"The Revolution in India: Its Tasks and Dangers" (1930)
Its Tasks and Dangers (1930)
India Faced with Imperialist War:
An Open letter to the Workers of India (1939)
"The Crisis of Terrorism and its Party" (March 27, 1909)
from Pravda (Vienna) No. 3. [English version from Trotsky’s Writings on Britain, volume 3, New Park, 1979]
[Note from the New Park edition: “The partition of Bengal in 1905 by the British colonial administration resulted in the intensification of nationalist activity in a number of forms. There was a considerable growth in the organization of the Congress[...] which itself split in 1907 as a result of demands for more militant policies. In April 1908 a terrorist bomb at Muzatarpur killed two English women.”]
Thus his [Herman Gorter's; see note below] assertion, that the proletariat remains isolated in Britain whereas in Russia it is leading the peasant masses behind it, is a generalization naked in point of form, one-sided, and therefore false. The British proletariat is far from being isolated, for after all Britain is a world state. British industry and the position of British capitalism depend wholly upon the colonies and, in consequence, the struggle of the British proletariat likewise depends on the struggle of the colonial popular masses. The tasks which the British proletariat sets itself in its struggle against British capitalism must likewise take their orientation in harmony with the interests and moods of the Indian peasantry. British proletarians cannot attain their final victory until the peoples of India rise and until the British proletariat provides this uprising with a goal and a programme; and in India victory is out of the question without the aid and the leadership of the British proletariat. Here you have the revolutionary collaboration between the proletariat and the peasantry within the confines of the British Empire.
"On the policy of the KAPD"
(November 24, 1920)
speech to the Executive Committee of the Communist International [English version from Trotsky’s Writings on Britain, volume 3, New Park, 1979]
[Note from the New Park edition: "Herman Gorter (1864-1927) was a poet and a member of the Dutch Socialist Party, associated with a left-wing group expelled in 1908 that set up the Independent Socialist Party. Together with syndicalists Gorter rallied to the Communist International in 1919 but became a convinced ultra-left, attacking Lenin’s Left Wing Communism in his Open Letter to Comrade Lenin. This extract forms part of Trotsky’s reply."]
[...T]he Eastern woman who is the most paralyzed in life, in her habits and in creativity, the slave of slaves, that she, having at the demand of the new economic relations taken off her cloak will at once feel herself lacking any sort of religious buttress; she will have a passionate thirst to gain new ideas, a new consciousness which will permit her to appreciate her new position in society. And there will be no better communist in the East, no better fighter for the ideas of revolution and for the ideas of communism than the awakened woman worker.
Perspectives and Tasks in the East (1924)
The London parliament is a parliament of slave-owners. Even were it to represent a nation of forty million in the most ideal and formally democratic manner, the British parliament would still pass laws for the three hundred million population of India and have financial resources at its disposal that it had acquired by force of Britain's rule over the colonies.
The Question of Revolutionary Force (1928)
The imperialist yoke assumes in India, the classic colony, infinitely more direct and palpable forms than in China. The survivals of feudal and serf relations in India are immeasurably deeper and greater. Nevertheless, or rather precisely for this reason, the methods which, applied in China, undermined the revolution, must result in India in even more fatal consequences. The overthrow of Hindu feudalism and of Anglo-Hindu bureaucracy and British militarism can be accomplished only by a gigantic and an indomitable movement of the popular masses which precisely because of its powerful sweep and irresistability, its international aims and ties, cannot tolerate any halfway and compromising opportunist measures on the part of the leadership.
On the Reactionary Idea of "Two-Class Workers' and Peasants' Parties" for the Orient
part 7, Section 3: Summary and Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution, in The Third International After Lenin (1928)
As all modern history attests—especially the Russian experience of the last twenty-five years—an insurmountable obstacle on the road to the creation of a peasants' party is the petty-bourgeoisie's lack of economic and political independence and its deep internal differentiation. By reason of this, upper sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (of the peasantry) go along with the big bourgeoisie in all decisive cases, especially in war and in revolution; the lower sections go along with the proletariat; the intermediate section being thus compelled to choose between the extreme poles. [...]
The Comintern's endeavour to foist upon the Eastern countries the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, finally and long ago exhausted by history, can have only a reactionary effect. Insofar as this slogan is counterposed to the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it contributes politically to the dissolution of the proletariat in the petty-bourgeois masses and thus creates the most favourable conditions for the hegemony of the national bourgeoisie and consequently for the collapse of the democratic revolution.
10. What Is the Permanent Revolution? Basic Postulates
The Permanent Revolution (and Results & Prospects) (1930)
On Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, see also:
full text of "What Is the Permanent Revolution? Basic Postulates" (Chapter 10 of his The Permanent Revolution, 1928)
Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky (August 1939)—has been called "Trotsky's most clear and succinct exposition of the permanent revolution," but does assume some basic knowledge of the history of the Russian revolution.
Historic References on the Theory of "Permanent Revolution" (Appendix No. 3 to Volume III of his History of the Russian Revolution, 1930)
We can and we must find a way to the consciousness of the Negro workers, the Chinese workers, the Indian workers, and all the oppressed in the human ocean of the colored races to whom belongs the decisive word in the development of mankind.
Closer to the Proletarians of the Colored Races (1932)
"To call for the organization of a [workers'] militia [for self-defense against the fascists]," say some opponents who, to be sure, are the least serious and honest, "is to engage in provocation."
This is not an argument but an insult. If the necessity for the defense of the workers' organizations flows from the whole situation, how then can one not call for the creation of the militia? Perhaps they mean to say that the creation of a militia "provokes" fascist attacks and government repression. In that case, this is an absolutely reactionary argument. Liberalism has always said to the workers that by their class struggle they "provoke" the reaction.
The reformists repeated this accusation against the Marxists, the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks. These accusations reduced themselves, in the final analysis, to the profound thought that if the oppressed do not balk, the oppressors will not be obliged to beat them. This is the philosophy of Tolstoy and Gandhi but never that of Marx and Lenin. If L’Humanité [newspaper of the French Communist Party (PCF)] wants hereafter to develop the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violence," it should take for its symbol not the hammer and sickle, emblem of the October Revolution, but the pious goat, which provides Gandhi with his milk.
"The Workers' Militia and Its Opponents"
Whither France? (1934)
The revolution of 1848 revealed within a few months that precisely under more advanced conditions, none of the bourgeois classes is capable of bringing the revolution to its termination; the big and middle bourgeoisie is far too closely linked with the landowners, and fettered by the fear of the masses; the petty bourgeoisie is far too divided and in its top leadership far too dependent on the big bourgeoisie. As evidenced by the entire subsequent course of development in Europe and Asia, the bourgeois revolution, taken by itself, can no more in general be consummated. A complete purge of feudal rubbish from society is conceivable only on the condition that the proletariat, freed from the influence of bourgeois parties, can take its stand at the head of the peasantry and establish its revolutionary dictatorship.
Ninety Years of the Communist Manifesto (1937)
The Stalinists in India directly support the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois national parties and do all they can to subjugate the workers and peasants through these parties. What we must do is create an absolutely independent proletarian party with a clear class programme.
The general historic role of the Stalinist bureaucracy and their Comintern is counter-revolutionary. But through their military and other interests they can be forced to support progressive movements. (Even Ludendorff [commander of the German army during the last years of the First World War] felt himself forced to give Lenin a train—a very progressive action—and Lenin accepted it.) We must keep our eyes open to discern the progressive acts of the Stalinists, support them independently, foresee in time the danger, the betrayals, warn the masses and gain their confidence. If our policy is firm and intransigent and realistic at the same time, we would succeed in compromising the Stalinists on the basis of the revolutionary experience. If the Red Army intervenes [in India—the hypothesis posed by Trotsky's correspondent] we will continue the same policy, adapting it to military conditions. We will teach the Indian workers to fraternize with the rank-and-file soldiers and denounce the repressive measures of their commanders and so on.
The main task in India is the overthrow of the British domination. This task imposes upon the proletariat the support of every oppositional and revolutionary action directed against imperialism.
"Letter to an Indian comrade"
(dated November 24, 1939)
[Actually not an "Indian" comrade, but a Ceylonese/Sri Lankan one, addressed in the text as "Comrade Perera"—either M.N. Perara, one of the founders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), (as the New Park edition says) or Selina M. Perera, the LSSP's treasurer, who tried to visit Trotsky in Mexico that month on her way home from a visit to Britain, but was turned back at the U.S.-Mexico border due to Mexican immigration restrictions against British subjects (according to the Pathfinder edition).]
from the Internal Bulletin of the Socialist Workers Party, December 1939
[transcribed from Trotsky’s Writings on Britain, volume 3, New Park, 1979]
India is participating in the imperialist war on the side of Great Britain. Does this mean that our attitude towards India—not the Indian Bolsheviks but India—is the same as toward Great Britain? If there exist in this world, in addition to Shachtman and Burnham, only two imperialist camps, then where, permit me to ask, shall we put India? A Marxist will say that despite India’s being an integral part of the British Empire and India’s participating in the imperialist war, despite the perfidious policy of Gandhi and other nationalist leaders, our attitude toward India is altogether different from our attitude toward Britain. We defend India against Britain. Why then cannot our attitude toward the Soviet Union be different from our attitude toward Germany despite the fact that Stalin is allied with Hitler? Why can’t we defend the more progressive social forms which are capable of development against reactionary forms which are capable only of decomposition? We not only can but we must! The theoreticians of the stolen magazine [the New International, theoretical journal of the Socialist Workers Party, edited by Shachtman and Burnham, which adopted their factional line; see note below] replace class analysis with a mechanistic construction very captivating to petty-bourgeois intellectuals because of its pseudo-symmetry. Just as the Stalinists camouflage their subservience to national socialism (the Nazis) with harsh epithets addressed to the imperialist democracies, so Shachtman and Co. [Max Shachtman; see note below] cover up their capitulation to American petty-bourgeois public opinion with the pompous phraseology of the ‘third camp.’ As if this ‘third camp’ (what is it? a party? a club? a League of Abandoned Hopes? a ‘People’s Front’?) is free from the obligation of having a correct policy toward the petty bourgeoisie, the trade unions, India and the USSR!
"Petty Bourgeois Moralists and the Proletarian Party" (May 4, 1940)
In Defense of Marxism (1940)
[excerpted in Trotsky’s Writings on Britain, volume 3, New Park, 1979]
[Note from New Park edition: Shachtman and James Burnham were "[l]eaders of the petty-bourgeois revisionist tendency in the [American] Socialist Workers Party at this time, who denied the need to defend the Soviet Union against imperialism. Trotsky's struggle against them is documented in In Defense of Marxism. Shachtman later became a social democrat and Burnham a cold war reactionary."]
Colonial peoples in the war:
[...] In the colonial and semi-colonial countries the struggle for an independent national state, and consequently the “defense of the fatherland,” is different in principle from that of the imperialist countries. The revolutionary proletariat of the whole world gives unconditional support to the struggle of China or India for national independence, for this struggle, by “tearing the backward peoples from Asiatism, sectionalism, and foreign bondage, ... strike[s] powerful blows at the imperialist states.”
At the same time, the Fourth International knows in advance and openly warns the backward nations that their belated national states can no longer count upon an independent democratic development. Surrounded by decaying capitalism and enmeshed in the imperialist contradictions, the independence of a backward state inevitably will be semi-fictitious, and its political regime, under the influence of internal class contradictions and external pressure, will unavoidably fall into dictatorship against the people—such is the regime of the “People’s” party in Turkey, the Kuomintang in China; Gandhi’s regime will be similar tomorrow in India. The struggle for the national independence of the colonies is, from the standpoint of the revolutionary proletariat, only a transitional stage on the road toward drawing the backward countries into the international socialist revolution. [...]
Tasks of the revolution in India:
In the very first weeks of war the Indian masses exerted their growing pressure, compelling the opportunist “national” leaders to speak in an unaccustomed tongue. But woe to the Indian people if they place trust in high-sounding words! Under the mask of the slogan of national independence, Gandhi has already hastened to proclaim his refusal to create difficulties for Great Britain during the present severe crisis. As if the oppressed anywhere or at any time have ever been able to free themselves except by exploiting the difficulties of their oppressors!
Gandhi’s “moral” revulsion from violence merely reflects the fear of the Indian bourgeoisie before their own masses. They have very good grounds for their foreboding that British imperialism will drag them down too in the collapse. London for its part warns that at the first display of disobedience it will apply “all necessary measures”— including, of course, the air force in which it is deficient at the western front There is a clear-cut division of labor between the colonial bourgeoisie and the British government: Gandhi needs the threats of Chamberlain and Churchill in order more successfully to paralyze the revolutionary movement.
In the near future the antagonism between the Indian masses and the bourgeoisie promises to become sharper as the imperialist war more and more becomes a gigantic commercial enterprise for the Indian bourgeoisie. By opening up an exceptionally favorable market for raw materials it may rapidly promote Indian industry. If the complete destruction of the British empire slashes the umbilical cord linking Indian capital with the City of London, the national bourgeoisie would quickly seek a new patron in New York’s Wall Street. The material interests of the bourgeoisie determine their politics with the force of the laws of gravitation.
So long as the liberating movement is controlled by the exploiting class it is incapable of getting out of a blind alley. The only thing that can weld India together is the agrarian revolution under the banner of national independence. A revolution led by the proletariat will be directed not only against British rule but also against the Indian princes, foreign concessions, the top layer of the national bourgeoisie, and the leaders of the National Congress, as well as against the leaders of the Muslim League. It is the pressing task of the Fourth International to create a stable and powerful section in India.
The treacherous policy of class collaboration, through which the Kremlin for the last five years has been helping the capitalist governments prepare for war, was abruptly liquidated by the bourgeoisie, just as soon as they ceased to need a pacifist disguise. But in the colonial and semi-colonial countries not only in China and India, but in Latin America—the fraud of the “People’s Fronts” still continues to paralyze the working masses, converting them into cannon fodder for the “progressive” bourgeoisie and in this way creating an indigenous political basis for imperialism.
"Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution"
drafted by Trotsky
adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International on
May 19-26, 1940
The Trotskyist Press on India/Sri Lanka, 1938-51: writings of Trotsky's followers in India during the independence struggle and contemporaneous articles in British and American Trotskyist publications
Marxists on India index
"The 'Quit India' Movement 50 Years On: Stalinist Alliance with Churchill Betrayed Indian Revolution" (Workers Hammer)
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