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PARTISAN REVIEW
greatest realism and penetration. But he was apparently incapable
of examining the instrument itself, of scrutinizing with empirical
scepticism the given doctrine. (Lenin was much more the scientist
in this respect.) There was always something rigid,
mechanica~
doctrinaire about Trotsky's approach to basic theory, as when,
during the factional struggle within the Socialist Workers Party
last winter, he actually insisted on making a key issue out of the
acceptance or rejection of the Marxist dialectic.
As long as the "classic" Marxist formulae corresponded with
the development of history, Trotsky's inadequacies were not appar·
ent. But when, in the last ten years, new forms of class rule began
to take shape in Russia and Germany, forms which have not devel·
oped as might have been expected by the old formulae, then the
failure of Trotsky to reshape his basic theories to cope with these
new phenomena became increasingly serious.
Thus although Trotsky understood better than any other
leader the dangers of Stalin's abandonment of international revo·
lution in favor of "building socialism in one country," he lost his
long fight against Stalinism in part because he consistently under·
estimated its threat. He was fighting inside the leading commit·
tees when he should have been talking to the Party, he was talking
to the Party when he should have summoned the proletarian non·
Party masses into action. Even after his exile, it took him years to
break organizationally with the Third International. This curious
reluctance to draw the full conclusions from his own political
analysis, I think, was based on the fact that he never conceived of
more than two alternatives in the Soviet Union: either progress to
socialism or retrogression to capitalism. In the factional struggl
inside Russia in the twenties, Trotsky and the other left opposi
tionists charged that Stalin's policies .were leading to the restora
tion of capitalism. But once Stalin had smashed the opposition
an
exiled Trotsky, he reversed his policies and began to
tum
sharpl
"left," putting into effect the Four Year Plan Trotsky had lo
advocated. The development of Russia since 1928 has been n
towards socialism, it is true, but not towards capitalism either:
Trotsky, concerned with the forms of property, to his death insist
that Russia was "a degenerated workers state." But Stalin, in m
opinion, has created a new form of class exploitation--call ·
"bureaucratic collectivism" for lack of a better term-and onl
