Britain
LEON TROTSKY
Britain and Russia
it were, to the small amount of survivals of barbarism in those | The article below is part of a speech entitled Through What
countries. On this idea is built up the entire philosophy of Stage Are We Passing', delivered by Trotsky on 21 June 1924
international Menshevism. Allow me to deal, even though only and reprinted in the collection Zapad i Vostok (West and Fast),
in very general terms, with this question, which is of the highest Moscow, 1924. The translation, by Brian Pearce, first appeared
importance
in Fourth International, summer 1964. It is reprinted by kind
At the congress of the Communist International one of the permission of the translator.]
weakest of the European parties is certainly the British
Communist Party, The American party is even weaker, truc
but we are talking for the moment only about Europe. The The Strength of the Communist Party and the Level of Culture
strongest party is our party. Then comes the German party, and in a Country
then the French. What in reality explains the fact that in such a
powerful, cultured, educated, civilized, etc. When I spoke recently ar Sokolniki, at the jubilee gathering of
Britain, the Communist party still exists as a mere propagandist educational workers, I was asked a question of great
society, not yet possessing the power to play an active part in importance in relation to principles, a question closely
politics? In order to answer in a radical way the explanation connected both with the international situation, in the widest
at first glance so simple and fitting — that Communism is sense of the word, and with the Fifth Congress of the
directly proportionate to backwardness and barbarism, Communist International which is now taking place. And
explanation which expresses the whole wisdom of Menshevism, instead of making a hundred-and-first or thousand-and-first
the
describe
so-called
comprehensively
attempt
I will recall a few other phenomena and institutions in the life of
Great Britain. In Britain, there is — T ask you not to forget it — 'international situation", I am going to give, even though only
a monarchy, whereas there is none here or in France or in in broad outline, an answer to that question of principle which
Germany. Now, a monarchy cannot be depicted from any point was put to me at Sokolniki and which I will now tell you abour.
of view as an expression of the highest culture, as one of the The note I received is in my pocket — here it is: 'Comrade
highest attainments of mankind — even MacDonald doesn't do Trotsky, please explain why the most advanced capitalist countries have the weakest Communist parties (USA. Britain)
thai, he keeps quiet about it, politely and diplomatically holds
his tongue, and doesn't say that a sign of the high cultural level and are furthest from the social revolution. This problem
of Britain is that there, in contrast to barbarous Russia, they worries me very much and 1 request you to explain it.! That is the question.
have a monarchy. In Britain there is still to this day an The answer to it is the key to the international question,
aristocracy enjaying distinctions of rank. There is a House of
Lords. In Britain, finally, the church, or rather the churches, broadly understood, that is, both from the standpoint of the
wield tremendous influence in all spheres of life. There is no relations betwcen the various states and the relations between
country in Europe where church influence in political, social the capitalist states and the Soviet Republic and from the
and family life is so great as in Great Britain. Over there, for a standpoint of the development of the revolution throughout the
man to say that he does not belong to a church, does not go to world. In the last analysis these are, after all, two aspects of one
church, and even more, that he does not believe in God, and the same problem...
requires quite exceptional personai courage.
How then can it be explained that the most advanced and
So it is difficult there, in each separate case, to break through cultured countries have weak Communist parties, while, on
the old, dense web of hypocrisy and clerical prejudices and the the contrary, our country, which cannot, unfortunately, be
worldly customs which are based on this hypocrisy and these called the most cultured in Europe, has a very strong
prejudices. None of you will say, I hope, that the influence of Communist party, which rules the state? The writer of the note
the church or of the churches on social consciousness is an says that this problem worries him. And that is quite
expression of human progress. Thus it turns out that in Britain, understandable. We know that international Menshevism.
alongside of the fact that the Communist party is exceptionally starting with our own Russian Mensheviks, builds upon this
weak, there are to be found such other facts, not matters of contradiction its chief "accusation'
against international
indifference for us. as the existence of a monarchy, an communism and against the Soviet Republic. You see, if this
aristocracy, a House of Lords and a tremendous influence of contradiction be taken in a simple way, so to speak logically. mechanically, then you are not far from the conclusion that
religion in politics, in social life, and in everyday affairs. And if
and
Communism
15
of... backwardness
expression
you approach Britain one-sidedly from this aspect, that is, from
the aspect of the monarchy, the House of Lords, the barbarism. The more backward a country is, you deduce from your first glance at the problem, the stronger is Communism in
aristocracy, landlordism and church influence, then you would
doubtless say that the most barbarous and backward country in that country, whereas super-civilized countries like Britain and
Europe is Britain. That would be as true as the statement of the America have very weak Communist parties, in proportion, as
21
country as
22
Mensheviks that Communism is a product of backwardness; that is to say, it would be as untrue, as one-sided, as false.
Can one really agree that Britain is the most backward country in Europe? No, this idea cannot at all be fitted into the framework of our general picture of Britain. In Britain technique is at a very high level, and technique is decisive in human life. America, true, has outstripped Britain in the field of technique: the daughter of British culture has raced ahead of her mother along the line of technique. Before the war Germany was rivalling Britain more and more threatening to outstrip and in certain hranches of industry actually outstripping Britain. But today, after the defeat of Germany, Britain leads Europe conomically. British science, literature and art have played and are playing a role of the first order in the development of human thought and human creative achievement. How can one find one's way out of this contradiction? For a contradiction stares us in the face: on the one hand, high technique, science,
monarchy, aristocracy, House of Lords, power of religious prejudices over people's minds.
What conclusion can be drawn? This conclusion, that there is no single yardstick with which one can measure the development of a country in every sphere, and on the basis of that measurement make a uniform evaluation covering all aspects of social life. Development is contradictory, In certain spheres a country achieves tremendous successes, but it happens quite often that by these very successes that country holds back its own development in other spheres.
Let me speak concretely about this matter. Britain was the first country to take the road of capitalist development and won, thanks to that fact, the hegemony of the world market in the nineteenth century. The British bourgeoisie became, again thanks to this fact, the richest, strongest and most enlightened of the bourgeoisies. These conditions enabled it, as we know, to create a privileged position for the upper strata of the British working class and thereby to blunt class antagonisms. The British working class is becoming conscious of itself as an independent class hostile to the bourgeoisie much more slowly than the working class of other countries with less powerful bourgeoisies.
Thus it turns out that the growth of the British bourgeoisie, the most advanced bourgeoisie in Europe, having taken place in exceptionally favourable conditions, has for a long time held back the development of the British proletariat. The slow and organic" growth of technique in England, and the fact that the Reformation and the bourgeois revolution happened close together in time, held back the work of critical thought in relation to the church. The British bourgeoisie developed under the protection of ancient institutions, on the one hand adapting itself to them and on the other subjecting them to itself. gradually, organically,
in an evolutionary way.
revolutionary upheavals of the seventeenth century were profoundly forgotten. In this consists what is called the British tradition. Its bas u featureis conservatism. More than anything else the British bourgeoisie is proud that it has not destroyed old bullings and old beliefs, but has gradually adapted the old royal and noble castle to the requirements of the business firm. In this castle, in the corners of it, there were its ikons, its symbols, its fetishes, and the bourgeoisie did not remove them. It made use of them to consecrate its own rule. And it laid down from above upon its proletariat the heavy lid of cultural The British Proletariat
and our Proletariat
The British working class has developed quite differently from ours. Our young proletariat was formed in a period of some 50 years, mainly from peasants and handicraftsmen who had lived in the countryside, along with their fathers and grandfathers, in ancient surroundings, in economic backwardness, ignorance and religious prejudices. Capital ruthlessly seized the peasant lad or youth by the scruff of the neck and at once flung him into the cauldron of factory life. The change in his conditions took place catastrophically, When the young
peasant felt the blast of the factory's steam, he at once began to think about who he was and where he was. It gained ascendancy over him all the more casily because he had no conservative idcas: the old village notions did not fit at all; he needed a complete and radical chenge in his whole outlook on the world.
With the British worker things went quite differently. His father and his grandfather were workers, and his great-grandfathers and remoter ancestors were mall artisans. The British worker has a family tree, he knows who his ancestors were, he has a family tradition. This is also a kind of "culture", bur it is expressed in the fact that in his conselousness he drags around with him many of the prejudices of his ancestors. For him, the British worker, there was not this sudden, sharp, catastrophic transition from the closed little world of the village to modern industry: he has developed organically
ancestors into gradually changing conditions of factory life and etc.: on the other,
urban culture. In his mind there still to this day sit old, medieval craft ideas and prejudices, only modified in form and adapted to the conditions of capitalism. The life of the crafts and the craft festivals — celebration of the birth of a son, his entry into apprenticeship, graduation to the independent position of master-craftsman, and so on -
with religiosity, and this religiosity passed over into trade unionism, which has a heavy conservative tail stretching back into the Middle Ages...
Hritish technique is a fundamentally capitalist technique, It was not brought in from outside, destroying national cconomic forms, but has developed on the basis of these national forms The consciousness of the working class reflects this "organic" growth oftechnique, while lagging very much behind it. It must not be forgotten that human consciousness, taken on the scale of society, is fearfully conservative and slow moving. Only idealists imagine that the world is moved forward through the free initiative of human thought. In actual fact the thought of society or of a class does not take a single step forward except when there is extreme need to do so. Where it is at all possible. old familiar ideas are adapted to new facts. We speak frankly if we say that classes and peoples have hitherto not shown decisive initiative except when history has thrashed them with its heavy crop. Had things been different, would people have allowed the imperialist war to happen? After all, the war drew nearer under the eyes of everyone, like two trains hurtling towards each other along a single track. But the peoples remained silent, watched, waited, and went on living
conservative lives. The fearful upheavals of the imperialist war were needed for certain changes to be introduced into consciousness and into social life. The working people of Russia overthrew Romanov, drove out the bourgcoisie and took power. In Germany they got rid of Hohenzollern but stopped half-way... The war was needed for these changes to take place, the war with its tens of millions of dead, wounded and maimed... What a clear proof this is of how conservative and slow to move is human thought, how stubbornly it clings to the past, to everything that is known, familiar, ancestral until the next blow of the scourge.
Such blows have occurred in Britain too, of course. Thus, after the rapid industrialization there developed in the second third of the last century the stormy movement of the working class which is known as Chartism. But bourgeois society stood sufficiently firm and the Chartist movement came to nothing The strength of the British bourgeoisie lay in its maturity, its wealth, its world power, crumbs from which it shared with the upper strata of the working class, thereby demoralizing also the weakened masses.
Think over this process to the extent necessary to understand the profound difference from our development, which was extremely delayed and therefore extremely contradictory. Take our metal-working and coal-mining South: boundless expanses of steppe, thinly populated, steppe settlements with deep mud around them in spring and autumn. and suddenly huge metal-working enterprises arise in these steppes. They did not, of course, develop out of our own economy but broke in upon us thanks to foreign capital. From the backward and scattered Villages, European (and sometimes American) capital
from his remote were shot through and throuch
familiar, everyday,
Britain 23
assembled fresh cadres of workers, tearing them from the
semi-petty-bourgeois representative of the British working
class.
conditions which Marx once called "the idiocy of rural life" And there you had these fresh proletarians of the Donets basin,
What the British bourgeoisie has been able to achieve is a sort of Krivoi Rog and so on, not bringing with them into the pits
of hypnotic fascination for its culture, its world-historical and the factories any hereditary traditions, any craft
importance. By means of this skilfully-organized hypnosis it conservatism, any fixed and firm beliefs. On the contrary, it
has influenced the workers leaders, whom it has known how to was in these new, unfamiliar and stern conditions that they only
keep always surrounded by its reporters, photographers. for the first time properly felt the need for firm beliefs, which
sportsmen, clergymen, lecturers and so forth, all cunningly would give them moral support. To their aid came Social
turned on to each newcomer among the workers" leaders. The Democracy, which taught them to break with all their old
newcomer in this way finds himseif in a bourgeois milieu. They prejudices and so gave a revolutionary consciousness to this
praise him to the skies if he nibbles at the bait, and they give him
a good brushing the wrong way if he takes the slightest step class which had been born in a revolutionary way. This, in broad outline, is the answer to the question which was put to me
against the bourgcoisie, And this does not just happen once, and which I, in my turn, have set before you.
but day by day, week by week, and year in and year out. And
It is possible to put the matter like this: the richer, stronger,
the young leader going out into society begins to feel ashamed mightier, cleverer, firmer a bourgeoisie has proved to be, the
because his Sunday suit is not sufficiently well-cur; he dreams more it has succeeded in holding back the ideological and
of'a top-hat to wear when he goes out on a Sunday, so as not to consequently the revolutionary development of the proletariat.
be any different from a real gentleman. These may seem trifles, Here is another expression of the same idea. The British
but, after all, they make up a man'slife. And in this hypnosis of bourgeoisie has got used to the servility of the so-called
a way of life lies the art of a ruling class. a powerful, cultured. workers' leaders whom it has educated. Let me interrupt myself
hypocritical, base, greedy class — an art which consists in to introduce a very interesting quotation from the British
exercising an everyday influence whereby to work upon and
The newspaper complains
newspaper the Sunday Times.
subject to itself everyone who comes forward from among the
working class, everyone who stands a head taller than the other because in Britain today, under the MacDonald Government, stormy strikes are taking place, and it says:
in every factory, in every ward and borough, in every town and
throughout the country.
*We have in Great Britain the finest body of Labour leaders
Probably a lot of you have seen the Times, It comes out every in the world, men of experience and patriotism, with a real sense of responsibility and a wide knowledge of economics. But
day in dozens of pages of splendid fine print, with a variety of
the
thrust aside
illustrations and an endless range of sections, so that everything
by
rapidly
being
they are
avowed
revolutionaries, whose influence is increased every time the
has its place in the paper, from questions of high politics to all Government capitulates to them. " That's what it says, word for
kinds of sport, and including the affairs of the churches and of
the world of fashion. And from what point of view is everything word. As to the statement that they are being "thrust aside by the avowed
revolutionaries, that,
presented? Naturally, from the point of view of the interests of
alas, is as yet an
exaggeration. Of course, revolutionaries are increasing in
Other British bourgeois newspapers are not so solid as the number in Britain too, but unfortunately they have still far
Times, but they are built on the same model, so as to capture the from sufficiently 'thrust aside' those leaders whom the Sunday
him to
Times calls wise politicians, filled to the brim with wisdom and
genuflect before the British national tradition, that is, before patriotism.
the bourgeoisie. And the workers" press is very weak; besides
How has this come about? In our country there have never
which, with the exception of the Communist publications, it is been leaders who won such praise from the bourgeoisie, even if
permeated through and through with the same hypnosis of we bear in mind that at a certain period the
Socialist
bourgeois culture. This hypnosis is supplemented by direct Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks played a considerable role.
terrorism. To belong to a church is in Britain the same as because our bourgeoisie - discounting the sharpest and most decisive moments, when things were at their most critical — was
covering your nakedness with clothes, or paying what you owe
in a shop. May one walk down the strect naked? May one not dissatisfied even with the Socialist Revolutionaries and the
belong to a church? To declare that one does not belong to a Mensheviks. What is the cause of such satisfaction with the
church, and still more that one does not believe in God, requires workers' leaders on the part of the bourgeoisie over there in
in Britain the same sort of extraordinary courage as to go naked Britain? It is due to the fact that the British bourgeoisie
in public. The so-called Labour Government headed by themselves have trained these leaders. How did they get the
MacDonald is also a product of the age-long education of the opportunity of training "labour" leaders? This was due to the
workers' leaders in this way. That is the reason, in the last circumstance that they were powerful and cultured, being the ruling class of an advanced capitalist country. As fast as the
analysis, why British Menshevism is sostrong and Communism working class advanced young leaders from its ranks, all sorts of political "specialists" in the service of the British
There Is no Abstract Yardstick for Civilization bourgeoisie at once settled on them, won them over, brought to bear on them all that could be imagined by a powerful
Now let us repeat our question: is the weakness of Communism bourgeois culture.
in Britain a symptom of the country's high level of civilization. Among us the average petty-bourgeois, the philistine, the
or isit a symptom of backwardness? After our analysis we have member of the intelligentsia of liberal and even radical views,
no grounds for falling into the trap of such a mechanical has considered from time immemorial that since Britain is a
presentation of the question, We say: it is at one and the same highly civilized country therefore everything which exists in
time a symptom of very carly development and of great Britain or comes from Britain is superior, good, progressive
backwardness, because history operates not mechanically, but and so on. In this we see expressed the petty-bourgeois
dialectically: it combines during long periods advanced incapacity for thinking dialectically, analysing phenomena,
tendencies in one sphere with monstrous backwardness in grasping a problem in its historical concreteness. There is
we
from
another.
standpoint of
the
If
compare,
something which is really good, British technique, and that we
world-historical development, the "Labour" government of are trying to transfer to our country in exchange for grain,
MacDonald and the bourgeois-nationalist government of timber and other valuable commodities. The British monarchy.
Turkey, the conclusion we draw is not in MacDonald's favour. hypocritical British
You recall that the 'great" Liberal lender Gladstone — in reality sanctimoniousness - all this is old rags, rubbish, the refuse of
he was a liberal philistine, and Marx had a most highly centuries, which we have no need for whatsoever. (Applause)
concentrated hatred of him — the great" Gladstone ance
delivered a tremendous speech against the blood-stained If British culture has affected our average philistine in this
Sultan, the representative of fanatical, barbarous Islam, and so way from afar, by correspondence so to speak, evoking in him a
оп.
blind infatuation, how much more strongly, directly and
If you take the average philistine and say to him: Britain and concretely does it affect the British petty-bourgeoisie and the
24
MacDonald (above) and Trotsky (right) in 1924 Turkey — well, of course, Britain means civilization and progress, Turkey means backwardness and barbarism. But see what is happening. There is fow in Britain a government of Mensheviks and in Turkey a bourgeois-nationalist government. And this bourgeois-nationalist government of Turkey found it necessary to abolish the Caliphate. The Caliphate is the central institution of Pan-Islamism, that is, one of the most reactionary trends in the entire world. But the Menshevik government of Britain has re-established the Caliphate in the Hejaz, in order to uphold the rule of the bourgeoisie over its Moslem slaves. History's conclusion is that the Menshevik government of Britain, in spite of British civilization, etc., is playing in this conjuncture of forces a reactionary role, whereas the bourgeois-nationalist government of backward Turkey, as of a nationally-oppressed country, is playing a progressive role. Such is the dialectic of history!
Of course, from the standpoint of the development of technique, science and art, Britain is immeasurably superior to Turkey.
accumulated wealth of Britain is beyond
The
comparison with what Turkey possesses in this respect. But we see that it turns out that, precisely in order to protect this wealth and its whole national "civilization" in general, the British bourgeoisie has been obliged to follow an ultra-conservative policy, so that a Labour Government becomes in its hands an
instrument for re-establishing the Caliphate. There is no abstract yardstick applicable to all spheres of life. It is necessary to take living facts in their living historical inter-action. If we master this dialectical approach to the question, the latter has
becomes much clearer to us. Germany, for example, is placed not by accident, as regards this question of the relationship between the forces of the Communist Party and of Social Democracy, between Russia and Britain. This is to be understood by the course of development of capitalism in Germany. It is necessary, of course, to investigate concretely the history of each separate country, in order to discover more exactly the causes of the delayed or hastened growth of the Communist Party. In a general way, however, we can draw the following conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat in countries which have entered the path of capitalism very late in the day, like our country, is easier than in countries with an extensive previous bourgeois history and a higher level of culture. But this is only one side of the matter. A second conclusion, no less important, declares: socialist construction after the conquest of power will be easier in countries with a higher capitalist civilization than in countries which are cconomically backward, like ours. This means that for the British working class to break through to real proletarian power, to dictatorship, will be incomparably harder than it was for us. But once having broken through to power, it will advance to socialism much quicker and much more easily than
ourselves. And it is even uncertain, history has spoken with a double tongue on this question, who will build socialism earlier, we or the British. If the British working class takes power in the next ten years — 1 speak approximately, and give this figure not in order to prophesy but merely as an arithmetical example — it will then within another ten years have a real socialist economy. very highly developed, while we in twenty years" time will probably still have, not only somewhere in Yakutia but also nearer here, very many survivals of peasant backwardness...
Decades will be needed to transform our North and our South into a centralized socialist economy, based on a high level of technique, with our great expanses of territory still only thinly populated. And I think that in twenty or twenty-five years" time the British workers, turning to us, will say: "Don't be annoyed, but I've got a bit ahead of you." Naturally, we shan't be annoyed — those of us, that is, who survive till then. Get ahead, comrades British workers, do us the favour of getting ahead, please, we beg you, we've been waiting a long time for this (laughter). Such is the dialectic of history. Politics has held the British worker back, has for a long time, so to speak, hobbled him, and he is advancing with such timid, pitiful, MacDonaldite little steps. But when he frees himself from his political trammels, the British racehorse will outstrip our peasant nagTo generalize theoretically what I have said, in the Marxist
terminology which is familiar to us, I should say that the question itself boils down to the inter-relation between the basis and the superstructure and to the inter-relation of bases and superstructures of different countries one with another. We know that superstructures — state, law, politics, parties and so on — arise on an economic basis, are nourished and determined by this basis. Consequently, basis and superstructure have to correspond. And this happens in fact, only not simply but in a very complicated way. A powerful development of superstructure (the bourgeois state,
bourgeois culture) sometimes holds back for a long time the development of other superstructures (the revolutionary proletarian party), but in the last analysis — in the last analysis, not immediately - the basis reveals itself nevertheless as the decisive force. We have shown this by the example of Britain. If we approach the problem in a formal way, it may appear that the weakness of the British Communist Party contradicts the
law
of the relationship
Marxist
superstructure. But this is certainly not the case. Dialectically. the basis, as we have seen, will, in spite of everything, secure its victory. In other words:a high level of technique, even through the barrier of ultra-conservative politics, nevertheless will manifest its preponderance and will lead to socialism sooner than in countries with a low level of technique.
That, comrades, is what I conceive the fundamental answer to be to the question which was put to me at Sokolniki.
Britain 25
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Debate
BEATRIX CAMPBELL, CELIA PUGH,
SHEILA ROWBOTHAM, JOAN SMITH