A movement is more than a question of individuals. It is mainly a question of ideas, of principles, of tactics, of creating a movement to achieve the ideals that flow from the principal ideas. It is in this context that PMP must be understood. The PMP split the Trotskyist movement internationally. For example, the Revolutionary Socialist League, the majority British Trotskyist group, was hopelessly split on the PMP with a large majority opposing it, in spite of the fact that it was the official section of the Trotskyist movement. To fortify their opposition they glorified and misunderstood Lenin's revolutionary defeatism, counterposing it to Trotsky's positions, particularly those he held during the First World War.

As a result Lenin's revolutionary defeatism became the burning issue of the day, to be counterposed to the PMP. Since that time, however, there have been a number of studies of Lenin's defeatism. The ones I consider as the most important are Hal Draper's in The New International in the early 1950s, Brian Pearce's in Labour Review in 1961, and JP Joubert's 'Revolutionary Defeatism' in Cahiers Léon Trotsky, and which appears elsewhere in this journal. They all have strong points and they all equally present it in its historical context. Joubert goes beyond the others in giving a history of the stages that led up to the Second World War and he also comments that 'Lenin used the term "defeatism" at this time in more than one sense'. Pearce points out that in August-September 1917, when German troops had taken Riga and were marching on Petrograd, the former Tsarist generals in Kerensky's High Command were counter-revolutionary defeatists who wished to see Petrograd taken. The troops in this sector, especially the Lettish brigades, who were strongly influenced by the Bolsheviks, were defencist and fiercely resisted the German offensive. Equally, they point out that the differences between Lenin and the other revolutionary internationalists such as Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg were mainly of propaganda and tactics, and not of principle, a point reiterated by Deutscher.

The more recent discussion of the arguments of Lenin and Trotsky shows the narrowness of both knowledge and understanding that many of our comrades then had. During the earlier war there were three basic differences between Lenin and Trotsky - the character of the future revolution, the question of the party and the application of an anti-imperialist foreign policy. Anyone who deals with that period and fails to realise the interplay of the three has understood nothing. On one point each both stood firm - Lenin on the party, and Trotsky on the character of the future revolution. Furthermore, their roles were different. Trotsky was a brilliant theorist and propagandist, but Lenin was not only a theorist and propagandist, he was also the founder and builder of a party and its chief organiser, and the harshness of his language and the absolutist character of its tone, which hid the extreme flexibility of his tactics, was because he had a party to which he had to give direction and purpose.

The first two points were resolved in the process of the struggle, Trotsky was compelled by events to move to Lenin's position of a hard revolutionary party (the Bolshevik Party) and not a loose, all-embracing party. This quotation from Lenin proves the point:

'The pressure of facts has increasingly compelled Nashe Slovo and Trotsky, who reproach us for our "factionalism", to take up the struggle against the OC and Chkeidze. The trouble, however, is that it was only "under pressure" (of our criticism and the criticism of the facts) that the Nashe Slovo supporters retreated from position to position but they have not yet said the decisive word. Unity or a split with the Chkeidze faction? They are still afraid to decide!"

Whilst this was a criticism of Trotsky, the main thrust of the article is an attack on Martov and his defence of Chkeidze. It was published in December 1916. By the time Trotsky had returned to Petrograd in May 1917 he was almost completely in line with and in support of the Bolshevik Party. Equally by then Lenin had come over to the idea of the workers taking power through the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets' '

In the earlier part of the war Lenin had clearly and precisely declared that the next revolution in Russia would he a bourgeois revolution. Read, for example, Socialism and War, which was written in 1915. The argument was presented more sharply that year in his article 'On the Two Lines in the Revolution', a strong but frankly incorrect interpretation of the future pattern of the struggle in the Russian revolution, and in this context he therefore accused Trotsky of 'underestimating the peasantry', assuming an independent role for the peasantry as expressed in the slogan 'the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry'.

Nevertheless, unlike the Mensheviks, Lenin always recognised the key role of the proletariat in the coming revolution, and was therefore rapidly able to adapt to reality. The April Theses, Lenin's defence of his new position against the old Bolshevism of Kamenev (the practice he had propagated before the February 1917 revolution), expressed the new line in the slogan 'All Power to the Soviets', which was the basis for Trotsky's entry into the Bolshevik Party. The changes in these two positions, of Trotsky on the party and of Lenin on the character of the revolution, were the basis for the coming together of Lenin and Trotsky. As for the third part, the character of the struggle against war, it was resolved by historical events.

The slogan of revolutionary defeatism arose again in the second imperialist war, but mainly as a criticism and an attack upon Trotsky's PMP, attacking it using the policies and arguments of the past on the given assumption that Lenin was correct, his policy was precise and clear and, obviously, they understood it - an assumption on the part of some of those I have mentioned which on further reflection leaves a large element of doubt. Equally, as every struggle for national independence has its own distinctive characteristics and must be examined individually and concretely, so every imperialist war has its own characteristics and must also be seen in context.

There seems to be a false position expressed by many of the opponents of the PMP that the Bolshevik Party, as a hard, solid party, quickly and almost automatically reacted to the imperialist war, a picture that Lenin unfortunately seems to create in his writings of the period. The facts, however, contradict this and sufficient material has been unearthed since to destroy this cosy assumption. Firstly, the action and role of German Social Democracy in particular took them by surprise - for example the well-known article in the issue of Vorwarts supporting the war was believed by Lenin to be a forgery. If this applied to Lenin it was even worse among other leading elements of the party. In the early days of the war there was confusion among the Bolshevik members of the Duma, with Kamenev disagreeing with elements of the policy of revolutionary defeatism. The 'Bolshevik Committee of Organisations Abroad' disintegrated. Of the five members on it, two enlisted in the French army, and a third member withdrew. Lenin and Zinoviev remained as the only representatives of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks abroad to elaborate the war programme of the party.

In France, the 'Bolshevik Group of Paris' did not stand up any better than the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. There were 'defencists' in all three parties, and since the Russians do nothing by halves, most of the 'defencists' went off to enlist in the French army.

The first and basic position of Lenin, therefore, was to establish a hard and clear line on the war based on the resolutions of the Second International at its Stuttgart, Copenhagen and Basle congresses. He gave this the sharpest expression in order to build the necessary theoretical propaganda foundation on which the Bolsheviks could base their fight. It was made so distinctive that elements of difference arose between Lenin and other people and organisations, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as well as Trotsky. Revolutionary defeatism as expounded by Lenin had contained in it two distinctive elements, and it was particularly over the second element that differences arose, The first element, that of' carrying on the class struggle to the bitter end, even it it causes the military defeat of your own oppressor (ie, the defeat of your own bourgeoisie is the lesser evil) was more or less accepted by the other revolutionary groups, as in Liebknecht's famous slogan 'The main enemy is at home', or 'Turn the imperialist war into a civil war'. Although in slightly different language, this concept was accepted as an aim by most revolutionary groups.

The second element in Lenin's revolutionary defeatism, from which the basic differences arose, was advocating the military defeat of your own imperialist state as a means of bringing on the revolution. Here again, there were elements of two different strands, first, with reference to Russia alone, the most backward and reactionary state, headed by a barbaric and feudal absolutism, and, secondly, as applied generally to all imperialist states.

Among the earliest and sharpest expressions of this argument is the article 'The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War', which is a criticism of other oppositions to imperialist war, in particular Trotsky's, and in this context is raised the character of the future revolution. These quotations give the flavour: 'Wartime revolutionary action against ones own government indubitably means, not only desiring its defeat, but really facilitating such a defeat' What are the distinctive actions, i.e., distinctive from the rest of the revolutionary opposition? He carries on: Discerning reader". note that this does not mean "blowing up bridges", organising unsuccessful strikes in the war industries, and in general helping the government defeat the revolutionaries. What distinct, practical actions flow from it I don't know because in reality he doesn't tell us. Instead he repeats his arguments about the intertwining of the two distinct aspects of' revolutionary defeatism:

'A revolution in wartime means civil war; the conversion of a war between governments into a civil war, is on the one hand, facilitated by, military reverses ("defeats") of governments; on the other hand, one cannot actually strive for such a conversion without thereby facilitating defeat.'

Essentially it is a theoretical and propaganda argument with no really distinctive action from the rest of the revolutionary opposition to the imperialist war. And it is precisely on this point - practical action - that the PMP comes into its own

The theoretical flaw in linking the two aspects of defeatism was shown in France in June 1940. However, it would be totally incorrect to believe that Lenin had a rigid concept: the language may make it seem so, but the reality was somewhat different, reflecting his keen flexibility even on this question. For example, during the debate about Brest Litovsk, in reply to Karnkov he declared, "We were defeatists at the time of the Tsar, but we were not defeatists at the time of Tseretelli and Chernov" a fact pointed out by both Pearce and Joubert. What is however, more of interest is that, as we have already noted, when German troops were marching on Petrograd in August-September 1917, Kerensky's generals were counter-revolutionary defeatists whereas the Bolshevik-influenced troops were military defencists.

That the Bolsheviks were right in trying to defend Petrograd, the centre of the revolution during a period of dual power, is accepted by everyone as being undoubtedly correct.

Nevertheless, the positions and arguments must be understood within the period, the character of the war and the conditions under which the war was taking place. As Trotsky was fond of saying, truth is concrete, and Lenin's policy at the time expresses this thought quite clearly, unlike the so-called revolutionary defeatists who in their minds made the Second World War a re-run of the First. So while Lenin's concept of revolutionary defeatism was based on the Franco- Prussian and Russo-Japanese wars, re-emphasised by the policy statements of the Second International, it soon became obvious that on the major and decisive fronts it was instead a static war with massive slaughter, a war of attrition with millions being killed.

This caused a growing opposition to the war. There was a growing mood of revolt, not only among revolutionary politicians but also among the soldiers and sailors as well as among the civilian population. This applied to all the major countries (with the possible exception of the USA, because of its late entry), where there were growing revolts of military units during the last two years of the war. For example, after the Nivelle Offensive in 1916 there were revolts of French frontline troops that were brutally put down by Petain, with hundreds of soldiers being shot almost out of hand. The Russian troops revolted in Marseilles. There were revolts in the German army and navy, and even in Britain there were small revolts - a growing tempo of revolts among all the armies and navies.

In this context revolutionary defeatism as regards its second aspect had a valid sense. In this setting military defeat applied to all countries, unlike what Trotsky declared, for it meant the breakdown of the imperialist war at its weakest point. The concept had a validity in this particular war, but was not a universal tactic for all imperialist wars. The continuous and bloody attrition-type of struggle on the Western and Eastern fronts laid the conditions for such a mood. The pattern of the Second World War was, however, different, with the overwhelming bulk of the struggle-and the bloodshed -taking place on the Eastern front, creating different conditions and moods which needed a different approach. In the final analysis the revolution and its success depended on a revolutionary party. The final defeat of German imperialism in 1918, whilst creating revolutionary conditions, did not bring about a successful German revolution, The revolutionary mood penetrated all combatants, even the United States with its infamous Palmer Raids, but only the Bolsheviks carried out a successful revolution.

The history of the arguments about revolutionary defeatism is well-documented by Joubert. It is clear that the part of the policy whereby a revolutionary wishes for the military defeat of his own government was basically side-stepped by Trotsky, who accepted a modified version at best, that it can only apply to one government. We, however, are not faced with that dilemma which was caused by political infighting and not by the arguments themselves. We can say that this particular argument is invalid as a universal law applied to every imperialist war.

However, it did have a certain justification in the First World War. This does not mean that Liebknecht's arguments and slogans were not equally valid. But it did have a justifiable basis in the fact that the First World War was a static war based on trench warfare where millions were being slaughtered as well as large numbers being injured, many seriously, and where a crescendo of revolt was emerging among all combatant countries and where the collapse of the weakest link would start a revolutionary movement. Although I have not mentioned the mood and feeling of the civilian population, nonetheless a corresponding mood developed there strongly influenced by the brutality of war.