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The Ideas of Leon Trotsky
Hillel Ticktin and Michael Cox
The Ideas of Leon
Trotsky
Porcupine Press
Published by Porcupine Press, 10 Woburn Walk, London WClH 0JL
1995 Porcupine Press
©
Text processing and interior layout by Paul Flewers
Cover by Catlin Harrison
Photograph processing by Lesley Thompson
Printed in Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford
ISBN 1 89 943804 1
Contents
Hillel Ticktin and Michael Cox, The Ideas of Leon Trotsky ..................... 1
Political Economy
Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky and the 'Russian Mode of Production':
The Political Economy of Taking Power in the Russian Empire .......... 23
Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky and the Social Forces Leading to
Bureaucracy, 1923-29 .............................................................................. 45
Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky's Political Economic Analysis of the
USSR, 1929-40 ........................................................................................ 65
Hillel Ticktin, Leon Trotsky's Political Economy of Capitalism ............. 87
Politics, Philosophy and Culture
Lynne Poole, Lenin and Trotsky: A Question of Organisational Form? 111
Antonio Carlo, Trotsky and the Party: From Our Political Tasks to the
October Revolution ............................................................................. 147
Stephen Dabydeen, Trotsky, the United States of Europe and National
Self-Determination .............................................................................. 163
Michael Lowy, From the Logic of Hegel to the Finland Station in
Petrograd ............................................................................................. 187
David Gorman, The Political Economy of Defeat: Leon Trotsky and
the Problems of the Transitional Epoch .............................................. 201
Alan Wald, Literature and Revolution: Leon Trotsky's Contributions to
Marxist Cultural Theory and Literary Criticism ................................ 219
History
David Law, The Left Opposition in 1923 ................................................ 235
Richard Day, The Myth of the 'Super-Industrialiser': Trotsky's
Economic Policies in the 1920s ............................................................ 253
Susan Weissman, The Left Opposition Divided: The Trotsky-Serge
Disputes ................................................................................................ 269
Debating Trotsky
Michael Cox, The Revolutionary Betrayed: The New Left Review and
Leon Trotsky ........................................................................................ 289
Michael Cox, Trotsky's Misinterpreters and the Collapse of Stalinism ... 305
David Law, How Not to Interpret Trotsky ............................................. 317
John Molyneux, How Not to Interpret Trotsky-Again ...................... 329
Loren Goldner, Trotskyism and Trotsky: Pierre Broue as Biographer ... 333
Trotsky and the World Economy
Leon Trotsky, Two Speeches on Developments in the World Economy 341
Leon Trotsky, On Party Education ......................................................... 371
Index ......................................................................................................... 377
Notes on Contributors
The Editors
Hillel Ticktin was educated at Cape Town and Moscow Universities. He is
Reader at the Institute of Russian and East European Studies and Chairman of the
Centre for the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements at Glasgow University,
where he has taught for 30 years. He is the author of numerous articles on the So
viet Union, in which he argued well before 1991 that it was doomed to collapse.
His book The Origins of the Crisis in the USSR: Essays on the Political Economy of a
Disintegrating System, appeared in 1992. He has also written a book on South Af
rica, and various articles on the nature of modern capitalism. He is the editor of
the journal Critique, which was founded in 1973.
Michael Cox was educated at Reading and Glasgow Universities. He was Reader
in Politics at Queen's University in Belfast until he transferred to the Department
of International Politics at Aberystwyth in September 1995. He is Chairman of the
Irish Slavists Association, and is on the editorial boards of a number of journals.
He has written extensively on the nature of the Cold War and on US foreign pol
icy in relation to the Soviet Union and Russia. He is one of the founding editors of
Critique. His analysis of the Cold War as a system is one of the most important
pieces to have been published on the subject.
The Authors
Antonio Carlo is a Professor at the University of Cagliari, Italy, and author of
many works on the former Soviet Union.
Stephen Dabydeen is writing his thesis on Trotsky's views on nationalism.
Richard Day is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Toronto
University, and author of many works on Trotsky, Soviet economic thought
and Soviet economic history, including Leon Trotsky and the Politics of Eco-
nomic Isolation and The 'Crisis' and the 'Crash': Soviet Studies of the West, 1917-
1939.
Loren Goldner lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has written extensively on
political, historical and economic issues.
David Gorman is a member of the editorial board of Radical Chains.
David Law is an historian at the University of Keele. He wrote his PhD on Trot
sky and the Soviet Union.
John Molyneux has written a number of books and articles on Marxist themes,
including Leon Trotsky's Theory ofR evolution.
Lynne Poole taught at the Department of Social Administration and Social Work
at the University of Glasgow, and now teaches at the Department of Social Work
at Edinburgh University.
Alan Wald teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is a member
of the editorial board of Against the Current, and has written a number of substan
tial works on literary and intellectual themes, including The Revolutionary Imagi
nation: The Poetry and Politics ofJ ohn Wheelwright and Sherry Mangan; James T Far
rell: The Revolutionary Socialist Years; The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and De
cline of the Anti-Stalinist Left and The Responsibility of the Intellectuals: Selected Es
says on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment.
Susan Weissman is Associate Professor at St Mary's College, California, and
author of many works on the former Soviet Union, Victor Serge and socialism.
She is a long time member of the editorial board of Critique, and is also an editor
of Against the Current. ·
The Illustrations
The photographs reproduced in this book were taken by Alexander Buchman, an
aeronautical engineer and amateur photographer, during a five month stay at the
Trotsky household in Coyoacan, Mexico, in 1939-40. During this period, he was
enlisted to improve the security system of the premises, and he served as a guard to
fill a temporary vacancy. His motion pictures and still photographs of Trotsky are
amongst the last taken prior to his assassination.
Hillel Ticktin and Michael Cox
The Ideas of Leon
Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein, or Trotsky (1879-1940), was arguably the greatest ora
tor of the twentieth century, certainly one of its finest writers, and undoubtedly
one of its most influential revolutionary theoreticians. His talents were by any
measure considerable; certainly quite extraordinary in comparison with those who
have stood in judgement of him over the years. He was a brilliant organiser, and
was in fact, according to Lenin, 'too much drawn to the administrative side of
things'. He had an enormous intellectual range, making important contributions
to the study of Tsarist Russia, literary theory, revolutionary history and our un
derstanding of fascism in a world turned upside down by war and depression.
Trotsky was also a principled and brave human being who refused to compromise
with Stalin, something that cost both him and his family dear. He was no political
saint, of course. As one of the two men bearing the greatest responsibility for the
defence of the early Soviet state, that would have been nigh impossible. Nor was
he always correct. In fact, some of his arguments now seem plainly bizarre, espe
cially his mature characterisation of the USSR as a workers' state, and his strangely
upbeat discussion about what was being achieved economically in the Soviet Un
ion in the 1930s. Some have even argued, with some justification (though with lit
tle understanding of revolutionary psychology) that Trotsky was too much of an
optimist as well. Yet even at his most optimistic, he never lost his objectivity. And
when he was wrong or ambiguous, he was generally more interesting than those
who are always right, but never actually say anything. Indeed, frequently locked
away within some of his less assured assessments (notably those written in exile
about the Soviet Union), there was more often than not a rational kernel of truth
straining to get out. Even his mistakes live on in the works of those who might
