The Third Camp tradition

IS: Invented tradition

Matt Hale ( Solidarity 296) is right about the political deterioration of the SWP, but, I think, too generous to the IS and SR groups which preceded SWP. In his book Trotskyism SWP leader Alex Callinicos explicitly sides with “orthodox” neo-Trotskyism. When the Trotskyists split in 1939-40, over how to respond to the first pushing-out of Stalinist imperialism to eastern Poland, Finland, the Baltics, the wrong side was those who registered the imperialism and opposed it — Shachtman, Draper, the future Workers Party/ ISL. They “were indeed an instance of... drift towards... acceptance of Western...

A tragedy of the left: Socialist Worker and its splits

Click here to download pamphlet as pdf . Abridged introduction How did the Trotskyist left in Britain come to be scattered and divided into hostile and competing groups? At the root the divisions are a product of the repeated defeats and the continuing marginalisation of revolutionary socialism. Small groups - and the biggest of the groups in Britain, the SWP, is still a small group - groups without implantation in the working class, have little power of cohesion when strong political divisions emerge. When members of a small organisation whose raison d'etre is propaganda for certain ideas...

Problems of Trotskyist history

Problems of Trotskyist history: introduction to Shachtman's Where is the petty-bourgeois opposition? George Santanyana’s aphorism, “Those who do not learn from history are likely to repeat it”, is not less true for having become a cliché. And those who do not know their own history cannot learn from it. Take the history of the Trotskyist movement — that is, of organised revolutionary Marxism for most of the 20th century. To an enormous extent the received history of that movement is not “history” but the all-too-often mendacious, and always tendentious, folklore generated by competing sects...

April 1940: the USSR and and the World War

The outbreak of the Second World War has once more put prominently at the top of the order of the day the “Russian question”. The signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact was followed by the joint invasion of Poland; by the reduction of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the state of vassals of the Kremlin; by the invasion and seizure of part of Finland by the Red Army; and by speculation and prediction of coming events which, a year ago, would have been waved aside as preposterous. In bourgeois-democratic circles, these events furnished the occasion for more pious homilies about the identity of...

1948: Flashback on 1939

Flashback on the “Russian Question”. The 1939 dispute in the light of new documents, by Ernest Erber: New International February 1948. The captured German archives bearing on German-Russian relations during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, published by the US State Department, are of special interest to our movement. The captured German archives bearing on German-Russian relations during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact, published by the US State. Department, are of special interest to our movement. The infamous pact and the train of political and military events it set in motion were...

1940: Max Shachtman's reply to Leon Trotsky - A “petty bourgeois” opposition?

Where Is the Petty Bourgeois Opposition? A Repeated Challenge Remains Unanswered. In his open letter to Comrade Trotsky, Comrade Shachtman, repeating the challenge issued by the Minority since the moment it was accused of representing a petty-bourgeois tendency in the party, declared: “... it is first necessary to prove (a) that the Minority represents a deviation from the proletarian Marxian line, (b) that this deviation is typically petty-bourgeois, and (c) that it is more than an isolated deviation — it is a tendency. That is precisely what has not been proved.” Comrade Trotsky has been the...

Cliff's state capitalism in perspective: The "Russian Question" in Britain in the 1940s

Click here to download as pdf Click here to download as epub Click here to download as mobi Or read online below: Introduction I. The great riddle of the twentieth century II. 1917 and Marxist socialism III. Trotsky IV. Trotsky's picture of the USSR V. 1933: Trotsky discusses state capitalism VI. 1933: Trotsky discusses 'bureaucratic collectivism' VII. Perspectives: before World War Two VIII. The results of World War Two IX. The other Trotskyists: the Workers' Party X. One, two, many state capitalisms XI. Tony Cliff's revolution in science XII. Cliff and Haston-Grant XIII. Being arbitrary XIV...

Matt Merrigan: a fighter for the Third Camp in Ireland

Matt Merrigan (1921-2000) was a socialist, trade unionist and one of very few Third Camp Trotskyists in Ireland. Born into poverty in Dolphin’s Barn, Dublin, Merrigan left school at 13 and worked for twenty years at the Rowntree-Mackintosh chocolate factory. He became a shop steward with the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU), rising to be its national secretary in 1960, a post he held until 1986. Merrigan’s first contact with the Trotskyist movement came in 1942, when he met Jim McClean and Bob Armstrong, members of the Revolutionary Communist Party [the British...

Introduction

The articles collected here tell the story of the workers’ revolt against Stalinist rule in East Germany sixty years ago, in June 1953, and the responses of the “Third Camp” Trotskyists of the Independent Socialist League. Three further articles, written between 1946 and 1954, set out the theoretical framework by which the writers understood the imposition of Stalinist rule in Eastern Europe after World War Two; and a final article, written just before the German events, sums up what socialists should learn from the experience of Stalinism. Some articles have been abridged. Usages typical of...

The first mass workers' revolts

Like a brilliant gleam of light in the gathering darkness of the post-war years, the rising of the German working class has already shattered myths and shamed despair. It has already answered a host of questions that had been posed by those who became panic-stricken before the seemingly invincible strength of Stalinist tyranny. These June days may well go down in history as the beginning of the workers’ revolution against Stalinism — the beginning, in the historical view, quite apart from any over-optimistic predictions about the immediate aftermath to be expected from this action itself. Is...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.