Front an historical it negative point of view, the fact that Trotskyism remains and grows whilst the Right Opposition, Maoism, Titoism, etc, have disappeared, proves the solid foundation built by Trotsky. But an example of the quality of our thinking was the argument between Mandel and Toriv Cliff as to whether a boom was emerging precisely when the post-war boom was taking off. Mandel argued that it was riot happening and tried to justify his position as Trotskyism by arguing that the original version of Capital had a different meaning than the English translation. Unfortunately for him he was arguing against Cliff, who probably had as good a knowledge of German as he. When we get to the point that a competent economist tries to argue that a boom is not emerging when it is developing in front of his eyes we realise the intellectual crisis of Trotskyism.

The question of the boom was also related in its own way to the possibility of a bourgeois democratic regime and its length and stability. To begin with the arguments about the regimes of bourgeois democracy related to the political situation that emerged after the war. The SWP Minority and afterwards the RCP Majority, pointed to the existence of such types of regime after the First World War, where they rested not on a solid material basis, but on the political superstructure, counterposing this to the concept of Bonapartism, which, whilst generally accepted by the SWP, was given its sharpest expression by Pierre Frank. The original concept, justifiable on the basis of available knowledge, held that what would emerge after the war would be an economy very much inferior to the 1918-39 period, and that the regimes of bourgeois democracy would be a mere spasm, providing no solid future foundation for bourgeois democracy. The polemic thus become an argument about a re-run of 1918-39 in a modified form, and was not only about what regimes would arise after the war, but also about the function of these regimes. The Minority argued that because of the relationship of forces a bourgeois-democratic regime would arise, albeit extremely unstable, whose function would be to halt the process of revolution and to carry out the counter-revolution in a democratic form since the establishment of a regime of military dictatorship was not possible. The sharpest expression of this formula, though based upon the arguments of the SWP Minority, was that of the RCP Majority, of a 'bourgeois democratic counter-revolution in the period of decline of the bourgeoisie'. Although this was vastly superior to the argument of the SWP and the IEC of the Fourth International, insofar as it corresponded closer to reality, it was, nonetheless, inherently flawed. The essence of the bankruptcy of the concept of the Majority was shown in an incident that had more the quality of farce than of' realism. The April 1946 Conference in Paris was organised as an illegal meeting - in a relatively democratic society.

The fundamental crisis of Trotskyism emerged from the confusion and the inability to understand the war and the immediate post-war world. This was crucial. It is true that the fifties struck a heavy blow at our movement, and whilst no movement can avoid being affected by major external events, how one comes out of it is the measure of the quality of a movement. The Bolshevik Party also suffered major blows after 1905, and furthermore made serious mistakes, such as boycotting the Duma, but because its basic concepts were sound it overcame them, and already by 1914 it was growing fast with a number of deputies in the Duma. But the contrary is true of the Trotskyist movement, instead of building further on the foundations laid by Trotsky it has confused and dissipated them.

The two fundamentals on which our failure is most sharply shown are the Russian question, including Eastern Europe, and the development of the capitalist economy.

Whilst the thesis of- the bourgeois-democratic counter-revolution seemed to be adequate, and was far superior to that of the Bonapartist military dictatorship expounded by the majority of the SWII, it soon became clear that it was not adequate in itself. Counter-revolution, after all, is the mirror image of revolution, so to speak, and is therefore limited in time and space.

It soon became clear after the war that a new situation had already emerged. Felix Morrow noted that the post-war period was not a re-run of 1918-39. The policy and actions of reformism in particular were flourishing because they were based on a sound material basis. This new phenomenon not only destroyed many of the organisations that were unable to understand the change. It also destroyed the best and most capable elements - not only Morrow, who became a rabid anti-Trotskyist, or Van Heijenoort, who dropped out arid became theoretically anti-Marxist, but almost the entire leadership of the Majority of the RCP, whose leading members capitulated to bourgeois reformism.

The destruction of the RCP reflected this theoretical collapse of its leadership: the bankruptcy of the official leadership of the Fourth International took a different form - low level thinking and empirical changing after the event,

New epoch

Yet the problems that they faced were in and of themselves not new, even if this was a fundamentally different period from that of' 1918-39. Already during the early 'twenties the Bolsheviks themselves had become involved in many of these problems. Bukharin was taken up in further interpreting the role of the state, using as his basis the experience of Germany during the First World War. But the most important polemic was between Trotsky and Kondratiaev, based upon the statistics and diagram of the development of capitalism that had been published in The Times. In 'The Curve of Capitalist Development' published in 1923 as part of the continuing argument, Trotsky quotes Engels: 'It is self evident that this unavoidable neglect of contemporary changes in the economic situation, of the very basis of all the proceedings subject to examination, must be a source of error’, (his emphasis) Developing the argument further, he writes:

'But when a serious change occurs in the situation, all the more so a sharp turn, such general explanations reveal their complete inadequacy, and become wholly transformed into empty truisms. In such cases it is invariably necessary to probe analytically much more deeply in order to determine the qualitative aspect, and if possible also to measure quantitatively the impulse of economics upon politics. These "impulses" represent the dialectical terms of the "tasks" that originate in the dynamic foundations and are submitted for solution in the sphere of the superstructure."

The arguments about bourgeois democracy without a material base become empty truisms when we have the unique phenomenon that whilst Marx in Capital could argue about the historic function and need for a reserve army of unemployed, Western Europe, including Britain, was so short of workers that millions were brought into Europe, guest workers in Germany, France, etc, and immigrants into Britain. Again, the material standard of living increased fairly rapidly; in other words, the material foundation for reformism in the advanced countries existed. It was precisely this problem that needed to be analysed and understood, and the policy, programme and tactics that flowed from it.

This process of the curve of capitalist development has been relatively lately raised by Mandel in Late Capitalism and by Richard B Day, in my opinion both incorrectly.

The assumption that imperialism is the final stage of capitalism is being proved incorrect. Many factors on which it rested have been invalidated by events, such as the colonial empires, and the dominance of finance capital. Similarly, examining modern capitalism without taking the Stalinist bloc into account is absurd. In this context it is interesting that both Rudolf Hilferding (the father of the theory of imperialism) and Leon Trotsky were both moving away from the position that it was imperialism and no more. They were moving in different directions, but both questioned the continuing development of imperialism. For example, in the introduction to his Stalin Trotsky equated the then period (1940) with a renaissance period, and said: 'The epoch of the Renaissance was an epoch of struggles between two worlds'. The article The USSR and War also posed the problem. Van Heijenoort refers to Trotsky developing and changing his concepts of the period ahead. Trotsky was not pessimistic and when his critics tried to imply that The USSR and War was a pessimistic document he thought that the issue should be resolved by the war. His time scale was wrong, but the basic concept is still valid; in spite of Van Heijenoort's beliefs, the working class has not been defeated. This digression from the basic argument about the period is just to point out that such a reassessment is within the revolutionary Marxist tradition.

Already in 1940 Trotsky was posing the question of the struggle of the social systems and, although the idea was still in the development stage, it is clear in which direction he was moving. The development of political and economic events after the war showed that our concepts, based upon pre-war events, were out of touch with reality. It is as if Trotsky himself had posed the question in 'The Curve of Capitalist Development': `But when a serious change occurs in the situation, all the more so a sharp turn, such general explanations reveal their complete inadequacy, and become transformed into empty truisms’ Our answers became empty truisms based upon pre-war factors. The need as advocated to 'probe analytically much more deeply' was not done in most cases, and only in the last 10-15 years has some serious effort been put in, in my opinion incorrectly, since Mandel tried both to move and to standstill at the same time.

In my opinion what Trotsky called 'the curve of' capitalist development' and Kondratiaev a cycle (though they are not identical in shape) was a cycle, not the internal business cycle of Kondratiaev, but a structural cycle based upon internal and external factors that stabilised a new dominant economic pattern (in this case no longer imperialism but a new type of capitalist structure). An examination of the structure of the economy today and the imperialism of pre-1914 shows vast and fundamental differences, not just a difference based upon the historical development of a process, but radical structural changes. The five basic points that Lenin put forward as a summary of his definition of imperialism no longer correspond to reality.

The colonial empires, the sources of raw material and the surplus exploitation of the `colonial areas' no longer play the role they did, even if elements still exist. Similarly, despite the fact that the big monopolies have grown larger and even more powerful, overriding them all is the role of the state. Finally, and most important of all, we have a major conflict and competing social systems that have emerged, which has supplied the political motive (although there are economic factors as well) for the dominance of the state.

Each of these economic cycles, or, as Trotsky wrote, 'curves', has two major segments, the upward segment and the semi-stagnant segment, and this is demonstrated by the development of the last couple of hundred years. This is where we went wrong: we confounded the second segment of imperialism with the first segment of the new epoch, or, as I call it, étatism. It was precisely because of this pattern of economic development that reform had a glorious heyday. The standard of living increased rapidly, and illusions even faster. The destruction of the RCP was based upon the failure of the leadership to understand the process.

But in a sense this is secondary to the basic problem of understanding the historical process and the ability, based upon this understanding, to change the world. Although the term 'imperialism' has acquired a certain image, and it is not unnatural to use it in the way that Lenin used the term 'Workers and Peasants' Government', imperialism meant more than that. Our basic and broad world outlook flowed from this concept; the theory of Permanent Revolution, for example, can only be conceived during the period of imperialism. Therefore, and herein lie the weakness and confusion of the present day Trotskyist theories, only on the basis of this new epoch can our theories emerge. Our theories and actions must be examined on this premise. To note a few:

1. The Permanent Revolution must be argued and applied according to the period of étatism and not imperialism.

2. The national question and the struggle for national independence must be understood and applied according to this period and not to imperialism or the middle of the nineteenth century.

3. Our understanding of the Soviet bloc, etc, must be based upon the same premises.

Understanding is not the be-all and end-all, but without that understanding we cannot move in the right direction.

All this may seem a far cry from the original focus of this article, the Proletarian Military Policy. But it was during the Second World War when the character and weakness of the present Trotskyist movement emerged, and the PMP cannot be investigated in isolation from the rest of the policies of the movement. The problems encountered with the PMP very much exemplified the general problems the movement faced at the time. Perhaps we were not strong enough to apply the Proletarian Military Policy, but our inability really to understand the events which unfolded during the war lies at the heart of our present weaknesses.