p In trying to win over young people, the Trotskyites seek to create the impression that, for their "International," the interests of the revolution have always come first. This idea is being driven home, for instance, in the Fourth International, written in a popular style by one of the leaders of modern Trotskyism, Pierre Frank, and clearly designed for the youth. In the introduction Frank states his work is intended to give young people a better understanding of the history of the "Fourth International.”

p The book is replete with assertions about the "Fourth International" being the "successor to revolutionary Marxism," and that it has always sought to "enrich Marxism." Frank lays it on thick in embellishing the activity of the "Fourth International" in the pre-wiar period, claiming that at the time the Trotskyite “International” "was of invaluable service to the working class movement."   [17•1 

p He does not explain just what he meant by that, apparently assuming that the reader must accept his statement in good faith.

p To fully appreciate what the words and deeds of the "Fourth International" meant, we must recall events in the late 1930s. This was a time of dramatic events. Every day that passed without war was darkened by the awareness that world war was imminent. In Germany, the Nazi clique was going ahead with plans to cover the globe 18 with a web of concentration camps.

p Everyone who clearly saw the source of the war danger, all those who had the courage of their convictions, rose to fight against fascism. The struggle against war and fascism brought together men of different political beliefs. Many were tortured in Nazi prisons and paid with their lives for their courageous, anti-fascist stand.

p What stand did the Trotskyites take then? What were the “services” Mr. Frank so vaguely mentions? A study of the historical documents and the facts of the pre-war period and the declarations and actions of the "Fourth International" itself inevitably gives rise to a number of questions.

p The first question: Why does Frank say nothing of the Troitiskyites’ shameful attitude to the struggle against fascism?

p After all, it is a fact—which Frank cannot deny—that the Trotskyite “International” fought tooth and Mail against the Communists’ calls for all anti-fascist forces to rally together in a united Popular Front. The Communists regarded the Popular Front as the form of alliance capable of frustrating fascism’s military plans and permitting the working class to influence the entire course of historical development. By urging the masses to take more vigorous action against fascism, the Communists were also preparing the most favourable conditions for the subsequent transition to the attainment of new, socialist goals.

p The Trotskyites did their utmost to prevent the establishment of the Popular Front and to split the anti-fascist ranks. The German Trotskyites, who styled themselves "the International 19 Communists of Germany," labelled the "united front tactic a form of .. .revisionism," and urged that the anti-fascist front be repudiated.

p They were matched by the Italian Trotskyites, who, as soon as Mussolini took over, tried to counteract Communist efforts to unite the antifascist forces. Antonio Gramsci, having been informed in his prison cell that some political prisoners were in danger of succumbing to TrotskyHe influence, had good reason for sending a terse warning to the other prison cells that "Trotsky is a puttano (the prostitute)of fascism."   [19•1 

p Gramsci was quite right. The Italian and German Trotskyites’ efforts to prevent unity of the anti-fascist forces were in no sense errors or aberrations. They amounted to a deliberate policy masterminded by Trotsky.

p Soon after the publication of Frank’s book in Paris, there appeared another book about Trotskyism, by Jean-Jacques Marie, who had little sympathy for the Communists. He quoted a statement by Trotsky which smacked of hatred, declaring the anti-fascist front to be an instrument designed to rescue imperialism, and " imperialism’s final political recourse in its fight aga inst the proletarian revolution.”   [19•2 

p At the time the Trotskyites were out to prevent anti-fascist unity rather than fight against fascism. The policy-setting documents of the "Fourth International" called for opposing the theory and practice of the Popular Front. In different countries they acted as follows:

p In France, the Trotskyites urged "instant revolutionary action" instead of forming the Popular Front. When such a front was set up despite their opposition, they declared that the proletariat was "hacking down on its class positions," and tried to sow the seeds of discord in the ranks of the anti-fascists.

p Later, the Trotskyites called for non- participation iki the Resistance Movement on the plea that there was need to organize an "independent proletarian struggle." On some occasions, individual Trotskyite outfits (such as their so-called Communist League) urged fraternization with the Nazis or served on various collaborationist organizations for highly obscure "tactical reiasons.”

p During the civil war in Spain, the Trotskyites tried to break up the Popular Front and spread defeatist attitudes in am effort to wreck the regular army and to spread insubordination.

p In other countries the Trotskyites did their utmost to prevent a broad international campaign from being launched to support Spain’s Republican government. While the Communists sent in volunteers and collected funds and medicines, the Trotskyites sabotaged the activity of committees set up to provide the Spanish people with material and medical assistance.  [20•1 

p Such are the facts, and if Frank fails to mention them in his book, it does not follow that it was not so. By omitting them from his "history," Frank simply misleads the youth.

p Seeking to present the history of Trotskyism in its best light, at the end of his book Frank 21 mentions several Nazi victims who were allegedly members of the Trotskyite "International." However, even among card-carrying Nazis there were anti-fascists who did underground work. If a handful of Trotskyites did take part in the anti-fascist struggle, they were obviously—and this should be emphasized—acting contrary to the decisions of Trotskyite centres and the Trotskyite political line.

p The second question: Why does Frank say nothing about the attitude of the “founders” of the "Fourth International" to the questions of war and peace? Is it because their attitude was nothing to boast about?

p The whole policy of the Trotskyite “ International” is concentrated on belittling the struggle for peace carried on by the Communist parties in the 1930s. The 7th Congress of the Comintern in 1935 stressed: "The central slogan of the Communist parties must be the slogan of struggle for peace."   [21•1 

p There, again, instead of opposing the fascist war-mongers, the Trotskyites came out against the Communists who were in the forefront of the struggle for peace.

p The Trotskyites declared that events should be allowed to run ’their course, even if the whole world was engulfed in the flames of war. They claimed the revolution would stand to gain because it heralded the end of capitalist regimes. The "Fourth International" declared that "war has often proved to be a mother of revolution.”

p On the strength of such ultra-revolutionary 22 catchwords, the Trotskyites held that the struggle for peace was "bourgeois pacifism," and accused the Communists of "backing down on their class positions" and of being cowards. The Nazi troops invaded one country after another, but in the same manifesto the Trotskyites declared: "The ’Fourth International’ indignantly rejects the appeals to help the democratic forces fight against fascism." They also insisted that the "slogan of patriotism is a false slogan.”

p These Trotskyite statements played into the hands of the Nazis, who did not want to have to contend with organized forces in their drive for world domination.

p The third question: Why does Frank say nothing about the stand taken by Trotsky and his followers with regard to imperialist-devised plans for aggression against the Soviet Union? Is it because Trotsky’s prophecies did not materialize and that Trotsky’s attitude on the whole was blatently reactionary?

p The Trotskyites hated the Soviet Union more than any other country, and at the time some of them (like Shachtman, who incidentally, chaired the constituent congress of the "Fourth International") insisted that the Soviet Union did not differ in socio-economic structure from the imperialist states. While Trotsky did not share this view, believing it to be "extreme," he urged, like Shachtman, the forcible overthrow of the Soviet system. In 1936, Trotsky cynically declared: "No devil ever cut off his own claws," meaning that the social order in the Soviet Union had to be changed forcibly.  [22•1 

p Trotsky believed this could be done during a possible imperialist aggression against the USSR and asserted that "the first major social upheavals from outside may plunge... Soviet society into a state of civil war."   [23•1 

p Trotsky’s predictions were remarkably like the Nazi propaganda claims about the Soviet Union being "a colossus on clay feet," and Goebbels’s prophecies about internecine strife in the USSR if it were involved in a war. No wonder the respectable Social Democratic West German magazine, Die neue Gesellschaft, said that Hitler admitted having "learnt a great deal" from Trotsky  [23•2 .

p At any rate, for several pre-war years the Trotskyites echoed the Nazis’ appraisal of the Soviet Union’s military capabilities. A Manifesto, issued by the "Fourth International" a year be fore Nazi Germany’s attack on the USSR, declared that the Soviet army was extremely weak and that the country would be paralyzed by "centrifugal nationalist tendencies" from the outset.  [23•3 

p When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the Trotskyites declared that the war continued to be an imperialist war and that the Soviet Union should not be given support. During the war, the "Fourth International" kept insisting that the establishment of the anti-Hitler coalition was contrary to the interests of the revolution and opposed the launching of a second 24 front, because this would "hold back the revolutionary European workers."   [24•1 

p The fourth question: Is it a coincidence that Mr. Frank keeps quiet about Trotskyite opposition to the Communist parties’ policy of defending democracy? Perhaps he finds it better to ignore this?

p In the 1920s and 1930s, the necessity of defending democracy became particularly acute due to the spread of fascism in a number of countries and the efforts of monopoly capital to whittle down democratic freedoms.

p The Communists came out staunchly in defence of democracy. At the 7th Congress of the Comintern, Georgy Dimitrov said: "We are not Anarchists, and it is not at all a matter of indifference to us what kind of political regime exists in any given country: whether a bourgeois dictatorship in the form of bourgeois democracy, even with democratic rights and liberties greatly curtailed, or a bourgeois dictatorship in its open, fascist form. While being upholders of Soviet democracy, we shall defend every inch of the democratic gains which the working class has wrested in the course of years of stubborn struggle, and shall resolutely fight to extend these gains.”   [24•2 

p Meanwhile, the Trotskyites insisted that it was futile to champion democratic freedoms, and again insisted that the proletariat was backsliding from its class positions. They regarded 25 the struggle for democracy as spreading " illusions among the masses." The "Fourth International" Manifesto declared this struggle useless "because democracy is inevitably transformed into a reactionary dictatorship”.

p To put a better face on their opposition to the Communists’ struggle for democracy the Trotskyites went in for irresponsible demagogy and slogans like "socialism right now," "everything is possible.”

p Leo Figueres, a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, stresses in his book, Trotskyism Is Anti-Leninism: "Had these outwardly ‘ultra-revolutionary’ slogans not been resolutely rejected by the Communist Party and Maurice Thorez, they would have led, in the summer of 1936, to the disintegration of the Popular Front, the alliance of the proletariat and the middle class sections, who would have found themselves beset by the darkest reaction. This would have opened up the way to an early victory by fascism."   [25•1 

Indeed, no matter how the Trotskyites’ prewar activity is viewed, the result is the same: objectively it aided and abetted the forces of fascism. The Trotskyites were revolutionaries in word, but in deed they sought to divide the ranks of the anti-fascist fighters and to spread a mood of surrender, despair and futility. These are the only “services” they can claim to have rendered.