we will expose that bloc and all the rest of it. And we will take the fight on the international field. You go ahead and line up your bloc. We will work with those people who believe in the same principles, the same programme and methods, that we do. And we will fight it out and see what happens in the International.^[14]

In the end, faced with constant harassment and bullying, Goldman was driven out of the party and Morrow was expelled from the SWP in 1946. The Cannon regime in the SWP couldn’t tolerate a healthy exchange of opinions, and so it reverted to organisational measures to solve political problems, the essence of Zinovievism.

The next in line for this treatment were the leaders of the RCP. The so-called ‘leaders’ of the International orchestrated a campaign against the British comrades. They used Healy, who had his own grudge against the leadership, as their stooge within the RCP. Healy’s factional letters to Cannon found their way to the leaders of the RCP and were duly reported to the Central Committee, who agreed to send a letter to the SWP, attacking this unprincipled relationship.

Around this time, the IS had put forward the demand for the withdrawal of troops from the occupied territories in Europe, following the end of the Second World War. When the RCP’s leadership added that this should include the Red Army, Healy made a song and dance of his opposition. After the leadership of the RCP wrote to the IS for a clarification of their position, the latter belatedly responded that this should include the Red Army. Later, when the correspondence was raised with Healy, he was taken aback, and after an embarrassed silence, then said: “well, we got agreement”, without any explanation. Ted laughed that Healy had now been reduced to getting his political instructions by post.

But Healy’s main argument at this time was over the need for a tactical turn towards entry into the Labour Party. This became the real basis of his faction, which proceeded to picture the situation in the Labour Party in the most glowing terms, inventing the development of a mass left wing. This description was entirely false.

The question of entrism was first raised by Trotsky in September 1933, in regard to the British Trotskyists entering the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Trotsky explained that in this way, they could win over a layer of the ILP to the Bolshevik-Leninists. Although first raised in relation to Britain, this tactic subsequently became known as the ‘French turn’. The ILP had broken with the Labour Party in 1932 and was moving in the direction of centrism, the political position between reformism and Marxism.

Entrism was viewed by Trotsky as a short-term tactic. The conditions outlined for such entry were: a pre-revolutionary crisis, where the mass organisations were in a state of ferment; the crystallisation of a mass left wing; and the possibility that the revolutionary tendency could make rapid gains.

Ted had outlined these conditions earlier, in his 1942 document, Preparing for Power, in which he explained:

The whole idea motivating the entrist tactic is to enter a reformist or centrist organisation which is in a state of flux, where political life is at a high pitch, and where the membership is steadily moving towards the left. It is essentially a short-term perspective of work in a milieu where favourable prospects exist for obtaining results in a relatively short space of time. It is dictated principally by the isolation of the revolutionary forces and the relative difficulty of reaching the ear of the masses.^[15]

When such opportunities dried up in the ILP in the mid-1930s, Trotsky urged his supporters to enter the Labour Party, which was moving to the left, with special emphasis placed on its youth organisation.

This had been the tactic pursued by the WIL up to the outbreak of the war, with certain successes in the Labour League of Youth. Even then, increasingly open work was being conducted. By 1941, given the emptying out of the Labour Party resulting from the wartime political truce and the youth having been conscripted into the armed forces, the WIL was operating as an open, independent party. During the war, this tactic was absolutely correct and gave important results, especially given the strikebreaking role of the ‘Communist’ Party. In contrast, the official section of the Fourth International, the RSL, continued with a dogmatic entrist tactic, combined with an opportunist policy, and eventually shrivelled up and disintegrated as an organisation.

In 1945, with the historic victory of Labour at the general election, Healy saw this as an opportunity to raise the banner of entrism. But the conditions for entrism as outlined by Trotsky did not exist. There was no pre-revolutionary situation. Neither was there a mass left wing, nor revolutionary ferment in the membership. When Healy argued the case for entrism at the August national conference of the RCP, he was resoundingly defeated.

He nevertheless continued to press the faction’s case in a document entitled British Labour and the Tasks of the Fourth International, produced three months later. The RCP’s Political Bureau decided to write a reply, drafted by Ted, concentrating on the main points. This was produced on 29 December 1945 for the internal bulletin.

It explained that, rather than a critical ferment existing in the Labour Party, the mood was rather muted. “The actual facts are that, up to date, the Labour Party remains stagnant, so far as political discussion and criticism of the leadership are concerned”, stated the reply.^[16]

It went on to report the views from members of the small RCP fraction operating in the Labour Party, which was used to keep an eye on developments. Rather than back Healy’s position, even the Labour Party Fraction confirmed that Labour’s ranks were rather passive:

Members of our Labour Party Faction have indicated this clearly in their reports – it is so far almost impossible to get any response to criticism of the Labour Party leadership and the government. This is not to say that such criticisms do not get a response in some areas, e.g. certain districts in South Wales, but the overwhelmingly general picture is as above.^[17]

The idea of a developing left wing, let alone a centrist wing, was a fiction, with as yet little opposition to the policies of the Labour leaders.

The picture of Labour Party internal life presented by the Minority is therefore incorrect. In composing it, the comrades have been guided not by the conditions actually existing, but by their own subjective wishes and by premature anticipations of future developments. With minor changes, the position inside the Labour Party is the same as it was at the August National Congress.^[18]

They concluded: “we can expect no significant gains in membership from Labour Party work for some time to come.” More fruitful work for the party was to look towards dissatisfaction in the rank and file of the Communist Party, which could only be won on an independent basis.

Nevertheless, the leadership of the RCP understood that, in Britain, the Party faced certain difficulties arising from the objective situation. They had recognised the beginnings of the post-war recovery that was underway. Widespread scarcities and the necessity of rebuilding following the war, which was underpinned by US loans, provided an impetus to the economy. This gave the new Labour government a certain breathing space that allowed it to carry through a number of reforms. This included the drawing up of measures to establish a National Health Service and nationalise some basic industries, a form of state capitalism. These reforms, in turn, served to strengthen illusions in the government.

The 1945 Labour government was not therefore, as expected, a ‘government of crisis’, but one broadly carrying out its programme.

Similarly, Stalinism, rather than entering into a crisis, and despite its political zigzags, emerged strengthened from the war and the victory of the Red Army over Hitler. Illusions in Stalinism and reformism, therefore, created problems for the RCP, as events had served to undermine their original perspective of revolutionary events. As a result, the party was, at least temporarily, feeling increasingly isolated.

Ted Grant and the RCP’s leadership had to take these important developments into account, in regard to perspectives and tactics. As Ted explained:

This long-term perspective of [the crisis of] British imperialism is indisputable and has been long foreseen. However, a mistake in conjuncture which was made was the telescoping of the inevitable long-term crisis with the immediate perspective for Britain.

We anticipated that British imperialism would be faced with a crisis as soon as the war was ended. However, the concatenation of circumstances has served to screen the disastrous results of the war for Britain. The huge markets created by the destruction of the war can be utilised because of the temporary quiescence of the proletariat. What was an unfavourable relationship of forces has been turned into a temporarily favourable one. Germany has, for the time being, collapsed as a competitor; America has been faced with a series of unprecedented strike struggles in basic industry; Europe and the world needs tremendous quantities of capital goods, above all machinery.

… At home, six years of war have created a huge market for consumer goods […] The housing shortage and the destruction in the blitz created a boom in the building industry. The fusion of finance capital and the state inevitably results in increasing measures of regulation and of ‘planning’. The tendency towards state capitalism and state control is shown by the projected nationalisation of the mines, steel, transport and fuel, and by the blocking of export of capital and partial control of investment. These measures will undoubtedly temporarily aid the economy as a whole in the economic upswing.^[19]

Ted concluded:

All these factors, however, lead to the situation where British capitalism temporarily attains a relative stability, only later, we repeat, to be faced with a catastrophe greater than she has ever experienced in the whole of her history. The inevitable crisis, however, will not be immediate. It will be delayed for a time.^[20]

Furthermore, he explained:

In 1929, the Labour government operated in a period of slump and could not carry out anything of its declared programme, but on the contrary, was forced to initiate counter-reforms on the pretext that it was not in a majority. Today, the Labour government rides in power at the crest of a tremendous wave of radicalisation seldom seen in British history … It is actually carrying out, in part, its declared election programme. In the eyes of the masses, this reconciles them to sacrifices because they have illusions in the ‘theory’ of a gradual and painless transition to socialism.^[21]

While Ted and the RCP’s leadership acknowledged this new situation, they regarded it as temporary. They were confident that in a relatively short period of time, the capitalist crisis would re-emerge and the revolutionary perspective would once again be on the agenda.

Healy’s faction offered no such analysis. On the contrary, they stuck to the fanciful and erroneous position of the International leadership, namely that there was no economic recovery, only slump conditions, and that a new world war was imminent. It was in these conditions, explained Healy, that a mass left wing was in the process of developing in the Labour Party, and therefore the RCP needed to dissolve itself and enter Labour. In effect, he was offering a fanciful panacea for the real difficulties they faced. But this position was entirely false.

Throughout these early post-war years, the British leadership, and above all, Ted Grant, had managed to grasp the new situation and reorient the ranks of the Party. They had to keep their feet firmly on the ground, and patiently work towards an inevitable change in the situation. In doing so, they needed to avoid the pitfalls of impressionism. But this stand brought them increasingly into collision with the International leadership, who increasingly manoeuvred against them.

Great changes were on the horizon, and the leadership of the RCP were in a position to meet those challenges. They had to navigate the problems of temporary political isolation, but that was not new in the history of the revolutionary movement. To add to the difficulties, Healy was to step up his factional activity, with the full backing of the ‘leaders’ of the Fourth International as they attempted to undermine the leaders of the RCP.

How the RCP, and Ted Grant in particular, faced up to these problems and challenges will be dealt with in the next volume.

Rob Sewell
London
November 2025

References

^[1] The Proletarian Military Policy was put forward by Trotsky at the start of the war. In order to connect with the advanced workers, who saw the Second World War as a war against fascism, it put forward the position that the workers should be armed and organised as a class to carry out the war against fascism, with no faith in the capitalist class or the army bureaucracy to fight in their best interests.

^[2] Quoted in Claudin, Fernando, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, p. 347.

^[3] Marshal Pietro Badoglio was the Prime Minister of Italy after the fall of Mussolini.

^[4] Ted Grant, ‘The Italian Revolution and the Tasks of British Workers’, Workers’ International News, Vol. 5, No. 12, August 1943.

^[5] Ted Grant, ‘The World Revolution and the Tasks of the British Working Class’, Collected Writings, Vol. 2, p. 573.

[6] Trotsky, ‘Problems of the Italian Revolution’, Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1930, pp. 223-224.

[7] Ted Grant, Collected Writings, Vol. 2, p. 201.

[8] Ibid., p. 173, our emphasis.

[9] Cannon, James, Writings and Speeches 1945-47, p. 200.

[10] Quoted in the RCP’s internal bulletin, 12 August 1946.

[11] Ted Grant, ‘The Character of the European Revolution’, October 1945, in this volume, p. 102.

[12] Ted Grant, ‘Economic Perspectives 1946’, The Unbroken Thread, pp. 380-81.

[13] Tearse, Roy, ‘An Analysis of the Changes in the International Conference Resolution in the light of the RCP amendments’, 1946, in this volume, p. 647.

[14] Cannon, James, Writings and Speeches 1945-47, pp. 182-83.

[15] Ted Grant, Collected Writings, Vol. 1, p. 308.

[16] Ted Grant, ‘Comments of the Political Bureau on “British Labour and the tasks of the Fourth International”’, in this volume, p. 593.

[17] Ibid., p. 594.

[18] Ibid., p. 595.

[19] Ted Grant, ‘Perspectives in Britain and the Orientation of the Revolutionary Communist Party’, in this volume, p. 485.

[20] Ibid., p. 486.

[21] Ibid., p. 489.