Third Camp Marxism

70 years ago, on 22 May 1943, Stalin announced the formal shutting-down of the Communist International, the association of revolutionary socialist parties across the world set up after the Russian Revolution.

Although Moscow retained close control of the Communist Parties until the 1960s, the shutting-down was a symbolic disavowal of socialist revolution. This is how socialists commented at the time.

By Albert Gates (Al Glotzer)

This time the attempt to answer the question – Why did they confess? – is made in the form of a novel. Ever since renowned leaders of the Russian revolution were brought into a Moscow court and startled the whole world by their eagerness to plead guilty to all the crimes in the counter-revolutionary calendar, many people have claimed that no satisfactory explanation has been given of their conduct. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler provides us with his answer to the all-engrossing riddle.

The survival and expansion of Russian Stalinism threw all the political compass points of Trotsky's pre-World War "Trotskyism" into seismic confusion. Years of political ferment produced two "Trotskyisms" - Shachtmanites and Cannonites. The tiny Irish Group in this document declared for Shachtman.

LONDON, Jan. 9 (By Mail)—The vicious police
regime of Northern Ireland has opened a campaign
of terrorization and repression against the Irish
Trotskyists, members of the Ulster section of the
Workers' International League. One comrade has been
blacklisted by the Belfast employers, another has been
deported to Southern Ireland, while a third has been
thrown in jail upon trumped-up accusations obviously
inspired by the Stalinists.
The first victim of this campaign was a comrade

Two distinct currents emerged after 1940 from the Trotskyism of Trotsky. The “official” “orthodox” Trotskyism of James P Cannon, E Mandel, Michel Pablo, Gerry Healy, Ted Grant, etc.

History records no greater crime than that of the Stalinist regime in its treatment of the victims in the concentration camps. Hitler's methods were not original. They ran parallel with, if they were not mere copies of those utilized by Stalin. If Hitler sent millions of people, primarily the Jews, into the gas chambers, the Russian camps have crushed, dehumanised and done to death more victims than all other concentration camps combined. For a time the war brought a decrease in the slave labor population of the lagers, as Stalin's hell-holes are called.

Introduction (2010)

Stalinism dominated and shaped the would-be left for two thirds of the 20th century.

Its consequences still warp and shape much of the would-be left, including organisations that are ostensibly anti-Stalinist. To a surprising extent, the left has still not properly come to terms with the lessons of Stalinism.

This review was originally published by the Labor and Working-Class History Association, and appears on their website here. To orders copies of the book, click here.

Ed's note, 1947:
From an Irish comrade, living in Dublin, we have received the following account of the problems facing the revolutionists of that country. We print below extracts from his interesting letter.

From The Militant, July 16, 1951