With the Second World War the picture was different. Firstly, the concepts among revolutionaries were different. Whereas as late as January 1917 Lenin, in a lecture on the 1905 revolution, could say 'we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution', the revolutionaries in the Second Imperialist War put the coming revolution on the order of the day. The mood of the population was vastly different. To give the classic example, there were massive strikes and a rising mood of revolutionary feeling up to June and July 1914 in Petrograd, but when war was declared the militant and revolutionary mood vanished and a massive demonstration in support of the war took its place. During the Second World War the holiday mood, was non-existent and chauvinist fever was at a very low ebb. True, there were other specific factors, such as the existence of Soviet Russia and the nature of German fascism in particular, but they were secondary to the over-riding moods and concepts.

It was in these conditions that the Proletarian Military Policy was propounded and the polemic arose within the Trotskyist movement. It is interesting in this connection to know that Lenin, also, had a military policy. In his article 'The Disarmament Slogan', speaking of the smaller and more democratic countries, he wrote:

'Therefore "not a penny, not a man", not only for a standing army but even for a bourgeois militia, even in countries like the United States, or Switzerland, Norway, etc.... We can demand popular election of officers, abolition of all military law, equal rights for foreign and native-born workers.... Further, we can demand the right of every hundred, say, inhabitants of a given country to form voluntary military training associations, with free elections of instructors paid by the state, etc. Only under these conditions could the proletariat acquire military training for itself and not for its slave owners, and the need for such training is imperatively dictated by the interests of the proletariat.'

This programme is only a pale shadow of Trotsky's PMP, and is presented as a counterweight to the disarmament slogans of the pacifists, but it does recognise the need for an independent military policy for the revolutionary left, though not giving it the centrality that a real struggle demands,

Starting from the premise of the reactionary nature of imperialism, believing (incorrectly) that it was the death agony of capitalism and, following on from this, that the issue of capitalism would be finally decided by the war, the PMP sharply posed a policy for power which was, however, an application and extension of the previous policy, ie, the Transitional Programme. It was the transitional programme during wartime with its own particular characteristics - universal militarism, etc. The concept was linked to the question of power, whereas not one of the revolutionary leaders during the First World War linked their concepts to the question of power; at the very best they hoped for it. It assumed the following - the reactionary nature of the war, that the transformation of society was on the order of the day, and the need for a policy to do this - the PMP.

All of these were rational and, in my opinion, correct. It the process is far more complex than any human being can totally evaluate, at least the great revolutionary establishes the basic principles and the general direction; the tactics were intended to be modified, as the captain of a ship does according to the conditions in which the ship operates. This has always been recognised by the great Marxists: Lenin, for example, when dealing with the range of possibilities, refers to the possibility of a second imperialist war. Trotsky in The USSR and the War raises the possibility of a bureaucratic-collectivist world, with the role of the revolutionary being to fight for reforms to protect the oppressed. Neither of them in any way accepted or believed in these possibilities, but neither totally ruled them out if the working class should fail to achieve the practical realisation of its struggle.

The difficulties within the Trotskyist movement emerged with the death of Leon Trotsky. Looking back in hindsight, whilst the problems that emerged were insurmountable themselves (as the Trotskyists could not hope to carry out the Socialist revolution) a lesser task was possible for small parties rooted in the working class. It is against this standard that the movement internationally will have to be judged. It was precisely our inability to evaluate the process as it began to develop, substituting cliches for thought, that exaggerated our weakness and prevented the movement from taking off.

The capitulation of France started off the process of wishful thinking. The revolutionary defeatists took it in their stride, as if nothing had happened. Revolutionary defeatism, the wish for the defeat of one's own bourgeoisie, was proved to be bankrupt, the consequences of that defeat being the throwing back of the revolutionary struggle for a number of years. Ironically, the American SWP, which proclaimed itself the leading and dominant force in Trotskyism, for some perverted reason also saw the defeat of France as part of the revolutionary process. The Manifesto it published in November 1940 under the banner of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International bore no relationship to reality. This, of course, laid the basis for the conflict inside the SWP and later between the SWP Majority and the WIL/ Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain.

The reality in France at the beginning of the war was that the majority of the bourgeoisie was counter-revolutionary defeatist, the working class was demoralised and dictatorial measures were being enacted against it. The articles written later by Sherry Mangan ('Terence Phelan') pointed out that there was fraternisation between the Germans and the French, not between German and French workers, but between German and French officers, and that a number of important and reactionary French capitalists were secretly supporting the Germans. As far as the working class was concerned, Harry Ratner shows that revolutionaries were being persecuted, that there was demoralisation among the soldiers, and that there were some minor revolts, as in the Maginot Line, but that these were suppressed, as was the information about them. The workers' conditions and wages were being brutally lowered and their hours massively increased. For fear of revolution in a period even when the working class was demoralised as a consequence of the Popular Front, the bourgeoisie was defeatist. This was the same French bourgeoisie that 26 years earlier at the Battle of the Marne had sent troops to the front in taxis to fight off the German offensive on Paris.

For if one looks at the defeat and the actions of the French bourgeoisie, they are related to the previous Popular Front policy of the French Social Democrats and Communists. There seems to be a law that if the working class fails to seize its revolutionary opportunities it pays the consequences - as in Germany 1918-19 and 1923, Spain in 1936, and France in 1936-37.

Equally ironic in this context was that a section of the movement which had supported the PMP failed to understand the process, and drew the conclusion that all the bourgeois states were defeatist. This affected the American SWP as well as the majority advocates of the PMP in Britain in the struggle during the events during the earlier part of the war.

From this a new situation emerged: the whole of Europe, excluding some relatively minor countries, was under national oppression and, moreover, under the iron hand of dictatorship. The whole concept of a transitional programme is that in a period in which the capitalist class has ceased to be progressive and has become reactionary, holding back the necessary rational development of human existence, the consciousness and actions of the progressive class - the working class - must be raised to the level of the struggle for power, requiring such a transitional programme.

This fundamental approach to the new situation in Europe seemed to have been forgotten, and the Trotskyists were thrown off course. To begin with the defeat was conceived as the road to revolution, and then, when the magnitude of the defeat of the working class was realised, a range of ideas, policies and programmes flooded out in the Western non-Fascist capitalist societies. The Three Theses of the IKD members in the United States written on 19 October 1941 reflected the most pessimistic and reformist policy in the movement and sparked off a debate on future policy towards Nazi-occupied Europe. This important period of history, in which the Trotskyists inside occupied Europe as well as in Britain and the USA were found theoretically wanting, will be dealt with later because the whole polemical developments were determined by events external to them.

The first major, and in a sense, decisive, event was Hitler's invasion of Soviet Russia. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 (with its hidden clauses) had achieved its objective as far as Hitter was concerned, and as the decapitation of the Red Army necessitated the building of a new army command, Stalin therefore acted as a junior partner and lackey of Hitler to give himself time to do this. Both the insufficient time and the quality of the men be had appointed as new commanders showed the level to which the Red Army had fallen. This was practically demonstrated in the Soviet-Finnish War. In fact it was only during the Second World War that a command leadership of a high and capable standard was created.

In itself this was neither a surprise nor a shock to the Trotskyist movement. Trotsky had envisaged it well before the war. Even the tactics towards this war had been worked out well beforehand by Trotsky with reference to the Soviet Union, the countries in alliance with the Soviet Union and the countries opposing the Soviet Union. He had even pointed out that Nazi Germany would be the main enemy. The problems with regard to the character of the Soviet Union emerged later. No one, not even Trotsky, envisaged the lengthy and heroic nature of the struggle, even though he had pointed out that the Soviet population in defence of its own country was a different kettle of fish from other states. To appreciate this point one needs only to read the articles he wrote in April 1940 for the News Chronicle, assessing the Soviet-Finnish War, though he could hardly have fully imagined the end result, that the Soviet Union would take the main brunt of the Nazi attack and then go on to occupy Berlin. Stalin himself was demoralised in the first month (Khrushchev gives a clear picture of Stalin's attitude of mind during the first month of war), and only after this did he become the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Armed Forces, a necessary precondition of all dictators in major wars.

The Russians suffered a series of massive defeats in the early months. The soldiers were ill-trained and demoralised and this applies even more to the officer caste, who were in dread of their lives as Stalin passed the buck by shooting the officers who carried out his policy, for example the Soviet 'Guderian', army general Pavlov. Yet already in 1936 Tukhachevsky had predicted the opening character of the war. The Russians were able to withstand tremendous blows, which would have eliminated every country in Europe if not in the world, because of space, the seemingly inexhaustible supply of manpower and, ironically, the dictatorial apparatus of Stalin. He both lowered the standard of living and increased both hours and intensity of work for the production of weapons of war, etc, in a manner no other country could have got away with. He equally played on patriotism for all it was worth. Many top-ranking German generals, including among others Field Marshals Von Rundstedt and Von Leeb, were for early withdrawal from Russia once it did not collapse from the hammer blows, because they realised that both space and man power were against them. There had been some local support for the German Nazis when they first entered Russia, in reaction to the brutally oppresive national regime of Stalin. In many are as of the Ukraine people welcomed the Germans with flowers, bread and salt. But this popular support they soon destroyed themselves, so that when they had to retreat every man's hand was against them, not merely the army, but the civilian population as well.

Whereas during the First Imperialist War the Western Front was the main and decisive centre of struggle, in the Second by far the main centre of struggle was the Eastern Front. This was the decisive factor in the future developments. The world's present structures and conflicts are largely determined by that fact. The policy of' the more competent bourgeois politicians was to supply Russia with enough arms and equipment to bleed both Russia and Germany to death. This was expressed by Colonel Moore-Brabazon in a famous speech which had to be officially repudiated. From a historical point of view the calculation misfired, and there was, moreover, a conflict in strategic policy between British and American imperialism, which, with the dominance of American power, assisted Stalin in his manoeuvres. And Stalin was not just an agent of imperialism: the sell-outs and deals had one purpose only-the preservation of himself and his bureaucracy, a proposition that Trotsky often repeated when he pointed out that the bureaucracy has a self interest, which history has since proved. When Tito broke with Stalin, when Mao broke with Stalin, and when Khrushchev denounced him, they did not become merely agents of imperialism.

Stalingrad

This independence of Stalin was first shown in a well known but not highly publicised event. After the encircling and destruction of an entire German army in Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943 even Hitler had second thoughts and started negotiations with Stalin. In June 1943 Molotov met Ribbentrop at Kirovograd, which was then inside the German lines, for a discussion about the possibilities of ending the war. The relationship was, however, different to 1939, for, whereas then Stalin acted as a junior partner and accomplice to remain outside the war, in 1943 the relationship was changed and the negotiations were between equals. The terms were unbridgeable. One side or the other had to gain a major concession which neither side, or rather neither dictator, was willing to give. Immediately afterwards, in July, the great battle of Kursk that had been prepared took place, and which was the decisive battle of the war. After their massive defeat the Germans lost all hope of winning the war and at best could only slow down the inevitable defeat.

From then onwards, maybe unconsciously at first, the whole relationship of the Soviet Union changed, not only with Germany but with the Western Allies as well. In spite of the arguments, of the leadership of the American SWP in particular, that Stalinism was capitulating to capitalism, reality had a different substance. The secondary manoeuvres and actions of Stalin were exaggerated as capitulation - such things as the medals and uniforms, the reactionary character of the patriotism, the liberalisation of the church for its brutal and unconditional support of the war, etc. A well known example of this is how Stalin sent a number of Jewish intellectuals and artists touring Britain and America, only to butcher the majority of them after the war.

In the negotiations that followed with the Allies Stalin took an increasingly aggressive stance, establishing spheres of influence, territorial adjustments, etc. But he had one basic and fundamental agreement with his capitalist allies: the destruction of revolution and of independent revolutionary movements. The difference in interpretation is summed up in the Warsaw Uprising. When the Russian troops were marching towards Warsaw, the internal army of the semi-feudal reactionary government in exile rose against the Nazis, hoping that when the Russian troops entered Warsaw it would have a large measure of control. The Red Army sat deliberately on the banks of the Vistula watching the Germans destroy the revolt, thereby altering the balance of power in Poland in favour of its own 'Lublin Government'. The issue was not one of morality, rights or justice, since, after all, the Polish Internal Army had sat on its own haunches watching the Nazis massacre the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but of power, and it was equally a warning to the Allies as to what was meant by 'spheres of influence'. The British may have spluttered, but the Americans knew what it meant. Whilst the primary and fundamental agreement of Stalin with the Allies was for the destruction and elimination of all independent revolutionary activity as well as independent revolutionary parties, it was also a warning to the capitalist parties within the Soviet sphere of influence to toe the line.

Yet the key and burning issue was Germany. The fear of revolution in Germany determined the policy and strategy with regard to it. Already in the 1939 discussions between Hitler and the French Ambassador the fear of revolution in Europe as a whole was acknowledged by both sides. That Germany seemed to be the key to the revolution was accepted by everyone, not only by the bourgeoisie. The RCP believed it to be so, and even both factions of the SWP. During the polemic about the future of Europe, a document presented to the Eleventh Convention of the SWP on 14 November 1944, declared: 'The German Revolution is the key to the European Revolution... '. It is in the context of this universal belief and fear that the strategy and tactics to be applied to Germany were agreed on between the Allied imperialists and the Stalinist bureaucracy-the destruction of any possibility of a German Revolution.

The demand agreed between them for the unconditional surrender of Germany was not a slogan but a policy actively carried out by all the Allies. As regards France, a deal was made with Admiral Darlan and General Giraud in which they tried to replace De Gaulle with Giraud because they (quite rightly) believed that De Gaulle reflected too independently the interests of the French military and bourgeoisie, In Italy a deal was made with Marshal Badoglio and King Victor Emmanuel III, and again there was no demand for an unconditional surrender: on the contrary, secret negotiations were carried on and a secret deal was made with sections of the regime against which they were supposed to be waging a war for democracy. In Germany, the attitude was completely different: no one had said that the only good Frenchman, or the only good Italian, was a dead one: no one put forward plans to suppress and dismember France or Italy, but this was proposed in the case of Germany.

Everyone alive at the time remembers how Ilya Ehrenburg coined the slogan 'the only good German is a dead one', and this was propagated a million times through all the media of communication. The fact that the Germans were the first to suffer under Hitler was forgotten: Hitler's barbarism was blamed upon the whole population of Germany. In the economic field this became the famous (or rather infamous) Morgenthau Plan, which proposed the dismemberment of Germany by the destruction of its economic base and by its ruralisation. These were no mere words intended to be taken lightly; they were the very centre of Allied policy. This destruction of the German economy and the classification of every German as a pariah made up their common counter-revolutionary policy to ensure that a German revolution did not take place. Even after the war was over there was a standing order prohibiting Allied troops from fraternising with the Germans, as I know from personal experience.

The difference of approach is reflected in the way that the very popular and extremely strongly-based coup of 20 July 1944 failed. Despite widespread support among the German officer caste and bourgeoisie, it was unable to light a spark because the mass of the population was demoralised and apathetic. Not that they supported Hitler, but they felt caught in a trap with no way out. In the case of France and Italy a deal was possible: in the German case the Morgenthau Plan was not a deal, and they quite logically and correctly feared the entry of Russian troops - the very barbarism of the German forces (particularly the Waffen SS) in Russia causing them to fear the Russian advance. A conscious policy was in fact carried out by Stalin of replacing assault troops after they had occupied an area with troops from the most backward regions with the resulting pillage, rape, murder, etc. The policy of unconditional surrender achieved its aim of destroying any possibility of a German revolution, a policy in whose formulation Stalin played a major part. Problems emerged later: both Stalin and the imperialist Allies were counter-revolutionary, but on a different basis, and for different reasons. But that was in the future.

The Trotskyist movement failed to understand the full meaning of the process: they were on firm ground when it came to the great victories of the Soviet Union, but for the Majority the counter-revolutionary policies of Stalin seemed to he merely a weakness and a capitulation to the imperialists. This was an illusion with which some of the capitalists may have begun but, unlike the majority of the Trotskyists, they soon realised it to be incorrect. The Cold War scenario emerged from this reconsideration.

In a sense this whole section is a diversion from the main purpose of this article, which is the development of the ideological and political outlook of the Trotskyist movement. But I feel that it is a necessary divergence because ideas, policies and actions do not come out of mid-air but are rooted in the events around them.

By 1942-43 the Proletarian Military Policy had disappeared as the centrepiece of Trotskyist policy both in Britain and the USA. It is true that a faint resolution on the PMP was submitted by the WIL and the Trotskyist Opposition to the new unified Trotskyist organisation, but this was more a formal gesture and an endorsement of the PMP rather than an active policy statement. Just as the Bolsheviks dropped revolutionary defeatism after 1917, so in reality the active element of the PMP was dropped by 1943. The reasons for thus entombing the PMP were the changed conditions and the changed character of the struggle.

The superficial wisdom about this is that the Bolsheviks took power and therefore revolutionary defeatism was correct, but that the Trotskyists after the Second World War failed to take power and therefore the Proletarian Military Policy was incorrect. This is untenable-even in the most abstract formalising. If the PMP was a failure, revolutionary defeatism was an even greater failure, as France in 1940 proved. We thus come to a position that either there was a realistic policy but none of us knew what it was or, even more absurdly, no policy could have worked, and therefore we should have done nothing. It is precisely a one-sided picture of reality that creates these assumptions.

Positive concept

There are three basic elements in any political position and the struggle to achieve it; the policy and programme, the organisation and the conditions within which the programme and the organisation both operate. We know that revolutionary defeatism was basically a negative concept, whilst the Proletarian Military Policy was positive-each of them flowing from the concepts they had of the future. The second question is the organisation to carry out the policy. Unfortunately there was a deliberate underestimation of the strength of the Bolshevik Party, for which Trotsky, for reasons which are understandable, was responsible as much as anyone else, but that is another matter. It is all very well quoting Zinoviev`s statement that he and Lenin were alone and the party was isolated, and to point to the splits and divisions, but at the end of the day the Bolshevik Party was well rooted within the Russian working class. To begin with the movement was well grounded in the Russian revolutionary tradition, and they were well rooted in the Russian working class, far more so than the Mensheviks, a fact reiterated a number of times by Lenin. They had parliamentary representatives to prove it, and the fact that they were an insignificant minority in the Duma hid the more important fact that they represented the historically progressive class, the working class.

When we compare this with the representation and strength of the Trotskyist movement, we start to see the question in its proper perspective. The Trotskyist movement outside Russia was by and large not only very small and fragmented but also petit bourgeois. There were pockets of a proletarian base, such as Flenu in Belgium and Minneapolis in the USA, but they were pockets and not a movement. The reasons are explicable, but that was of no assistance. The forces they also faced were unfortunately greater than the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks competed as one of the major parties, whereas we on the contrary were small groups competing against two major forces in the working class, one of which laid claim to the traditions of the Russian Revolution.

Trotsky hoped that events would develop in our favour by destroying the all-powerful forces of Social Democracy and Stalinism, and that the question of Soviet Russia would be resolved, and along with it that of the Stalinist parties; that the war would create conditions that would either expose Social Democracy or destroy it - either way creating the conditions for the massive growth of the Trotskyist movement. Historical developments proved Trotsky's prognosis false, but all Marxists have had some of their prognoses falsified by history. A reading of the writings of the myriad political commentators of the time shows that they were even more incorrect than Trotsky was. Although by 1942/3 the Proletarian Military Policy was put on the back burner by both the British and the American Trotskyist movement, it could have been relit with the ending of the war if the conditions making it applicable had emerged - but this never happened.