A.

BELDEK FIELDS*

Trotskyism and Maoism: A Comparative Analysis of Theory and Practice in France and the United States

Trotskyism

and Maoism

are self-professed

variants of Marxism-Leninism

which have

separated themselves from the representation which Marxism-Leninism receives in the theories and practices of the party and government of the Soviet Union. According to the analyses of both Trotskyists and Maoists, the USSR is no longer engaged in a process of revolutionary development and communist parties in the West which maintain a relationship of solidarity with the Soviet Party have also fallen away from the revolutionary vocation. Trotskyists and Maoists not only make the above critique of Soviet Marxism-

Leninism, they attempt to offer alternative conceptions of theory and practice which, they argue, are more consistent with the revolutionary vocation of MarxismLeninism. In the case of Maoism, the Chinese regime has served as a model in the real world for the actual implementation of an alternate variant of Marxism-Leninism. But there is not now and there never has been a Trotskyist regime. Therefore, there can be no comparison between Trotskyism and Maoism at the level of regime behavior. The only possible valid comparison between the theory and practice of Trotskyists and Maoists is at the level of opposition forces. I have chosen to examine the phenomena of Trotskyism and Maoism within the national contexts of France and the United States. The major thesis is that the dynamics of these movements, particularly the splits both between and within the two variants of Marxism-Leninism, are explained by the convergence of two factors. The first is the contradictions within the bodies of theories themselves. The second is the particular political culture of the society in which the attempt to apply the theory is made. The article will thus first discuss the contradictory elements of the theories of Trotsky and Mao, second, the relevant similarities and differences in the French and American political contexts, third, the impact of both factors in terms of the practice of Trotskyists and Maoists in the two countries and, finally, attempt to explicate the limiting characteristics of Trotskyism and Maoism as potential forces for revolutionary change.

* This is a revised version of a paper presented within the theme of Politics of Development and System Change at the Eleventh World Congress of the International Political Science Association held at the University of Moscow, 12-18 August 1979. Grateful acknowledgment is extended to Jane Ellen Mohraz and five anonymous reviewers for their critical reading and very helpful suggestions.
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE

0039s3592/83/01

COMMUNISM Var. XVI, Nos 1&2,SPRING/SUMMER 1983,65-84 0065-20 $03.00 @ 1983 University of Southern California

66 The Contradictions

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM of Trotskyism and Maoism as Bodies of Theory

All theory contains contradictory tensions. Thus to point out that a theory contains internal contradiction is not to refute the validity of the theory. Indeed, contradictory elements within a theory can provide fruitful inability to maximize all values simultaneously, illustrations of problems, such as the with which subsequent theorists must

grapple. But while the stresses within any given body of theory can provide fertile grist for modifiers and interpreters of the textual treatises, they also pose problems for activists who attempt to apply theory to concrete contexts. Given the fact that Trotsky converted to Bolshevism as late as 1917 and that Mao went through an earlier flirtation with anarchist and utopian thought before accepting Marxist-Leninist orientation, it is not surprising that the variants of MarxismLeninism which both theorists offered showed considerable internal tension due to the pull of contradictory elements. In this article, sequences will be examined in two substantive that tension and its practical conareas: the nature and role of the

revolutionary party and the political potential of the peasantry and the regions of the world in which the peasantry is numerically predominant, the Third World.

The Par& Question Trotskys two major contributions to revolutionary theory are the conception of permanent revolution and the conception of the transitional program. The first deals with the process of revolution in the less industrialized countries and on a worldwide scale, the second is geared more explicitly toward the dynamics of change in the capitalist industrialized countries. One of the notable characteristics of the works in which these are explicated revolutionary party. In fact Trotsky, between Menshevism is the absence of a clearly articulated conception career, of a

who was a Menshevik and Bolshevism

early in his revolutionary

then stood

until his entry into the ranks of the latter in

1917, had different and clearly conflicting thoughts on the party question at different points in time. The issue of the party can be divided into two, the nature of the internal life of the party and the role of the party in the process of change. In regard to the former, Trotskys earliest thinking, offered in 1901, was toward a highly centralized and tightly disciplined party which would not recognize the right of factions to exist. By 1903 and 1904, he had turned around on the issue and denounced Lenin as another Robespierre attempting to create a Committee of Public Safety because of Lenins advocacy of a centralized party led by professional revolutionaries. Although Trotsky attempted to conciliate between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks at the 1907 Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in London, he was still more of a Menshevik than a Leninist on the question of the nature of the party. Similarly, he differed with Lenin on the role of the party in the revolutionary process. During the 1905 Revolution, in which Trotsky was a major driving force of the St. Petersburg soviets, the soviet replaced the party in his mind even as the major coordinating mechanism for mass revolutionary upsurge. It was not until 1917, when Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks, that he claimed that there were no longer any differences between Lenin and himself on either dimension of the party question. Foreign intrusion and the threat posed by the civil war made it possible for Trotsky to support a highly centralist party which banned factions and attempted to assert total

Trotskyism and Maoism control in the immediate post-revolution period, while also claiming in retrospect

67 that

both he and Lenin saw these as temporary measures dictated by the particularly dangerous circumstances. But, nowhere did Trotsky attempt a theoretical justification of his shift to Lenins position. Perhaps this was because he did not want to resurrect the memories of his bitter denunciations of Lenin. But it is also possible that he did not change his views to meet Lenin all the way and that Lenin had been influenced the facts of that situation Lenins death, Trotsky suggests a quite constricted by Trotsky after 1917. Whatever years after are, in The Transitional Program written fourteen

role for the party in the process of

revolutionary change within the industrialized countries. In the pre-revolutionary agitational period, the base institutions are to be soviets and factory committees with at best a coordinating rather than a controlling function reserved for the party. After the passage from a stage of dual power (in which workers committees in the factories and soviets in the country at large pose a direct and simultaneous challenge to the power apparatuses of capitalism) to that of the dictatorship of the proletariat (in which the industrial and political power apparatuses of capitalism are completely eliminated), Trotsky foresaw a plural party system in which the parties would operate within a constricted representational capacity. The soviets would be the controlling base of the parties and certain representational functions would be reserved for labor unions, were to between although the latters relationship to factory committees, if such committees survive dual power, is not well defined. Although the division of labor structures Trotskys

in The Transitional Program is sketchy at best, what does emerge clearly is view that the working classes in the industrialized countries are pluralistic

and that a single proletarian party would be inappropriate. Moreover, since the parties would be responsible to the soviets, at least in the post-revolutionary period, it is difficult to see how they could themselves. be centralist and highly disciplined entities unto

Yet, within the very same document, when Trotsky refers to the parties in his own Fourth International he writes: Without discipline-no revolutionary action. The inner structure of the Fourth International is based upon the principles of democratic centralism: full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action.2 Does the vanguardist, disciplined and centralist party of the pre-revolutionary period immediately transform itself into one among many workers parties beholden to the soviets (and when? as early as the stage of dual power?) or are we once again back in Trotskys contradictory pulls between placing power in the soviets at the base or accepting Lenins vanguard, centralist model? Trotsky himself offers us no theoretical resolution of the tensions caused by these conflicting elements within his thinking. Mao, too, claimed to be a Marxist-Leninist and yet offered a conception of the party quite at odds with anything prescribed by Lenin in What Is to Be Done? In that 1902 text Lenin defined the party, at least in the pre-revolutionary phase, as a small group of intellectuals and ex-workers who had become professional revolutionaries. While Lenin was careful to express concern that he not be understood as contending that the party would do the thinking for al1,3 the model which he constructed was one of the party and its intellectuals recruiting a limited cadre of gifted workers into its ranks and
1. Chap. 2. York: 3. See Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and PoMical Thoughf of Leon Trotsky (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), V. Leon Trotsky, The Transifional Program: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Fourth Zntnnational (New Pathfinder, 1973 and 1974), p. 111, V. I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?(New York: International Publishers, 1929), p. 117.

68

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM

performing the pedagogical function, as well as the secret work, which would be necessary to raise the workers beyond trade unionist or economist consciousness.* Within Maos thought, both the party and the revolutionary constituency which it is to serve were altered considerably. On the one hand, Mao retained the formal democratic centralist party structure, saw the party as the vanguard force in making the revolution, and, unlike Trotsky, accorded it the status of sole legitimate party in the post-revolutionary context. On the other hand, the model of learning and communication which ran from the party to the masses in What is to Be Done? shifted in Maos conception to a model in which the party learns from the masses. This is Maos concept of the mass line formulated in a 1943 directive of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party as follows:

In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadership is necessarily from the masses, to the masses. This means: take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas),
then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses them into action, embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate ness of these ideas in such action. and test the correct-

Then once again concentrate

ideas from the masses and in and carried through. more correct,

once again take them to the masses so that the ideas are persevered 1..q~~ vital, and richer each time.5

And so on over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming

Thus, while Lenin expressed concern over the possible undesirable consequences of the hierarchical relationship between the masses and the party, a relationship which he felt was nonetheless a necessity, Mao deliberately built in elements of a conflicting model. The fact is that there are elements of Maoism which are more utopian or anarchist than Marxist-Leninist.6 Side by side with dialectical materialism, democratic centralism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat is the recognition, so characteristic of Rousseauist, Proudhonian, and French syndicalist thinking, that no matter how dedicated any structure might be to the general welfare it will have a tendency to confuse its own corporate welfare with the general welfare. Rousseau, who argued the need for a single executive structure unlike Proudhon and the syndicalists, also contended that the only hope for securing the freedom of a people is to assure that such a structure take direction from the people and be held accountable to the people in their sovereign capacity. The Great Cultural Rousseaus Revolution can be viewed as an attempt by Mao to put

principle into practice. In its insistence upon mass line, in its mobilization of the energy of youth to bureaucratization on the part of the middle-aged elites, distinction between intellectual and manual labor, and in intellectuals and the cadres go into the fields and work

rooting party policy in the challenge the trend toward in its questioning of the its insistence that both the places, there is little that

resembles Leninism. So long as Mao lived, he was able to manage the reconciliation of the hierarchical Leninist and the anti-hierarchic~ utopian or anarchist aspects of his thought in 4. Ibid. 5. Mao Tse-tung, Extracts from a Directive of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party
dated 1 Jurw 1943 and attributed Schram, ThePoli~icol Thought ofMao 6. For an interesting discussion Populist Perspectives on Ma&m, of his selected works. Reprinted in Stuart R. 1963), pp. 316-317. of a similar point see Maurice Meisner, Leninism and Maoism: Some The China Quarkr~, No. 45 (January-March 1971), pp. Z-36.
Tse-~~ng(New York: Praeger,

to Mao in the edition

Trotskyism and Maoism

69

Chinese practice, if not with facility at least well enough to survive politically. But it did not take very long after his death for that contradiction to manifest itself in the form of a power struggle among the surviving leaders. Those presently on top in China argue that hierarchical forms are necessary for efficient socialist construction and accuse the Gang of Four of a Trotskyite opposition to their efforts.7 They draw the comparison between the behavior of the Gang in contemporary China and the behavior of the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union after Lenins death. In fact, whatever the views of the Gang of Four on Trotskyism, in the internal contradictions of Maoism itself. the root of the difference can be found

The Political Potential of the Peasantry and the Third World On the one hand, Trotsky felt that socialist revolutions in the Western industrialized countries were absolutely crucial for the institution of socialism in the less industrialized world. On the other, he was one of the earliest to foresee the possibility for revolutionary change in the more backward Russian setting. To have it both ways, Trotsky had to come up with a conceptualization and a terminology that were at odds with those of Lenin. Trotsky advanced a theory of revolution for Russia, as well as for what he called the backward countries generally, which would not constrain these countries to pass through a stage of bourgeois democracy as had the countries of the West. He talked rather of phases of the revolutionary process in these areas which involved distinctions between minimum and maximum programs, between the roles of workers and peasants, and between the seizure of political power by the workers and socialism. If Trotsky was later to use the device of the minimum program to move a politically retarded proletariat in the industri~ized countries into a confrontation posture uis-&is the capitalists, the original use of the concept was aimed at a politically retarded peasantry in the less industrialized context. At no point in the revolutionary process in the backward countries did Trotsky see any possibility of parity between the workers and the peasants as Lenin had suggested in his concept of a Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry. Trotsky felt that the peasantry would play an important supportive role in the overthrow of the feudal or neofeudal regimes which were oppressing them-so long as the rallying cry was minimum program which emphasized However, revolutionary liberal democratic demands. for Trotsky, the toppling of such regimes was the easy part of the process. More difficult was the transition to socialism itself. This of the maximum program which included collectivism

involved the implementation

and internationalism.* Here the peasants would balk. And this was not only a matter of the wealthier peasants, such as the kulaks in Russia, who would balk out of concern for their economic self-interest. Trotsky had absolutely no faith that even the oppressed farm laborers could be rallied to the cause. For Trotsky, rural life itself stifled rationality and consciousness: . . _ the great predominance of the urban population lies not only in the mass of productive forces that it constitutes, but also in its qualitative personal composition. The town attracts the most energetic, able, and intelligent
7. Chung Lien, The Gang of Four and the Trotskyites, Peking Reuiw, XX, 7 (11 February 1977), pp. lo-15 and XX, 45 (4 November 1977), p. 18. 8. Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects in The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (New York: Pathfinder, 1969), pp. 76-78.

70

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

elements of the countryside.g This made the hegemony of the proletariat peasantry at every point in the revolutionary process an absolute necessity.iO

over the

During the immediate post-revolutionary phase (which Trotsky initially called a workers government, a workers democracy, and a proletarian regime but which he called a workers state in his later writing), the hegemonic control of the proletariat is sufficiently potent that he considers this to be the initial period of the dictatorship of the proletariat. While in Trotskys conception of the process of change in the industrialized countries the dictatorship of the proletariat appears to be coterminous with socialism, within the backward context it not only precedes socialism but it represents the limits of the capabilities of the workers. A severe restriction is thus placed upon Lenins voluntarism. In the absence of the correct objective conditions, the revolutionary process in the less industrialized countries can only push beyond this initial phase and into socialism if it is aided by socialist regimes in the industrialized world. Thus while Trotsky was optimistic over the possibility of change in Russia he, unlike Lenin who was not so negatively disposed toward the political potential of the peasantry, placed all of his hopes for socialism in Russia on the working classes in the West. Yet it was in the name of both Leninism and permanent revolution that Trotsky attacked Stalins attempt to construct socialism in one country and commitment to a theory of discrete stages for the Russian revolutionary process. While Trotsky stressed the limitations of the peasantry and even of the proletariat in the less industrialized world, Mao went in the opposite direction and attributed to the peasantry a creativity and a political potential which went well beyond even what Lenin was willing to attribute to the Russian proletariat as a whole. We have already seen this reflected in Maos concept of the mass line. The party gets its ideas from the masses; the party just refines them. Given the creative potential which Mao saw in the peasantry, which was numerically more preponderant in China than it was even in early twentieth-century Russia, Mao did not have to follow Trotskys example by making the Chinese revolution contingent upon revolution elsewhere. Stressing the importance of superstructure, l1 Mao constructed a theory which was much more consistent with Stalins commitment to socialism in one country as a discrete stage of revolutionary development. But it went well beyond anything that Marxs, Lenins, or Stalins theories would accommodate when it attributed such a high revolutionary potential to the peasantry and constrained the party to interact with it in the fashion dictated by the mass line. Trotskys negative view of the peasantry immediately carried with it international implications-the only hope being placed in the working classes in the highly industrialized countries where the weight of the peasantry was less. Maos populist theory carried with it a latent global relevance which only became manifest after the Sino-Soviet split. It was then that the Theory of the Three Worlds, reportedly first enunciated by Mao in early 1974, argued that, on a global scale, the countries of the Third World had become the revolutionary vanguard. This is, of course, completely contrary to Trotskys theory. Moreover, the positing of this global view does not entail the Chinese giving up the notion of socialism in one country, the major anathema of Trotsky. This is because Mao and his comrades were certain that objective world historical forces were afoot which were pushing the Third
9. Ibid., p. 96. 10. This point is reemphasized in Chap. IV of The Permanent Reuolution. 11. Mao Tse-tung, On Contradiction (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 36-37.

Trotskyism and Maoism World toward socialism. not the indigenous The major threat to true socialist revolutionary

71 forces was

neofeudal or capitalist supported regimes and not the United States

and Western Europe. The major problem, in the eyes of the Chinese, was that the USSR, which had become a system of state capitalism practicing social imperialism, would come to control Third World revolutionary movements and regimes. The major Chinese response was not to try to export their version of a revolution, which would violate Maos commitment to the importance of particularity and superstructure, but to use diplomatic measures to try to keep Soviet influence out of the Third World countries so that indigenous revolutions could follow their natural course. The accomplishment of this task has meant the maintenance of relations with all willing governments in the Third World regardless of their nature. It has also meant encouraging (particularly them France) as well as the United States and Western European countries to counter Soviet influence in the Third World. It is this attempt

at preventive diplomacy which on the one hand dictates a very aggressive foreign policy but on the other a retention of the notion of socialism in one country. The object is to check what is perceived as ultimately an external threat to the Chinese revolution itself, not to internationalize that revolution-the major imperative which Trotsky saw for the survival of the Russian Maos populist Revolution. thus had both national and international faith in the peasantry

implications. The former are being squelched by the present regime. The latter are still being acted out in Chinese foreign policy. But how can such populism be comfortably integrated In sum, Trotskyism within a Marxist-Leninist framework? and Maoism as self-professed variants of Marxism-Leninism

contain certain key internal contradictions. We have examined some of these contradictory strains as they apply to the conception of the party and the role of the peasantry and Third World in the revolutionary process. Practitioners must grapple with these strains as they attempt to interpret and apply those theories in any given context. Before examining such attempts by French and American practitioners, examine the relevant similarities and differences within the two national contexts. let us

The Context of Application: France and the United States Both France and the United States are capitalist industrialized societies with liberal democratic forms. They thus conform to the specifications which Marx and Engels felt were necessary for the optimal and least disruptive transition from capitalism to socialism. In addition, both preserve high degrees of economic inequality and both have recently engaged in wars against Third World peoples. The French engagement in the Algerian War and the American engagement in the war in Indochina were crucial stimuli in both countries for yet another similarity, the youth radicalization of the 1960s and early 1970s. After low points in recruitment and activity during the 1940s and 195Os, there was an unmistakable resurgence of Trotskyism in virtually all of the capitalist industrialized countries in the 1960s and 1970s. However, while Trotskyism had laid the sole claim to an alternate interpretation of Marxism-Leninism to that being offered by the USSR and parties sympathetic to it in most of the capitalist industrialized countries during those earlier years, it lost that monopoly in the 1960s. For Maoism made its appearance there as a distinctive current of Marxism-Leninism and it too built upon the youth radicalization.

72 A major characteristic

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE

COMMUNISM

of the generational

revolt

in the capitalist

industrialized against The educaconduits by

countries was a reaction by what some called this first post-scarcity

generation

what were viewed as oppressively authoritarian bureaucratic structures. tional systems within these societies were seen mainly as bureaucratic

many of the young people in them. In France and the United States they were seen as funneling young peoople into military bureaucracies in order to fight imperialistic wars and, if one survived or was not subject to the draft because of sex or disability, into capitalist private or public bureaucracies to earn a living as a supportive cog of the and system. But for most of the young people who had this perception

of the social, political,

economic systems of France and the United States, the perception of the Soviet Union was that it too had developed an elaborate set of hierarchical bureaucratic structures which had an impact upon people that was not very different from what existed in their own societies. A certain number, to be sure a minority, of those who rejected both the legitimacy of their own systems and the viability of the Soviet system as a model were attracted to the ranks of Trotskyism and Maoism. But aside from the above similarities between the French and the American contexts, there are a number of superstructural characteristics which are quite different in the two societies. First, the strength of the Left is very different in the two countries. In France there is a large Communist Party and a large Socialist Party with considerable voter appeal and support from trade union structures. The popular support of the Socialist and Communist Parties was sufficiently strong that, for the first time in the twenty-three-year history of the Fifth Republic, after the 1981 election. they were able to assume control of the national government

There is also a strong and largely indigenous anarchist-utopian-syndicalist tradition which is deeply rooted in the attitudinal structure of French workers and sometimes acted out in behavior. It receives periodic theoretical elaboration. And it also receives support from some of the larger structures on the Left as in the case of the demand for worker control over industry (at&g&ion) which is made by Frances second largest labor confederation, the Confidtkation FranGuise Dhocratique du Travail (CFDT). This demand is supported by the Socialist Party and has sufficiently powerful appeal in France that even the Communist Party has felt the need to drop its long-standing opposition to it and to incorporate it in its own political discourse. In the United States, there are no political structures on the Left anywhere near the magnitude of the French Socialist and Communist parties. There are two capitalist parties which contend for political rewards in the system and, with the exception of the Teamsters, the unions have been highly reliable supporters of the Democratic Party. There are a number of explanations for this two capitalist party system. Among them are the long time use of a single member district electoral system and a directly elected presidency, the ability to offer high wages to skilled craft workers and workers in the basic industries, the effectiveness of political socialization in such institutions as the schools, and outright repression of groups which are viewed as threats.12 The largest Trotskyist party in the United States, the leaders of which were the first people prosecuted under the Smith Act, has long been a target of an illegal and uncon-

12. For general discussions of the use of repressive techniques in the United Goldstein, Poli&zl Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to the Present (Cambridge, 1978); and Sidney Lens, Radicalism in America (New York: Apollo, 1969).

States set Robert J. Mass.: Schenkman,

T~a~s~yi~ ~n~~~oisrn

73

stitutional disruption

program orchestrated

by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.13

Under these conditions, the memories of the labor struggles and the significant radical movements which emerged from them, as well as important past contributions made by Americans to anarchist and utopian thought, have been virtually expunged from the post-World War II American consciousness. Rarely is anything taught about them in the schools. The Communist Party is small; the Socialist Party of Debs and Thomas which was already quite small has splintered into a number of competing groups. And the anarchist and utopian tradition has been carried on by only the tiniest of groups and quite ephemeral communal experiments. While there are also some small scattered experiments in operating worker-controlled enterprises, there is certainly nothing like the attraction which syndicalist ideas have for French workers and no national union operating in the United States calls for worker control the way the CFDT does in France. The major arenas of American politics and work life have been subjected to a much more potent hegemony of the dominant ideology than those in France. A second major difference between the two societies lies in the degree of their homogeneity. The history of the United States is that of the displacement of Native American nations by immigrants from the other continents. The ideological result of this was a mixed picture. On the one hand, there was tremendous pressure on the successive waves of immigrants to become like the established citizenry. This often meant adopting the dominant political and economic ideology. On the other hand, immigrant groups and people who were easily differentiated from the White AngloSaxon physical and cultural type often felt the need to band together either out of selfdefense or in order to preserve their identities and deeply held convictions. From the Jewish Workingmens Circles to the contemporary Black or Latin0 activist groups, associations of this particularistic nature have been important and complicating factors on and for the more universalistic structures on the American Left. France is a much more homogeneous society. After World War II, however, France imported labor from other countries on a large scale. The majority of such workers have come from Iberia and North Africa. Workers from North Africa are victims of racism in France, are politically much more active than the Iberians, and sometimes, as in the case of the four-year rent strike against the SONACOTRA residences for immigrant workers, do things which the leaders of the major French parties and unions do not feel are consistent with their own most effective programs or strategies. Proletarian internation~ism notwithstanding, the immigr~t worker population is viewed by these domestic structures as foreign and transient and priorities are established on this basis.+ This is a considerably different situation from one in which there is a permanent and integral heterogeneity such as exists in the United States.
13. For the testimony ofJames Cannon, leader of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP), during the 1941 Smith Act trial see S&&m on Trial (New York: Pathfinder, 1970). On the long-term disruption program conducted by the FBI against the SWP, see Cathy Perkus, ed., COINTELPRO: The FBIs Secret Warm Political Freedom(New York: Monad, 1975). 14. The French Communist Party is particularly adamant about recognizing the political implication of differences in nationality. it does not accept the proposition of the Socialist Party, for example, that immigrant workers who have lived in a municip~ity for three years should have the right to vote in the French municipal elections. For the Socialist position, see Le Pmgrammecomtm de gQ~~~~~e~t de ia puche: ~To~~itionssociatistes pour 1~t~i~sat~a~(Paris: Flammarion, 1978) and for the Communist position, see Andre Vieuguet, Fran&s et immigrtk le combatdtr PCF(Paris: Editions S&ales, 1975), pp. 154-157. On the SONACOTRA strike, see my The Battle of SO~A~OTRA: A Study of an Immigrant Worker Struggle in France, New Po[i~ica~Sc~~ce, Vol. 3, No. 9/10 (Summer/FalI 1982) pp. 93-112.

74

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

The similarities between the two countries help explain why there has been a resurgence of Trotskyism and a growth of a Maoist movement in both France and the United States. But the differences, when coupled with the internal contradictions of the guiding theories themselves, will help us understand the lines of fragmentation of these movements within each country and the differences in orientations of the movements between countries. This will be demonstrated and Maoist practice in the two countries. Trotsky& and Maoist Practice in France in the following discussion of Trotskyist

and the United

States strains, will focus on under the heading of the less industrialized relationship between

This section, like the preceding one on contradictory theoretical two areas. First, I will discuss the nature of the parties. Second, The Third World, I wiii deal with the conception of the role of as well as the countries in revolutionary system change,

Trotskyist and Maoist movements and Third World people (or people of Third World heritage) who reside in France and the United States. The logic for including the latter dimension will become apparent in the discussion. l5

The Nature of the Parties

In France, mirrored the wider array of political options which are available to the citizenry in a wider array of Trotskyist groups than one finds in the United is States.

Largely because of Trotskys shifts on the nature of the party and his refusal to give the one of the major differentiating question any systematic theoretical treatment, characteristics among the French groups is how they conceive of the internal nature of a Trotskyist party. The question of internal factionalism is important. But there are also other characteristics of these groups which permit them to be placed on a continuum, the two ends of which are tight and loose party structures. There are two major French Trotskyist organizations which are on the tight side of the continuum. One is the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), led by Pierre Lambert. In 1952, Lambert refused to abide by the orders of the Fourth International for Trotskyists to enter clandestinely the French Communist Party (PCF). He viewed this as a highly opportunistic move which would involve the effective liquidation of the French Trotskyist party. Lambert led a majority of the French Trotskyists out of the entrist international tendency and was one of the founders of a new international grouping called the International Committee of the Fourth International Both the American and the British sections also affiliated with the International Committee. The Lambertist PCI takes the attitude that the nature of the party organization is a principled question which reflects the seriousness or lack thereof of revolutionaries. Its form of organization closely resembles that of the Communist Party in France and other countries where the party can operate openly. While it permits debate within the party prior to appointed decision times, it insists upon strict discipline once a decision 15. Much of the material in this section is based upon field research which included the collection and examination of written documentation, interviews with leaders and militants, and participant observation. Three research trips to France (1972, 1975, and 1978) were supplemented by the very kind and effective assistance of Professor Anne Thieulle of the University of Paris (VII) who helped me keep abreast of some of the French movements between trips. And, ofcourse, I am extremely grateful for the cooperation of those in the movements which are herein discussed. For further detaiis on the Trotskyist and Maoist movements in France and the United States, see my forthcoming book, 7rotskyirm and Mnoismt S&&s of Tfteory and Pm&e in France andtfir United&&s (New York: Autonomedia paper and Praeger cloth editions, 1983).

Tro~~yismand Maoism

75

is made. Members must accept the premise that permanent internal factionalism and the external airing of differences are inconsistent with the vocation of the organization. There is a clear distinction party. In the youth in the organization people between the youth group and the parent to follow a rigorous educational group, are expected

program conducted by the party. Theory is emphasized. Despite its opposition to the 1968 uprising, the PC1 has in recent years managed to recruit fairly effectively among younger people, while at the same time avoiding contamination by the confrontationist orientation which is often found within the student and youth milieu. A second variation of a tight form of Trotskyist organization in France is represented by a group which is usually called by the name of its newspaper, (LO). While the Lambertist a Marxist-Leninist party Butte OuvrGr~ PC1 represents a fairly standard form of organization for operating in a Western democracy, LO is a unique named to the

organization which had a unique origin. It was founded in 1939 by a Romanian Barta. Coming from an East European context, Barta was accustomed

clandestine form of party organization on the order of that discussed by Lenin in What Is To Be Done? Moreover, if he had been inclined to consider a non-clandestine form of organization appropriate to the Western context before he actually arrived in France, For in the 1930s the French what he observed once there disabused him of the notion.

Trotskyists were so divided among themselves that Trotsky was not even able to control those who were marching under the banner of his name. Barta was appalled by the indiscipline which characterized them and ascribed it to the fact that most of them were intellectuals or professional people with little or no contact with workers. In Bartas eyes they treated a revolutionary party as though it were a debating society and looked upon the revolution as an avocation or a hobby which they engaged in when they were not in the studio, office or salon. Barta tried to bring Eastern European clandestine discipline to the French. LO continues to reflect that orientation. Until very recently, all of its members were obliged to take jobs in factories and to participate in LOs factory groups which are spread across the country. More recently the organization has permitted a few people to maintain occupations of an intellectual nature and to render LO intellectual and writing services. But that is not the norm. The vast majority of its members are in manual work settings and their major regular task is the production and distribution of weekly single sheet, two-faced mimeographed tracts in approximately three hundred French industrial plants. A common face sheet is prepared by the central headquarters while the reverse side is prepared by the specific plant group. It is a test of discipline that these bulletins appear on time. Late appearance is regarded as a grave offense and is punished. Indeed, there is a very austere atmosphere in LO which emphasizes mastery of the self as a requisite for a good revolutionary. While LO publishes a weekly newspaper and a monthly journal, it has no publicly known headquarters, no book printing capability, and no bookstore. All contact outside of the plants must be made either with those who sell the newspaper on the streets or by writing to the post-office box of the paper. Members have clandestine noms degueve in order to preserve the secrecy of the organization. Indeed, it is difficult to see how LOs structure and mode of operation would be very different if it were operating in a much more repressive political context. On the loose side of the org~ization continuum is the Ligu Cornrn~ni~~~ ~~~o~u~~~~-

16. For a discussion of some of that dissension, (New York: Pathfinder, 1977).

see Leon Trotsky,

The Crisir oft& French &t&n (19353q

76

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM of the minority current which accepted the Fourth

naire. The Ligue is a continuation

Internationals decision in the 1950s to enter the Communist Party in France, as well as in other countries where it was strong. It used to be led by Pierre Lamberts arch French Trotskyist rival, Pierre Frank. While Frank is no longer as active in the organization as he used to be, the current is still sometimes referred to as Frankist. As has been indicated, the Lambertists viewed the entry into the Communist Party, which was designed to be a long-term entry (entrisme suigeneris) as opposed to the shortterm entry of the Trotskyists into the socialist parties in the thirties, as an opportunistic act of party liquidationism. After coming out of the Communist Party in the 196Os, the Frankists did a number of things which further convinced the Lambertists that they had no serious conception organization encouraged merged of a Marxist-Leninist party either in terms of its internal or in terms of its role in the revolutionary process. First, the Frankists and participated in the 1968 student uprising, which the Lambertists display of uncoordinated group of largely spontaneity. Second, the Frankists older Trotskyists with one of the most

viewed as a disastrous

their own smaller

aggressive and confrontation-oriented groups of younger barricade fighters involved in the 1968 events, the Jeunesse Communiste Rholutionnaire UCR). Some of the JCR leaders had accepted Trotskyist ideas before the merger but the majority of the militants had not been Trotskyists in any serious sense. For most of them, Che Guevara was more of an inspiration than Leon Trotsky. Not only did the Frankists merge with these people, but they dropped the distinction between a party and a youth group. The JCR militants came right into the Ligue and numerically swamped the older Frankists. The ex-JCR militants, such as Alain Krivine and Daniel Ben-Said, are in the top leadership positions. They are much less rigid on the organizational questions than either the Lambertists high level of activity or LO. The organization is sufficiently efficient to maintain a and to publish a rather astounding variety of publications

(including Rouge-once a daily but now a weekly newspaper of some substance), but it considers organizational questions to be tactical rather than principled like LO and the Lambertists. While it does not formally grant a right to public criticism or permanent when the intensity of Women have recently factionalism within its ranks, it is pragmatically permissive feeling becomes so great as to threaten a split or defections.

organized themselves into an internal pressure caucus in order to gain greater access to the leadership positions. Although they have won greater representation on the central committee, the women caucus continues to operate and to pressure the men, and to make available to the public a variety of different positions on the subject. For a group which claims to be Marxist-Leninist, the Ligue is really quite open about its internal differences. A fourth group represents the loosest form of organization. This is the Comitek Communistes pour lrlutogestion (CCA). The CCA is part of an international tendency headed by Michel Pablo. Pablo was the Greek General Secretary of the Fourth International when the decision was made that the Trotskyists should enter the communist parties. Pablo and Frank were allied until Pablo was expelled from the International in 1965 over some of his interpretations of international politics. Until 1977, Pablos French followers were ensconced in a small multitendencied and highly undisciplined party, the Purti Socialiste Urz+ (PSU). While the Pablists appreciate the greater degree of openness on the part of the Ligue than the PC1 or LO, the Pablists agree with the PC1 and LO that the matter is one of principle and not just tactics. However, the principle of the CCA is one of the toleration of open factionalism within. the organiza-

Tratskyism and Maoism tion. This perspective in which clearly-defined

77

is not very different from that of the Socialist Party and the PSU factions publicly articulate a variety of positions.

Thus, to sum up, the potpourri of alternative political structures available to the French on the larger political horizon is replicated in microcosmic form just within the ranks of French Trotskyism. The lack of a theoretically consistent view of party organization on the part of Trotsky has made it almost inevitable that one of the major factors of differentiation among the competing Trotskyist groups would be the conception of the party. Thus the Pablist CGA more closely reflects Trotskys views on the party as expressed in 1903 and 1904, while the Lambertist PCI is closer to Trotskys 1901 position and to the claim that there was no difference between Trotsky and Lenin after 1917. The Ligue stands between the two but is closer to the CCA than to the PCI. LO represents a variation to which Trotsky himself gave absolutely no sanction in France but which Bartas followers continue to maintain is the only one appropriate to a really serious revolutionary organization. it is not surprising that this Because the issue of hierarchy underlies both questions,

scaling of French Trotskyists on the tight-loose continuum in regard to internal party structure is replicated in their view of worker control or autogestion. American Trotskyists use the slogan with little or no impact or repercussion, and Maoists in both countries write it off as part of a confused and counter-revolutionary strategy for change in Trotskys T& T~~~sit~o~a~Frogram. But the combined effect of Trotskys sketchy treatment of worker control and workers and factory committees in that document, his specific reference to the applicability of worker control to France,r7 the strong strain of syndicalism in that country, and the programmatic commitment to autogestion on the part of the CFDT, the Socialist Party, and the PSU, has been to severely divided French Trotskyists over autogestion. The PC1 and Lutte Ouurihe, who take the most rigorous and disciplined view in regard to party structure, reject the concept of autogestion as a utopian counterrevolutionary trap. The Pablist CGA, which is on the loose end of the party continuum, sees autogestian as the key element in the entire Transitional Program. Once again, the Ligue takes a middle position arguing that autogestion should not be confused with or substituted for the political revolution but is a long-term suffer. goal which must be carefully prepared for so that productivity would not

In the United States, all of the Trotskyist organizations except one resemble the PCIs pattern of organization. The exception is a tiny organization called Spark which attempts to model itself after the French LO. The two organizations of intermediate . . size, i.e., several hundred at best, insist upon a tight organizational structure like that of the PCI. Unlike the situation in France, where the PC1 and the Ligti can claim several thousand members each and LO almost that, the only organization which gets up into the two thousand range in the United States is the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). It too has been close to the PC1 in its organizational structure. However, it has loosened that stance somewhat by initiating a provisional membership status whereby people who are too old to enter its youth group but who are not fully knowledgeable or committed to the party can participate in its activities. This change is dictated by the practicalities of the situation. People between the ages of eighteen and thirty are less radical today than they were a decade ago in the United States. Those people who were radicalized in the 1960s and 1970s and who might be looking for an affiliation with an
17. Where mihtary industry is nationalized, as in France, full strength.LeonTrotsky, The Transihmal Program, p. 91. the slogan of workers control preserves its

78

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

organized group are now over thirty, youth group.

the cut-off age for membership

in the SWPs

If the variation of Trotskyist attitudes toward internal structure is greater in France than it is in the United States, the same is also true in the case of Maoism. Although the current has died out now, in the early and mid-1970s there grew up in France a variety of anti-hierarchical Maoism. This current achieved its highest expression in a movement called La Gauche Prokttarienne (GP). Th IS movement overtly rejected Lenins What Is To Be Bone? and placed heavy emphasis upon the concept of the mass line. It consciously stated that its existence could only be ephemeral, thai it was there to assist the masses and not to direct them or to initiate their actions. It reversed the usual pattern of an organization beginning more loosely and progressively tightening its structure. Anti-hierarchical Maoism progressively decreased the degree of centralization in its organizational structure until it went into extinction.t8 Anti-hierarchic~ Maoism resulted from a convergence of the contradiction within Maos theories on the nature of the party and its relationship with the masses and the strong impact of French utopian and syndicalist thought. The effect of this convergence was so strong that when one said Maoilste or les Mao? in France, one was understood to be referring to anti-hierarchical Maoists. If one wished to refer to the more traditionally Leninist organizations which carried the banner of Maoism, one had to say b ~urx~stes-L~~n~stes . There are three major Marxist-Leninist groups in France: The Chinese-

recognized Parti Communiste Marxiste-Lkiniste (PCML), the Parti Communiste Rivolutionnaive (marxiste-lkniniste) (PCR m-l), and the Union des Communistes de France MarxistesLkninistes (UCFML). different conceptions While they differ on other dimensions, they do not have very of the party. But it is interesting that the Chinese-recognized of the PCR (m-l) to the mass line might be of the PCML on this point is due to what it of Maoism offered by the French antithat there are indeed strong currents within

PCML suspects that the commitment just a bit too strong. The sensitivity

regards as the disastrous interpretation hierarchical Maoists and the recognition

French political culture which encourage that kind of interpretation. It is particularly interesting that this division of Maoism did not manifest itself in the United States. For while there is nothing on the order of the enduring French anarchist, utopian, and syndicalist tradition in the United States, there did develop a widespread counter-culture with strongly anti-hierarchical norms in the 1960s and early 1970s. The New Left was its political expression and the most important New Left structure was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Moreover, the preparty predecessor groups of the two largest Maoist organizations to operate in the United States throughout the 197Os, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [CP(ML)], played important roles in the SDS during its final days. A number of the top American Maoist leaders are former SDS leaders. Given the anti-hierarchical current within the American counter-culture and the New Left, why was there not a convergence with the anti-hierarchical elements of Maos theory sufficient to produce an anti-hierarchical Maoist movement in the United States on the order of that in France? The explanation is that American Maoism was a reaction against some of the major characteristics of the youth culture of the 1960s. To be sure it was a reaction against 18. For a detailed study of the origin, development, and demise of anti-hierarchical Ma&m in France, see my Western Maoism: A FrenchInterpretation, Social Taxt: Theory/Cullure/ldeofo~~, NO. 8, 1983.

Trotskyism and Maoism what it regarded as some of the more exploitative aspects of that culture,

79 such as drugs

and commercialization of supposedly anti-establishment music, the effects of which it But it was also a reaction against the polirical saw as an antipolitical pacification. impact of that culture on SDS. It is ironic that both the RCP and the CP(ML) first became national political forces when their predecessor organizations acted together to prevent a takeover of SDS by the older then-Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Unlike the RCP and the CP(ML), the Progressive Labor Party did not have its origins in local manifestations Party. The militants of New Leftism but as a break away faction of the Communist in the other two groups felt that the PLP was purveying an

incorrect version of Maoism but that by the very fact of the PLPs having a fixed ideological position and a disciplined hierarchical structure, the ideologically vague and highly undisciplined SDS could not successfully defend itself against the PLP. Indeed, the SDS died shortly after the 1969 confrontation. Another aspect of the situation was the presence of the faction which was to become Weatherman. It was a third current which opposed the PLP and which was, at that time, perhaps the most numerically important. Moreover, this current occupied the anti-hierarchical, confrontation-oriented, and spontaneous political space which the Gauche Prolt;tarienne occupied in France. But it did so under the banner of a general anti-imperialist orientation with no special attention to Maoism. Thus in the case of the structural manifestations of Maoism, the difference in national contexts turned out to be more determining than the internal contradictions of Maoism hierarchical/anti-hierarchical contradiction touched a responsive itself. Where chord within the the

indigenous ideological tradition, as in France, two distinct currents of Maoism were manifested. But where that long historical tradition did not exist or was discontinuous and where another non-Maoist movement was occupying that political space, as in the United States, only the hierarchical aspect of Maoism manifested itself.

The Third World Trotskys tremendous optimism concerning the revolutionary potential with as low a level of industrialization and as relatively small a proletariat the one hand, countries socialism and his insistence on revoiution in the more highly in a country as Russia on industrialized

of the West to which Marx and Engels looked for the introduction of into the world on the other, have posed serious difficulties for Trotskyists

since World War II. For during the 1950s and the 1960s most of the revolutionary activity in the world has taken place in the Third World. Most of it has been directed toward breaking formal or informal dependency relationships with countries in the capitalist industrialized world. The theme of nationalism has often taken precedence over specific programs for post-revolutionary or post-war construction. For the Maoists, who have a theory of discrete stages, this is not particularly troublesome. But for Trotskyists, who do not recognize the necessity for discrete stages, there is an obligation to look for some indicators that the proletariat is indeed in control of the situation from the very beginning. The indicators are not specifted in the theory of permanent revolution and are thus subject to interpretation in concrete situations. Moreover, once that determination has been made, Trotskys stipulation that socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat are not one and the same, and that revolution in the West is a precondition for socialism anywhere, weighs against the Third World claims to socialism.

80

STUDIES IN COMPARAZVE COMMUNISM While the split in the Fourth Internation~ in the early 1950s was over the question of

long-term entry into stronger working-class parties, the differences between the two international Trotskyist bodies which resulted from that split became intensifed over the issue of revolution in the Third World. Pablo and the French Frankists took the position that the anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World were becoming the crucial political phenomena of the era and could have important repercussions within the Western countries. They supported the cause of the National Liberation Front in Algeria very early and Pablo was to serve the Ben Bella government advisor after the French were driven out. In the eyes of the Lambertists and Butte ~~~r~~~~~ the Algerian as an economic the

FLN represented

cause of Algerian nationalism rather than any kind of universalistic anti-imperi~ism. Neither the Lambertists nor LO could accept what they regarded as a faddish tiers~o~~i~e (Third Worldism) on the part of the Pablists and Frankists. While the major political commitnient of the Frankists in the late 1950s and early 1960s was to the Algerian situation, there was also verbai support extended to other Third World revolutionary movements. The American Socialist Workers Party had joined the Lambertists in the dispute over entry and for almost a decade remained with them in the International Committee of the Fourth International. But the majority of the SWP became quite taken with the Cuban Revolution and with the repercussions United States, particularly among American that that revolution was having in the youth. The SWP leadership had the

foresight to see that if the party ignored Cuba or denounced the Cuban Revolution as a petty-bourgeois nationalistic one, it would place itself in an antagonistic relationship with most of this newly radicalized youth. The majority in the SWP decided to support the Cuban Revolution. This was at the cost of an internal spiit which gave rise first to the Spartacist League and, the year after, to the Workers League. The SWP switched its international affiliation. At the 1963 Reunification Congress, it joined the International Secretariat as a sympathizing section.lg The Secretariat then changed its name to the United Secretariat. For a while both the Spartacist League and the Workers League remained in the International Committee but the Spartacist League in fairly short order fell away from that organization. Both the Spartacist League and the Workers League, like the Lambertist PC1 and

Lutte Ouurikrein France, have rather consistently withheld even conditional and critical support from revolutionary movements in the Third World. The International Committee, however, with which the Workers League affiliates, began to promote the cause of the Libyan regime in the late 1970s. While the Frankist Llgue and the American SWP have been associated with the same international grouping since 1963, their views on revolution in the Third World were not identical and the United Secretariat split into two factions. The French Frankists, and the majority of the United Secretariat, supported the strategy of guerrilla warfare as the appropriate one of system change, particularly within the Latin American context. This the SWP could not accept. It differentiated between the nature of the Gastroist regime in Cuba and the guerrilla tactics which had been largely designed by Che Guevara for the rest of Latin America. It extended critical support to the former, 19. Since American law prahibirs the formal affiliation of an American party with a non-American body, the SWP maintains a sympattiizing status within the United Secretariat. This has not prevented it from being an important f&x within that body.

Tratskyism and Maoism

81

seeing it as a workers state, but it rejected guerrilla warfare as the preferred approach. It supported emphasis upon party building, organizational work with the proletariat, and, where possible, electoral efforts. The disputes over Argentina were particularly sharp. Even on the issue of Vietnam, the two organizations were not in complete agreement. Despite the fact that both invested a large proportion of their resources in antiwar work during the Vietnam War, the SWP was more critical of elements of the program of the National Liberation Front and the Vietnamese Workers Party than was the French Ligue. The Ligue attempted to justify the more compromising elements of the program on the basis of the special or superstructural conditions of Vietnam. The SWP felt that while the antiwar effort was necessary, the position of the Ligue tended to do theoretical damage to Trotskyism by adapting it to the concrete conditions rather than by using Trotskyism In 1974, after the termination as the body of criteria by which to make judgment. of the war in Vietnam, the SWP and the minority in

the United Secretariat put forward a thesis called the long detour. This was a thesis that the course of revolution had been detoured from the industrialized countries for a period but that it was now coming back. The SWP turned its major attention back to trying to be a force for system change within the United States itself. Its interest in a Third World revolution was, however, rekindled by the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua, and the revolutionary movement in El Salvador. By this time, the differences between the French Ligue and the American SWP had been almost completely overcome. The Ligue and the majority of the United Secretariat had done a self-criticism and admitted that they had over-emphasized warfare strategy in Latin America at the expense of other approaches. the guerrilla The factions

within the United Secretariat were thus dissolved. However, the revolution in Nicaragua was once again to cause internal disruptions within Trotskyist organizations. Here the Ligue and the SWP stood together in support of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacidn National (FSLN), but the Ligue lost a substantial number of members to the PC1 which attacks the FSLN for reconstructing a bourgeois state against the interests of Nicaraguan workers and peasants. The discourse is virtually identical to that which was issued in the 1960s over the Cuban Revolution. Maoists, of course, do not reflect the same kind of almost schizoid orientation toward the Third World that one finds in the ranks of the Trotskyists. For Maoists take their inspiration from a body of theory which is already largely adapted to a Third World context and which has served as the theoretical guide for a Third World regime. The latter fact, however, has created its own problems for Maoists. The natural propensity of Maoists in the Western industrialized countries was to

be supportive and encouraging of revolutionary movements in the Third World and to hold the Trotskyists up for ridicule because of their rejections or hesitations on the question. However, this propensity has run up against the Chinese commitment to the non-exportation of their own revolution and their emphasis, rather, upon countering Soviet influence in the Third World. The real effect of the Theory of the Three Worlds on Western Maoists has been to discourage their support for Third World revolutionary movements. Even before the Theory of the Three Worlds was formally enunciated, the antihierarchical Maoists in France and the PLP in the United States had grave misgivings over some aspects of Chinese foreign policy. Chinese support of the regime in Sri Lanka while that regime was crushing insurgents, the Chinese position on Bangladesh,

82

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE

COMMUNISM

and the Chinese reception of President Nixon while the United States was still in Vietnam were particularly difficult for some Western Maoists to accept. After the PLP officially left the ranks of Maoism, the predecessor organizations of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary Communist Party severely disagreed over the proper posture to take vi-&is revolutionary movements in the Third World. The first organization adopted a position consistent with Chinese foreign policy, i.e., that of not calling for the downfall of any Third World regimes. This organization thus refused to participate in anti-Shah demonstrations when the Shah paid his visits to the United States. The predecessor organization of the RCP, however, argued that while Chinese foreign policy interests might dictate such a position on the part of the government of China, an American revolutionary organization with an international proletarian perspective had an obligation to support attempts to overthrow reactionary regimes in the Third World. While the Chinese had made known their preference among the competing French Maoist groups since the 196Os, they had stayed out of the American situation until 1977. Obviously because of its loyalty to the Chinese foreign policy line, the CP(ML) was rewarded with signs of favoritism by the Chinese government. The RCP was left out in the cold. Its point of reference is now the losing faction in China, the so-called Gang of Four and, as they say, Mao makes five. But being left out in the cold is sometimes better than being embraced warmly. The CP(ML) found it increasingly difficult to function as a fraternal party of the Chinese Communist Party and, in 1982, split internally over whether even to try to continue to function as a Marxist-Leninist party. Even those who had initially preferred to carry on decided that the party was so badly split that there was indeed no basis for a party any longer. The CP(ML) was put to rest in the summer of 1982. The Theory of the Three Worlds has had other internal effects in the United States that it has not had in France. Largely because of their orientation toward a Third World regime, French Maoists have been more oriented toward the problems of Third World immigrant workers in France than have any of the other elements of the French Left. Also, largely because so many of these workers are Arabs, French Maoists have also been more attentive than the other groups to the issue of Palestine and Israel. French society is highly homogeneous, however, and these workers are legally onfy temporary residents in France. In the United States, on the other hand, an important segment of the permanent citizenry is of African, Asian, and Latin0 ancestry. In the 197Os, a number of autonomous groups of people of Third World heritage arose in the United States and carried the banner of Maoism. They argued that if the mission of global revolutionary vanguard had passed to the Third World, so the mission of the revolutionary vanguard in the United States had passed to the most oppressed segment of the working class, i.e., people of Third World heritage who are the victims of both economic exploitation and racism. While both the CP(ML) and the multinational organizations (race being RCP, which considered themselves considered as a national question consistent with the Corninterns traditional stance), were able to accept the point at the international level, they argued that when it was appfied to the United States it was turned into a narrow nationalism which fragmented the American working class. To complicate matters even further, the two largest multinational Maoist groups which both rejected organizational separatism were at absolute odds over one of the major racial issues in the United States-school busing. The CP(ML) supported

Trotskyism and Maoism

a3

busing designed to overcome the disadvantage of nonwhite children in the schools. The RCP, on the other hand, denounced it as a plot of the capitalist establishment to divide the working class by pitting white and black workers against each other.20 Both of the parties still clung to the Black Belt Nation thesis advanced by the Comintern in 1928 and 1930. This is a call for a separate black nation in the section of the American South which has been traditionally referred to as the Black Belt. However, the precise political relationship of the United States remained nonspecific which this nation would have with the rest and the RCP claimed that while it defended

the right of nationality for blacks in the territory of the Black Belt, it did not favor the exercise of that right . under present and foreseeable conditions.21 The CP(ML) did not express sections of urban heritage. such disfavor of the exercise of the right and extended the right to World areas in the North which are inhabited by people of Third

The longest standing divisive question for American Maoists has been that of how to deal with race or Third World heritage within the United States. And making this question even more difficult to deal with is the fact that the American Maoist groups composed of people of Third World heritage have differed among themselves on these issues. Some have taken the same view as the RCP on a given issue, some the same view as the CP(ML), and some views which have been at variance with both the RCP and the CP(ML). it is the Trotskyist And there have been shifts over time as well. The irony is that while SWP and Spark which call for the creation of separate black political

parties, it is Maoists of Third World heritage who actually created separate political structures and the larger multinational Maoist parties which have had to respond to them. The strong Third World orientation of Maoism when combined with the heterogeneity of American society helped American Maoists recruit among people of Third World heritage but it also provided a major divisive element among American Maoists.

Conclusion The foregoing has demonstrated the thesis of this article, i.e., that the dynamics of the practice of the Trotskyist and Maoist movements striving for system change can be explained by the combined effect of firstly, contradictions within the bodies of theory which serve as the guiding inspiration and secondly, the particular political culture in which the attempt to apply the theory is made. The latter contextual factors do play a major role in determining the precise lines of cleavage, but the internal contradictions become particularly interesting in the light of the failure of Trotskyism and Maoism to attract anything approaching a mass base within either national context. While it is understandable within the American political context where no group on the Left has attracted much support, why has this been the case in France where there are structures on the Left with considerable bases of support? Two factors render the internal contradictions of Trotskyism and Maoism very serious impediments. The first is that as Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists and Maoists view theory and practice as a combined science. Theory is not merely analytical and suggestive but has a one-to-one prescriptive relationship to practice. When this kind of
20. 21. The RCP has since reversed itself on this issue. Programmeand Constitution ofthe Revolutionary Communist Party USA (Chicago: RCP, 1975), p. 123

84 tightly scientistic

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVECOMMUNISM approach is taken to theory, there is a very limited or inelastic posed by contradictions within theory and to

capacity to shelve or skirt the problems

get on with practical political tasks. Correct theory becomes as necessary to proper political practice as physics is to engineering. The French Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Rholutionnaire goes about as far as any of the groups discussed in trying to isolate tactical questions from those of principle the former as much as possible. (i.e., theory) and to broaden the scope of

This approach, however, runs up against the problem that the very raison d&re of Trotskyist and Maoist movements is a reaction to Soviet and other Western MarxistLeninists who have, in their eyes, taken such a pragmatic (revisionist or opportunist) approach. Trotskyists and Maoists attempt to provide principled, scientific alternatives to both capitalism and the communist parties which they see as having strayed from Marxism-Leninism. This posture of vigilance against Marxist-Leninist pragmatics, from Trotskys early criticism of Stalin up through the contemporary attacks on Eurocommunism, has meant that virtually any serious issue that arises within the ranks of Trotskyist:: integrity of Marxism-Leninism. fragmentation. Students interminable arguments and Maoists tends to be viewed as key to the total It thus becomes potent grounds for disaffection and

and intellectuals may have a higher degree of tolerance for over basic principles than do more practically minded

workers, but even within the former there is a threshold of tolerance. It would be an error to draw the conclusion that Trotskyists and Maoists have been so immobilized that they have not engaged in any effective practice. In both France and the United States, Trotskyist and Maoist groups have indeed engaged in effective antiwar work and have provided disciplined and skilled support for a number of causes and oppressed groups. In the United States, they demonstrated more vitality than any of the other organized groups on the Left throughout the decade of the 1970s. But they have thusfar not been able to handle their own contradictions well enough to gain a mass following and those contradictions have encouraged the dispersal of already very scarce political resources among a number of competing groups interested in system change within both national contexts. Their argument that the Communist Party in France has built and retained a mass following on a non-Marxist-Leninist program of system maintenance and participation in the administration of the bourgeois state rather than system change does indeed illustrate a dilemma facing Marxist-Leninists in contemporary capitalist industrialized societies. But it does not solve their own problem of attempting a principled Marxist-Leninist practice in those societies. The major problem for Trotskyists is, thus, how to avoid becoming a voice of permanent opposition to both capitalism and other more powerful forces on the Left rather than a force for permanent revolution. For Maoists the major problem is how to avoid becoming simply a support group for a particular regime on the order of the people-to-people friendship associations, while at the same time avoiding falling into the situation of the Trotskyists. These may be worthy roles. But they are not necessarily linked to Trotskys or Maos major concern which was system change and socialist development.