More than a decade has passed since the publication of the first two volumes of Ted Grant’s Collected Writings. Since then, the crisis of world capitalism, set in motion by the 2008 financial crash, has reached new heights. Economic stagnation, ballooning world debt, a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza have all turned the world on its head.
The current epoch is transforming the consciousness of billions of people, with revolutionary movements no longer a rarity, but a general feature of our time. A new generation, who have never experienced the heydays of capitalist upswing and relative stability, is turning towards communism.
In a time of such tectonic shifts, the method of Marxism is an imperative tool for anyone wanting to understand the world and to fight to change it. This is the reason why the writings of Ted Grant are so pertinent today.
The contents of this new volume, spanning the watershed years of 1945 and 1946, cover a turning point in world history, as well as in the Trotskyist movement itself. The contents display not only a rich picture of the historical period, but also how the method of Marxism is the most powerful tool for understanding the fundamental and inevitable changes in the objective situation.
As Rob Sewell explains in the introduction to the book, the defeat of Hitler and the Allied victory opened up a period of an entirely new nature in the development of both capitalism and Stalinism – one that Trotsky himself had not foreseen before the war. Instead of bringing about their collapse, capitalism and Stalinism, along with reformism in the West, were strengthened for a whole historical period.
While this process did not unfold overnight, Ted Grant immediately grasped the significance of the change in the general situation and the ramifications for the Marxist tendency going forward. The same cannot be said of the main leaders of the Fourth International, whose perspectives became further removed from reality with every passing day. Like soothsayers, they stuck to their prophecies of capitalism’s immediate downfall, and in their obstinance, abandoned the method of Marxism.
Ted, meanwhile, insisted that it is not the job of a Marxist to enforce preconceived notions of reality, but instead, to study the living world in all its contradictions and mutations – even if the new reality presents obstacles that are not advantageous to the revolutionary party. The texts presented in this volume are a testament to his towering ability to do exactly this.
International developments
This volume is separated into three main sections, the first of which covers international developments. Right up until his death, Ted studiously followed political developments across the world and wrote the main political perspectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). His masterpiece, ‘The Changed Relationship of Forces in Europe and the Role of the Fourth International’, written in March 1945, is included in Volume 2 and can also be found in Issue 49 of the In Defence of Marxism magazine.[1]
In this volume, the general analysis contained in that document is substantiated and developed through a wealth of editorials, articles and theoretical pieces, particularly those focusing on the major countries in Europe. But the scope goes beyond that. Readers will find material on the developments in Palestine, the post-war situation in East Asia and about the struggles of the American workers’ movement.
In particular, Ted wrote extensively about the imperialist machinations following the victory of the Allies and the rise and fall of the different powers, exposing the true intentions behind these meetings. After the founding of the United Nations (UN), which took place in San Francisco in October 1945, he aptly used Lenin’s phrase of a “thieves’ kitchen” to describe their plans to carve up the world under the cloak of ‘democracy’. He pointed out all the contradictions which were built into the foundations of the UN and made it impotent in the face of capitalist contradictions.
A true internationalist spirit runs through the pages of Socialist Appeal – the newspaper of the RCP – in these years. This was especially clear in the coverage of the events in Germany, a country Ted followed particularly closely and where the war had left behind untold devastation. While the Stalinists in the allied countries joined the chauvinist choir of the ruling class against the German workers, Ted, just as Lenin and Trotsky had done before him, put forward a position of international solidarity, laying the blame for the war and Nazism squarely at the feet of the German capitalists and all the imperialist powers. Ted and the small apparatus of the RCP even published a paper in German, Solidarität, during these years – an immense feat that helped the German Trotskyists exiled in London to begin rebuilding their forces under extremely difficult conditions.
One of the main events in connection with the defeat of Nazi Germany was the Nuremberg trials. Here, the Allied powers used the trials to clear out the most brutal henchmen of the Nazi regime and draw attention away from their pre-war support for Hitler against the German workers’ movement, presenting the war and their own role purely in terms of a “struggle for democracy”.
The RCP exposed the imperialist hypocrisy in clear terms, but also used the theatre of Nuremberg to wage a campaign against the Soviet bureaucracy in defence of Trotsky. Before the war, Stalin had conducted a campaign of slander against Trotsky and the Fourth International on the trumped-up charges of Trotsky being a Nazi-collaborator, levelled at the Moscow show-trials. The ‘evidence’ used in the sham trial was fabricated, as exposed by the findings of the Dewey Commission[2] in the US, to which Trotsky submitted evidence and witness statements in order to clear his name from such infamy. But with the fall of Hitler and the opening up of the archives of the Nazi regime, Ted Grant and the RCP saw a golden opportunity to challenge the Soviet prosecutors at Nuremberg to reproduce this so-called evidence. Spurred on by Natalia Sedova, Trotsky’s widow, they conducted a bold campaign, reaching far beyond their limited means, even connecting with layers of British Communist Party ranks who began to doubt their own leaders and wanted to learn the truth.
The RCP attempted to get the largest section of the Fourth International, the American SWP headed by James Cannon, on board to lead the charge and help vindicate the name of Leon Trotsky. But, as was always the case, the initiatives of the RCP leadership fell on deaf ears across the Atlantic, with the leadership of the American section more interested in undermining Ted Grant and Jock Haston for factional purposes. The articles on the events pertaining to the Nuremberg trials themselves are found in the first section of the book alongside the general developments internationally, and the letters about the RCP campaign, including those between the British and American sections, are in the book’s appendix.
Britain
The end of the war also saw an important new period open up in Britain. As in the rest of Europe, there was a mass swing to the left, which brought Labour to power, ending the wartime coalition with the Tories. While the RCP oriented politically towards Labour, they did not dissolve themselves and enter into Labour, as was adamantly proposed by the RCP Minority around Gerry Healy, who was supported by the leadership of the Fourth International.
Ted Grant came to realise that the end of the war did not automatically mean that Labour would be a government of crisis and present a favourable arena for entrism by the RCP. In fact, owing to the objective conditions of post-war recovery, although still in its infancy in 1945 and 1946, the end of the war provided an impetus to the economy and, by extension, to reformism and Attlee’s Labour.
This realisation, which was borne out by developments in the ensuing decades, can be seen clearly when comparing the RCP’s British Perspectives from 1945 to those of 1946, both included in the second section of the book. In the latter, Ted points out that while the war had not solved the contradictions of capitalism, Marxists should not simply repeat the perspective of the previous decade, as if nothing had happened between then and now.
Important conclusions flowed from a change of perspectives, particularly in relation to party strategy, reflected in the sharp debates around entry into both the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party. This section covers a large part of that debate.
The fact of the matter was that a historically unprecedented boom was on the horizon. And although this did not bear out immediately in the years covered by this volume, a sea change had begun beneath the surface. Ted was, in reality, the only leading cadre of the Trotskyist movement who fully realised this. With confusion reigning on all sides, he defended the basic principles of Marxism, which came under a barrage of attacks from both ultraleft and opportunist tendencies in the workers’ movement.
Included in this section of the book is also a selection of material about the Neath by-election – a tremendous campaign of the RCP at the beginning of 1945. When a favourable situation to strengthen the party in South Wales opened up, the RCP seized the opportunity and ran Jock Haston as their candidate for parliament against Labour and the Communist Party, which at this point were still a part of the anti-worker coalition with Churchill. To this day, the speeches and articles on Neath are a model for conducting bold, open work even as a small communist force.
Internal debates
The final section of this volume contains material from internal debates, both within the British section and between the leadership of the RCP and the Fourth International.
The vast majority of this material has never seen the light of day since it was originally published as part of the internal bulletins of the RCP. These texts, often of a longer and more theoretical nature, represent a treasure trove of the Marxist method applied to a whole host of different questions – from entrism to democratic centralism, Stalinism, centrism and economic perspectives.
What they show most of all is the ability of Ted Grant and the RCP leadership to think independently. Their patient, scientific approach is like night and day compared to the mechanical and downright dishonest methods of the leaders of the Fourth International and Gerry Healy’s RCP Minority.
A lot can be learned from these texts about how to build a revolutionary party. For further context to these texts, the reader should refer to The History of British Trotskyism by Ted Grant, and Ted Grant: The Permanent Revolutionary by Alan Woods, which provide an account of the historical background to these debates within the party.
A note on selection
The texts included in this volume represent as complete a selection as possible of what Ted Grant wrote, or contributed to writing, during these years. As was often the case in the production of Socialist Appeal, many articles were unsigned, with the editorial board working collectively to produce each new issue.
The main editorials would have usually been written by Ted, who was the editor of the paper and the party’s political secretary, and we have chosen to include them in this volume, except where the style of writing differs clearly from Ted’s signature style. A number of other unsigned articles where Ted was likely the writer have also been included, particularly on the topics where he was the party’s main expert. Additionally, statements of the Political Bureau (PB), which functioned as the day-to-day leadership of the RCP, and the Central Committee (CC) have been included. A few articles and letters by other members of the RCP, particularly Jock Haston, have also been included.
The authorship of all texts is indicated when different from Ted Grant and where there is known authorship. All texts have been checked against the original documents and are published here in their original form, except for evident typing errors that have been corrected and formatting characters that have been standardised throughout.
Acknowledgements
The making of this volume would not have been possible without the hard work of many people. We would like to thank Kevin Ramsey, Victor Murray Vedsø and Francesco Merli for leading the effort in compiling, organising and editing the vast amount of material from the period. Thanks also go to Anthony Bartlett-Fletcher and Oliver Brotherton, who helped sort and digitise much of the material in Ted Grant’s archives. Many thanks go to Deep Sohelia, who laid out the book and played a key role in the editorial process. We would also like to thank Solomon Dobbs for procuring additional material from the Records of Jock Haston at the Hull History Centre, Caspar Müller for digitising and translating material, and Dora Dimitrova for helping source the images for the book. A big thank you goes to the proofreaders for their hard work: Stuart Miller, Jonathan Hinckley, Oliver Brotherton, Nye Shaw, Kieran Lee and Jesse Murray-Dean. Finally, thank you to Victor Murray Vedsø for the cover design.