are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings as we go to press, amid a fluttering of patriotic flags and platitudes about fighting for democracy. But how did revolutionary socialists respond at the time to the challenge of a war waged by and between imperialist powers under the pretence of a war for democracy against fascism? While the Communist Party Stalinists after 1941 followed the reformist Labour leaders in unstinting, strikebreaking support of the imperialist war effort, the Trotskyist movement fought against the odds to uphold a line of working class independence. Here we reprint brief extracts and summaries from the varied literature summing up the Trotskyist analysis. Leon Trotsky - Who is Guilty of Starting The Second World War? (Sept 5 1939) •THE ATTEMPTS to picture the next war as a war between democracies and fascism were shattered against the real march of events. The present war, which its participants started before they signed the treaty of Versailles, grew out of imperialist contradictions. It was as inevitable as the crash of trains which are let loose one toward the other on the same track.
The chief antagonists on the European continent are Germany and France. In the struggle for hegemony in Europe and its colonial possessions, France attempted to keep Germany (not the fascist but the democratic one) in a condition of division and weakness. In this sense French imperialism was the midwife of German National Socialism.
On the contrary England, which was interested in breaking the European hegemony of France and its international pretensions, began soon after Versailles to support Berlin against Paris. The rearming of Nazi Germany would have been impossible without the direct help of England.
Thus the masked but deep antagonisms between the democracies were a springboard for Hitler ...
Diplomatic machinations, juggling with the formula democracies versus Fascism', sophisms concerning responsibility, cannot make us forget that the struggle is going on between the imperialist slaveholders of different camps for a new division of the world. According to its ends and methods the present war is a different prolongation of the previous great war, only with much greater rottenness of the capitalist economy, and with much more terrible methods of destruction and extermination.
Consequently, I don't see the slightest reason for changing those principles in relation to the war which were elaborated between 1914 and 1917 by the best representatives of the workers' movement under the leadership of Lenin. The present war has a reactionary character on both sides. Whichever camp is victorious, humanity will be thrown far behind.
The task of the authentic representatives if the working class and oppressed nations does not consist in helping one imperialist camp against the other, but in teaching the labouring masses of all countries to understand the reactionary meaning of the present war, to raise their own programme - the world socialist federation of nations - and to prepare themselves to replace the regime of robbery by the regime of general cooperation. " Trotsky's analysis was developed further by James P. Cannon of the American Socialist Workers Party at the time of the US entry to the war after Pearl Harbour in December 1941. James P Cannon - A Statement on the U.S. entry into World War I/ December 22 1941 "THE MARXIST analysis which determined our attitude to the war up to December 8, 1941, continues to determine our attitude now. We were internationalists before December 8; we still are. We believe that the most fundamental bond of loyalty of all the workers of the world is the bond of international solidarity of the workers against their exploiters.
We cannot assume the slightest responsibility for this war. No imperialist regime can conduct a just war. We cannot support it for one moment.
We are the most irreconcilable enemies of the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy and the military dictatorship of Japan. Our co-thinkers of the Fourth International in the Axis nations and the conquered countries are fighting and dying in the struggle to organize the coming revolutions against Hitler and Mussolini.
We are doing all in our power to speed those revolutions. But those ex-socialists, intellectuals, and labour leaders, who in the name of 'democracy. support the war of United States imperialism against its imperialist foes and rivals, far from aiding the German and Italian anti-fascists, only hamper their work and betray: their struggle.
The Allied imperialists, as every German worker knows, aim to impose a second and worse Versailles; the fear of that is Hitler's greatest asset in keeping the masses in Germany in subjection. The fear of the foreign yoke holds back the development of the German revolution against Hitler." Confonted with a war for which they refused to take responsibility, what was the attitude of the Trotskyists to conscription? Again the most detailed exposition of the position came in the writings of the American SWP, building on early opponent of pacifism, had argued strongly for class politics to be taken into the armed forces where the bulk of the working class would be found. Leon Trotsky - American Problems August 1940. "WE MUST try to separate the workers from the others by a programme of education, of workers' schools, of workers' officers, defrom militarisation, but inside the machine we can observe the class voted to the welfare of the worker army, etc.
We cannot escape from militarisation but inside the machine we can observe the class line.
The American workers do not want to be conquered by Hitler, and to those who say 'Let us have a peace programme,' the worker will reply 'But Hitler does not have a peace programme'.
Therefore we say: We will defend the U.S. with a workers army, with workers' officers, with a workers' government etc. If we are not pacifists, who wait for a better future, and if we are active revolutionists, our job is to pénetrate into the whole military machine." James P Cannon Military Policy of the Proletariat, Sept 1940. 'NOW, CONFRONTED with these facts of universal militarism and permanent war, that the biggest industry of all now is going to be war, the army and preparation of things for the army - confronted with these facts, what shall the revolutionary party do?
Shall we stand aside and simply say we don't agree with the war, it is not our affair? No, we can't do that.
We do not approve of this whole system of exploitation whereby private individuals take possession of the means of production and enslave the masses. We are against that, but as long as we are not strong enough to put an end to capitalist exploitation in the factories, we adapt ourselves to reality.
We don't abstain and go on individual strikes and separate ourselves from the working class. We go into the factories and try by working with the class to influence its development. We go with the workers and share all their experiences and try to influence them in a revolitionary direction.
The same logic applies to war. The great majority of the young generation will be dragged into the war. The great majority of these young workers will think at first that they are doing a good thing.
For a revolutionary party to stand by and say. 'We can tolerate exploitation in the factories, but not military exploitation' - that is to be completely illogical.
To isolate ourselves from the masses OUR HISTORY of the proletariat which will be in the war is to lose all possibility to influence them....
We will join the war as long as the workers do. We will say frankly to the workers in the unions and shops: 'We would like to throw over this whole business of capitalist exploitation - military as well as industrial - right now. But as long as you are not ready for that logical solution we will join with you, fight by your side, try to protect the men from useless waste of lives.
All that we will do, but we retain one privilege - the right to express our opinion day in day out: That you must not trust the leadership of your enemy class. '" • Broadly similar policies were adopted by the British Trotskyists. Future articles in Socialist Outlook will look in more detail at the class struggle in war time.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 64, 11 June 1994, Page 12
line," Leon Trotsky