Trotsky and Fatalistic Marxism, by Geoff Hodgson (Spokesman Books 1975, 95p)
There is undoubtedly a need for the Trotskyist movement to review its history and seriously debate its fundamental ideas, It is, therefore, a useful thing for Spokesman Books to put out Hodgson's polemic, Unfortunately, however, this polemic mistakes its object at two crucial points, and thus is not very helpful in setting the terms for such a reappraisal.
To begin with, the very title 'Fatalistic Marxism' is very odd. I myself would argue that Trotskyism has been characterised by an excessive voluntarism. It is, of course, true that fatalism in theory is often a cover for an active will and provides a psychological mechanism supportive of continued struggle, Nonetheless, Trotskyism tends to voluntarism even in its theory, in that it commonly derives from its conception of the epoch the thesis that, since objective conditions are rotten ripe for capitalist collapse, the revolution requires merely the intervention of the 'subjective factor', and political activity is therefore devoted to solving the 'crisis of leadership', This is absolutely incompatible with fatalistic perspectives, because for fatalists there can be no problem with the subjective factor — purely objective determinations guarantee change automatically.
If one examines Hodgson's analysis of Trotsky's theories, one discovers that this charge of fatalism is based upon a rejection of Trotsky's economic analysis, starting with Trotsky's thesis of 1921 that the future of capitalist development would be marked by a downward curve subject to short term oscillations, and ending with the allegation that in the last years of his life he abandoned all caution and adopted a perspective of imminent catastrophe, Now I do not want to enter here on the substantial economic analysis. What I would say is that even if the economic perspective was wrong empirically this does not in the least show that philosophically Trotsky was a fatalist.
Hodgson thinks that he has done more than refute Trotsky's analysis empirically because he objects at the level of method to Trotsky's attempts to delineate an economic perspective. It is at this point that another confusion in Hodgson's polemic enters in. With the best will in the world I cannot but see his efforts in this direction as an attack on Trotsky for using Marx's method. The book is presented as an attack on a deviation from Marxism, but it turns out that Marx himself is the original deviant! It would have been confusing to have started out from the beginning with the object of refuting Marx rather than one of his followers.
This anti-Marxism of Hodgson becomes clear when we notice that time and time again he denies the validity of any attempt to theorise the course of capitalist development, on the ground that government intervention into the economy can reverse any such trend. Consider this extraordinary speculation about the inter-war period: 'It would have been feasible for the bourgeois democracies to have adopted Keynesian style economic measures of state intervention, and without necessarily extending their imperialist control of other territories or markets... An upward turn in capitalist development could have occurred after the First World War, and a slump of the severity of the 1930s was not inevitable' (p. 24). Similarly the recent long boom is traced to a decision of governments to maintain full employment (p. 56).
Hodgson objects to Trotsky's 'determinist understanding of the movement of the capitalist economy... as being subject to laws of development, of a necessary rather than a contingent nature' (p. 25), What is this but an objection to Marxism itself? Of course one must admit that the laws of capitalist development are modified in their expression by contingencies, and Trotsky himself was well aware of this, as is shown by his objection to Kondratiev, which is quoted by Hodgson without seeming fully to take account of it (p. 20).
Eventually Hodgson almost comes clean, by denouncing Marx's famous Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and characterising the base-superstructure model, etc., as 'mechanistic and vulgar conceptions' (p. 30). He also argues in more detail against Marx's thesis on the falling rate of profit.
Complementary to Hodgson's characterisation of Trotsky's economic perspectives as fatalistic is his assertion that revolution is independent of the course of economic development. The major sin in Trotsky is this: 'It is the problematic which insists that the soul of revolutionary Marxism must depend on the prognosis of the ultimate stagnation of the system, as an automatic consequence of its own in-built laws of development' (p. 35). Once again most people would judge that this is Marx's own position, not some foible of Trotsky's.
For Hodgson, on the contrary, capitalism will be overthrown as a result of a 'crisis of legitimation'. Would it be terribly 'mechanistic and vulgar' to inquire how a crisis might occur if capitalism continues successfully delivering the goods?
Of course, a revolutionary crisis is more than an economic event, and may not coincide with a recession for example, But Trotsky, above all others, had the deepest understanding of the process of revolution, as his leadership of the Russian Revolution and his History of that event show, Trotsky was no specialist in economics, and banal on philosophy, but he was a genius at understanding the social psychology of classes, Yet Hodgson almost fails to mention that Trotsky alone understood the phenomenon of fascism, for example.
Hodgson calls for the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Yet that is just where Trotsky excels, where he should be studied, and where he should be emulated. (The 'timeless' analyses of some Trotskyist sects are something else, of course). Hodgson cannot deny that on crucial questions such as the Vietnam war and the 1968 events the intervention of the Fourth International was soundly based, and its appreciation of the conjuncture infinitely more scientific as well as infinitely more revolutionary than that of the reformist or Stalinist parties.
It is true that in the past the Trotskyist movement has underestimated capitalism's capacity for recuperation, and talk of a 'crisis of leadership' needs to be abandoned insofar as it encourages illusions in short cuts which have no objective reality, Some Trotskyists were idiots but many were brilliant and devoted revolutionaries, If they attracted a handful of followers and lost most of these by the mid-Fifties, this was not due to this or that wrong 'conception'; it was primarily due to the recalcitrance of objective conditions, and, in turn, the negative effects of this resulted in the degeneration of individuals and whole groups.
A new leadership comes into being as a result of large-scale social upheavals — that much should be obvious. On the other hand, a dialectical appreciation of the unity of objective and subjective (not their mechanical addition as in so many schemas) is not the same thing as fatalism. No one can deny that, at least in the imperialist countries, the social democratic and 'communist' parties are played out, and that therefore a new leadership will be at the head of future revolutionary developments, In this respect the efforts of the Trotskyist movement to keep the Marxist programme alive and up to date, together with its practical experience of intervention, within its powers, in the life of the class, will surely make a contribution. What needs to be avoided is that misplaced concreteness which translates the revolutionary conception of the epoch into imminent catastrophism and the idea that one has to merely proclaim the party for the class to fall behind.
Incidentally, when Hodgson comforts himself at the end by reflecting on the resurgence of Marxist analysis in Britain, what objective conditions does he suppose produced it?