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From The New International, Vol. XI No. 1, January 1945, p. 20.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Today the Communist Party, in America and elsewhere, takes the lead in entangling the working class in the leagues, pacts, agreements and other tricks and maneuvers of imperialist politicians. To justify this, they frequently refer to the agreements entered into by Lenin with the Allied military authorities in 1918. Ten years ago they began to advance this argument as a justification of their turn to the Popular Front, entry into the League of Nations, support of Roosevelt and the consistently reactionary course they have since followed which now culminates in Stalin’s seizure of Poland and his attempt to dominate Eastern Europe.
In June 1935, Trotsky addressed the following letter to the French workers, in which he explains the circumstances of the Lenin agreement and evaluates it. He also, thus early, drew the course embarked upon by the Stalinists to its logical conclusion. Some of his theoretical premises, e.g., the character of the Russian state, have since been rejected by the Workers Party. But American workers in particular and the international working class have today a wealth of experience with which to judge the fundamental validity of his condemnation of Popular Frontism as a defense of the working class in the jungle of imperialist policy. Dumbarton Oaks, regional pacts, agreements of the Big Three, all are the straight road to imperialist war. The Stalinists have travelled far since 1935 but much of Trotsky’s analysis reads as if it were written yesterday. – The Editor
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Last updated on 22 April 2016