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The Invading Socialist Society (tendance Johnson-Forest, 1947)

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MIA vient de mettre en ligne ce livre de CLR James, Dunayevskaya et Lee-Boggs (animateurs de la tendance Johnson-Forest) de 1947, année où ils quittent de Worker’s Party pour retourner quelques temps en minoritaires au SWP américain. Le livre critique notamment les positions de Germain (E. Mandel).

CONTENTS

Preface to the Second Edition by C L R James 1972

CHAPTER I – WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION

(a) Trotsky 1940, Germain 1947
(b) The Historical Role of the Fourth International
(c) The Mass Movement Today
(d) The Communist Parties in Western Europe

1. The Proletarian and Revolutionary Character of the Stalinist Parties
2. The Bourgeois and Counter-Revolutionary Character of the Stalinist Parties

(e) The Nature of the Party 1947

CHAPTER II – THE STATE AND REVOLUTION

(a) The Revolution Thirty Years After
(b) The State Thirty Years After
(c) The Communist Parties of Russia and Eastern Europe

CHAPTER III – IMPERIALISM THIRTY YEARS AFTER

(a) “Vast state-capitalist and Military Trusts and Syndicates”
(b) American Imperialism
(c) The Interweaving of Imperialist, Civil and National wars

CHAPTER IV – POLAND-WHERE ALL ROADS MEET

CHAPTER V – PARTIES, TENDENCIES AND PROGRAMS IN THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

(a) Sectarianism Today
(b) Menshevism Today
(c) Economism
(d) The Method of Bolshevism
(e) The Transitional Program Today

Appendix: The Political Economy of Germain.

Extrait / Extract:

We have declared and will declare again our opposition to Trotsky’s policy of 1940. But before attacking a policy, it is necessary to understand it. It is even more necessary to do so when defending it. In 1940 Trotsky argued:

1) that the defeat of Russia could mean the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R., and give imperialism a further long lease of life;

2) that only the defeat of the bureaucracy by the revolution would preserve state property in the U.S.S.R.;

3) that the Stalinist parties abroad would desert the Kremlin regime and capitulate to their own bourgeoisies.

Which of these judgments does Germain still defend? He does not even face them.

1) He and his school are probably the only persons in the world who believe that the imperialism of today, shattered beyond repair, can have a long lease on life by the dismemberment of Russia. This indeed is faith in capitalism.

2) Further, if we understand the 1939 Trotsky at all, if we watch the iron laws of economic development today and observe the barbarism that is eating away at bourgeois society, the patching up of the universal ruin of another war could not reverse but would accelerate the movement to the nationalization not only of national but continental economies. But Germain continues to agitate himself about the prospects of capitalist restoration after a new war by millionaire collective-farmers.

3) Finally, it is clear to all (again except Germain) that the Stalinist parties are tied to the Kremlin by roots far deeper than Trotsky believed. They did not join their national bourgeoisie during the war. They did not collapse and abdicate to the Fourth International the leadership of millions. We thus have today in fact a more complicated relation of fundamental forces and perspectives than those on which Trotsky based his positions.

To these fundamental problems Germain has his answer ready: “planned economy” and the “dual character of the bureaucracy.” There is not a trace, not one drop of Marxism, of the dialectical method, in this.

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Voir aussi / See also :

Dunayevskaya, James et Lee

Étiquettes : ,

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