“Trotskyism is revolutionary romanticism; Stalinism – practical politics.” Of this banal contraposition with which the average Philistine until yesterday justified his friendship with Thermidor against the revolution, there remains not a trace today. Trotskyism and Stalinism are in general no longer counterpoised but identified. They are identified, however, only in form, not in essence. Having recoiled to the meridian of the ‘categorical imperative’, the democrats actually continue to defend the G.P.U. except with greater camouflage and perfidy. He who slanders the victim aids the executioner. In this case, as in others, morality serves politics.
The democratic Philistine and Stalinist bureaucrat are, if not twins, brothers in spirit. In any case, they belong politically to the same camp. The present governmental system of France and if we add the anarchists of Republican Spain is based on the collaboration of Stalinists, social-democrats and liberals. If the British Independent Labour Party appears roughed up it is because for a number of years it has not withdrawn from the embrace of the Comintern. The French Socialist Party expelled the Trotskyists from their ranks exactly when it prepared to fuse with the Stalinists. If the fusion did not materialize, it was not because of principled divergences – what remains of them? – but only because of the fear of the social-democratic careerists over their posts. Having returned from Spain, Norman Thomas declared that “objectively” the Trotskyists help Franco, and with this subjective absurdity he gave “objective” service to the GPU executioners. This righteous man expelled the American ‘Trotskyists’ from his party precisely as the GPU shot down their co-thinkers in the U.S.S.R. and in Spain. In many democratic countries, the Stalinists, in spite of their ‘amoralism’, have penetrated into the government apparatus not without success. In the trade unions, they cohabit nicely with bureaucrats of other hues. True, the Stalinists have an extremely lightminded attitude toward the criminal code and in that way frighten away their ‘democratic’ friends in peaceful times; but in exceptional circumstances, as indicated by the example of Spain, they more surely become the leaders of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
The Second and Amsterdam Internationals naturally did not take upon themselves the responsibility for the frame-ups; this work they left to the Comintern. They themselves kept quiet. Privately they explained that from a “moral” point of view they were against Stalin, but from a political point of view, for him. Only when the People’s Front in France cracked irreparably and forced the socialists to think about tomorrow did Leon Blum find at the bottom of his inkwell the necessary formulas for moral abhorrence.
If Otto Bauer mildly condemned Vyshinsky’s justice it was only in order to support Stalin’s politics with greater “impartiality”. The fate of socialism, according to Bauer’s recent declaration, is tied with the fate of the Soviet Union. “And the fate of the Soviet Union”, he continues, “is the fate of Stalinism so long as (!) the inner development of the Soviet Union itself does not overcome the Stalinist phase of development.” All of Bauer is contained in this remarkable sentence, all of Austro-Marxism, the whole mendacity and rot of the social-democracy! “So long as” the Stalinist bureaucracy is sufficiently strong to murder the progressive representatives of the “inner development”, until then Bauer sticks with Stalin. When, in spite of Bauer, the revolutionary forces overthrow Stalin, then Bauer will generously recognize the “inner development” – with not more than ten years delay.
Behind the old Internationals, the London Bureau of the centrists trails along, happily combining in itself the characteristics of a kindergarten, a school for mentally arrested adolescents, and a home for invalids. The secretary of the Bureau, Fenner Brockway, began with the declaration that an inquiry into the Moscow trials could “harm the U.S.S.R.” and proposed instead an investigation into… the political activity of Trotsky through an “impartial” Commission of five irreconcilable enemies of Trotsky. Brandler and Lovestone publicly solidarised with Yagoda; they retreated only from Yezhov. Jacob Walcher, upon an obviously false pretext, refused to give testimony which was unfavorable to Stalin before the International Commission headed by John Dewey. The putrid morals of these people are only a product of their putrid politics.
But perhaps the most lamentable role is that played by the anarchists. If Stalinism and Trotskyism are one and the same, as they affirm in every sentence, then why do the Spanish anarchists assist the Stalinists in revenging themselves upon the Trotskyists and at the same time upon the revolutionary anarchists? The more frank anarchist theoreticians respond: this is payment for armaments. In other words: the end justifies the means. But what is their end? Anarchism? Socialism? No, merely the salvaging of this very same bourgeois democracy that prepared fascism’s success. To base ends correspond base means.
That is the real disposition of the figures on the world political board!