In the mid-1920s Britain was heading to a confrontation. The deep post-War political and economic crisis of the Empire, internally and externally, combined with the election of the Labour Party in 1924, and a growing conflict in the essential mining industry swirled into a potential revolutionary combustion, with May, 1926’s General Strike being the result. Trotsky’s famous 1925 critique of British Labor, Where is Britain Going?, was widely read and commented on inside and outside of the left at the time, with much debate ensuing. Officially promoted by the state and Party press, these are some of Trotsky’s last widely published articles before his expulsion in late 1927. Here, Trotsky answers some British left wing critics on the process of determining the pace and timelines of unfolding revolutions.

‘Where is England Going? On the Pace and the Intervals’ by Leon Trotzky from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 19. March 11, 1926.

In the year which has elapsed since the book “Where is England Going?” was written, events have by no means developed according to the line of march of Baldwin and MacDonald.

The generosity of the Conservative Prime Minister has quickly evaporated. King George’s judges have thrown into prison the Communists whom MacDonald excluded from the Labour Party and have succeeded in bringing the Party into a position of illegality. The same judges pat the young Fascist madcaps on the shoulder encouragingly, recommending the breakers of the law to join the police force, whose vocation it is to protect the law. In this way the judges prove that there is only a difference of form but no difference in the nature of the Fascist transgression, and the police protection of the law. The Fascists are grand citizens, but too impatient; their methods are premature. Class war has not yet turned into civil war. MacDonald and Lansbury are still rendering service by holding back the proletariat with the fictions of democracy and the myths of religion. Fascism on its part remains in the background. The capitalist politicians, however, understand that the affair is not confined to the method of democracy, and when Mr. Joynson Hicks is alone, he tries on Mussolini’s mask.

The police-like determination of the Baldwin Government is a necessary completion of its pitiful economic confusion. The Protectionism of the Conservative party is as powerless in the face of new facts as is the Free Trade of the Liberals. It was clear from the beginning that the efforts to introduce Protectionism would clash with the contradictory interests of the chief branches of British trade. We had not, however, imagined a year ago that the programme of Protection would degenerate into such a farce. In this period, duties have been introduced on lace, gloves, musical instruments, gas-lighters, penknives and toilet paper. Not more than 10,000 workers are employed in these branches of industry, whilst there are 1,231,900 miners. According to official statistics there are 1,215,900 unemployed. Is not Mr. Baldwin abusing in too great a degree the principle of gradualism?”

The Liberal party, the collapse of which continues to be the most striking political form of expression of the social retrogression of Great Britain has, as far as the majority of its members are concerned, given up hope of an independent government and, while its Right wing dreams of acting as a break to the Conservatives, its Left wing would like to act as a Right-flank support to MacDonald who needs such support more than ever. When old Mr. Asquith ironically refers to the expositions of Snowden and Churchill, of whom the former is beckoning the Liberals into the Labour party and the latter into the Conservative party, he is right in his way in saying that there is not much difference between dying as an appendage of one’s old political enemies and dying on the basis of independence.

Neither the economics nor the politics of England in the past year give us any reason for introducing any changes into the conclusions in our book. There is no reason to react to the gnashing of teeth of the bourgeois Press in England and especially in America. “Under the mask of a new book” howls a New York paper “the author is teaching the Americans and the English how to make an insurrection.” And the newspaper demands that decisive measures should be taken against the book, as its author is far away. That is all right. There is no need to answer, events will give the answer. The only thing I learnt from the critique of the British bourgeois Press is that Mr. Winston Churchill is not yet a lord, which I erroneously or at least prematurely took for granted.

The official Menshevist Press says essentially the same, except that it calls upon the bourgeois police for protection against “the preaching of force” in a slightly more disguised form. Here also polemics are out of place. The Left Opposition in Great Britain is of much greater interest to us in the present stage of development. We hear very little from its literary representatives: “If the unreasonable tendencies of Moscow should take root in our soil, it could only be thanks to the egoism of our bourgeoisie and the excessive forbearance of the leaders of the Labour party”, etc.; that is the gist of the articles by Lansbury, Brailsford and others. That is a ready-made Centrist formula with which thoughts and turns of expression can be anticipated. To expect a real attempt at the analysis of facts and arguments from these gentlemen is about as hopeful as expecting milk from a ram.

Fortunately we have in our hands a document which is distinguished by far greater directness and so to speak freshness. A Russian Comrade who is in correspondence with leaders of the English Labour movement, sent me two letters of a “Left” member of the Independent Labour Party, directed against my book “Where is England Going?” These letters seem to me more interesting than the articles of the British and other “leaders” of whom some have forgotten and others have never known how to think.

Three main directions may be distinguished in the ideological grouping of the English Labour movement and especially of its leading strata. As was once again proved at the Conference in Liverpool, the Right takes the leading position in the Labour party. The shabby remnants of the bourgeois theory of the 19th century, especially of its first half, form the official ideology of these gentlemen who stop at nothing in defending the principles of bourgeois society. At the other extreme is the small minority of Communists. The English Labour party will only achieve a victory under the leadership of a Bolshevist party. To-day the party is still in its swaddling clothes; but it is growing and may grow quickly.

Between these two extreme groups, as between two shores, is the vast number of shades of opinion and tendencies which have no future of their own but are preparing for one. The “theorists” and “politicians” of this broad central current are recruited from eclecticists, sentimentalists, hysterical philanthropists and all kinds of muddle-headed individuals. Eclecticism is with some of them a profession and with others a stage of development. The movement for opposition carried on by the Left, the half-left and the extreme Left reflects a deep social shifting among the masses. The mongrel character of the English Left, its theoretical lack of form, its political indecision make it possible for the clique of the MacDonalds, Webbs and Snowdens to be master of the situation, which however is impossible without Thomas. If the heads of the English Labour party are the reins with which the working class is harnessed. Thomas is the horse to which the carriage of the bourgeoisie is attached.

The present stage in the development of the English proletariat the overwhelming majority of which approves of the speeches of the “Left” and supports MacDonald’s and Thomas’s efforts to gain power, is of course no coincidence. This stage cannot be jumped over. The path of the Communist Party as the great mass party of the future, leads not only via the irreconcilable fight against the agents of capital in the form of the Thomas and MacDonald clique but also via the systematic unmasking of the muddle-heads of the Left, without the help of whom it is impossible for MacDonald and Thomas to maintain their position. This justifies the attention we devote to the criticism from the Left.

It is superfluous to discuss the accusations of the critic that our brochure is stiff, that the questions are put in a mechanical way, that the truth is too much simplified etc. “Through his (i.e. my) whole book runs the conviction that England’s decline will last another four or five years(?!) before it leads to serious complications”, whereas in the critic’s opinion, the next twelve months will form the same of the crisis after which “there will be no great difficulties in the course of development during the next decade”. (?!) In this way the critic first forces on me an exact prophecy as to the intensification of the crisis in the course of four or five years and then opposes to this prophecy a still more exact one which divides the next period of English history into two sections, twelve months of an intensified crisis and ten years of peaceful thriving.

The letter unfortunately contains no economic foundation. If we look for an economic significance in the prophecy of one year of crisis and a decade of progress, we must suppose that the author connects his prophecy with the present serious financial difficulties which are the result of the transition to the gold standard and of the regulation of the question of debts. The author evidently attributes the economic crisis to the deflation crisis and for that reason he allots it so short a period. It is quite probable that after the most serious difficulties of finance and credit have been overcome, a certain amount of relief will actually be felt in the money market and consequently in commercial and industrial intercourse. It is not permissible, however, to base a general prophecy on fluctuations of this kind, which in their nature are of minor significance. In any case, his prophecy as to ten years of prosperity is absolutely without foundation. England’s chief difficulties arise on the one hand from the re-grouping and rearrangement of the economic and political forces in the world and on the other hand from the innate conservatism of English industry.

During the next period the conditions for English capital will continue to grow more difficult with the consequence that the question of power will present itself to the proletariat with increasing acuteness. I have not defined any periods. The only remark on the subject in my book is that the revolutionary development of the English working class is rather to be measured by periods of five than of ten years. In saying so I did not, of course, mean to imply that the socialist revolution would occur “within four years” (although I do not consider it impossible). My idea was that the prospects of revolutionary development should not be calculated in a series of decades, not for our children and grandchildren but for the present generation.

In this connection I feel compelled to quote at length from the letter of the Left critic:

“Trotzky speaks almost the whole time of decades. Is it possible to speak of decades in reference to an economic or even a political situation? In my opinion, certainly not. It is impossible, as Trotzky himself once said, to foresee and determine an exact date for the outbreak of the revolution; and if he fixes his eye rather on the impossibility of determining the exact day, (?), I consider it impossible to foretell even the year (?).

“The revolution depends above all on economic factors; there are, however, at present innumerable economic factors which may work for or against the revolution in England. The revolution might have broken out on August 1st 1925 in consequence of the crisis in the coal industry. The revolution may break out when the crisis is renewed in May 1926. The revolution may be accelerated by a crisis in the Far East, by war, the economic collapse of other countries, shortsightedness of some industrialists in our country, the impotence of the Government to solve the question of unemployment, a crisis in other branches of industry apart from coal-mining and also by socialist propaganda among the workers which leads to increased demands and hopes on their part.

“Each of these possibilities is perfectly probable in the present circumstances, but not one of them can be foretold even a month ahead. The present time is characterised by extreme economic and consequently political instability; one move may spoil the whole game but on the other hand, the existing system may still be maintained artificially tor many years. In this way the British revolution, if we understand by that a political revolution, is under the sign of the unknown.” (Retranslated from the Russian article. Ed.)

The confusion of these lines is simply fantastic; at the same time it is not mere personal muddle-headedness, on the contrary, it is absolutely typical. It is the confusion of persons who “generally speaking” recognise the revolution, but who shudder to the very marrow at the prospect of it and who are prepared to accept any theoretical justification whatever for their political fear.

Let us consider the writer’s line of argument. He is charging at windmills when he demonstrates that the rate of development of the revolution and consequently the date of its outbreak is dependent on the accelerating or retarding effect of the reciprocal influence of numerous factors and circumstances. He himself draws the indisputable conclusion that it is impossible to foretell the date of the revolution. But he is clever enough to formulate this quite simple idea a follows: Trotzki considers it impossible to prophesy the day of the revolution; he however, the wise critic, considers it impossible to foretell even the year. This contrasting of the two assertions is almost incredibly childish. One might almost think that it is not even deserving of an answer. But are there not, as a matter of fact, many members of the “extreme Left” who have not even thought out the most elementary questions of the revolution on the crudest outlines and for whom the mere fact of considering the day and year means a tremendous advance which may be compared to the transition from complete ignorance of reading and writing to the stumbling spelling out of words?

Had I actually meant that it was only the day (?!) of the revolution which could not be determined in advance, I should at least have tried to determine the week, the month or the year. It is perfectly evident, however, that I made no such attempt, I pointed out that the social development of England has entered on a revolutionary phase. At the end of last century it was only possible to speak in quite general terms of a revolution in England in the future. In the years which immediately preceded the imperialist war, it was already possible to point to a number of symptoms which heralded the approach of a turning point.

After the war this turning point was arrived at and it proved a sharp one. In the past, the English bourgeoisie, by oppressing the workers and plundering the colonies, led the nation forward on the path of material increase, and thus ensured its own supremacy. At present the bourgeois regime is not only incapable of leading the British nation forwards, it cannot even maintain it at the level already reached. The English working class is fighting in the midst of the contradictions of the decline of capitalism. There is no single question of economic life such as the question of the nationalisation of mines and railways, the campaign against unemployment, Free Trade or Protection, the housing problem and so on, which might not lead directly. the question of power. This is the social and historical foundation of the revolutionary situation. It is, of course, a case of fight of living historical forces and not of an automatic accumulation of quantities. This alone makes a passive prophesy of the stages of the process and of the periods of the outbreaks impossible. Nothing is left for us but to feel the pulse of English economics and politics and, without for a moment neglecting the general prospect, to keep a careful watch on all the partial fluctuations and ebb and flow, and to determine their position in the process of the decline of capitalism. Only on the basis of such general knowledge can a revolutionary party carry on its policy, the elasticity of which finds expression in that even partial fluctuations are taken into consideration, while however, the main lines of development must by no means be lost sight of.

My “Left” critic has on some occasion heard something about determination of the “day” of revolution, and has not clearly understood that this refers to the moment of the armed revolt which had been placed on the agenda by the revolution. These are two quite separate questions, although they are closely bound up with one another. In the one case it is a question of a prognosis based on history and the general line of strategy resulting from it, in the second case of a tactical plan which proposes a more or less exact determination of time and place. It would not occur to anyone unless perhaps to the English public prosecutors to say that at the present moment armed revolt is on the agenda in England, and that it is a practical duty to work out plans for it and to determine its date. In such a connection it would only be possible to speak of one day or of days. In the autumn of 1923 the situation was just the same in Germany. At the present moment, the question in this is England is not to determine the “day” of revolution still far away but clearly to understand that the whole objective situation is bringing this “day” nearer, introducing it into the sphere of the policy of education and preparation of the proletarian party whilst at the same time conditions are being created for rapid revolutionary development of the party.

In the second letter the same critic comes to still more unexpected conclusions in support of his scepticism with regard to the dates (as a matter of fact, however, with regard to the revolution):

“The realm of economics”, he maintains, “is practically speaking, unlimited…a new discovery, a re-grouping of the capitalist forces…The other side realises the danger at the same time…Even in America, measures may be taken to arrest the coming collapse of England. To but it briefly” the critic concludes “there are many possibilities, and Trotzky has by no means exhausted them all”. (Retranslated from the Russian article Ed.)

To our friend of the Left all possibilities are necessary except one, that of revolution. Whilst playing hide and seek with reality, he is prepared to cling to any fantastic dream. In what sense for instance can, a “new invention” change the social conditions of the development of Great Britain? Since Marx’ time, there have been not a few inventions which have not weakened, but rather strengthened Marx’ law of the concentration of production and the intensification of class dissensions. New inventions will also in the future give the advantage to the stronger, i.e. not to Great Britain but to the United States. That the “other side”, i.e. the bourgeoisie, will be aware of the danger and fight against it with all means in their power, cannot be disputed. This however is also a very important political prerequisite of the revolution.

Finally, the hope that America will extend a helping hand, seems quite absurd. That, in case of civil war in England, America will try to help the bourgeoisie is more than likely, but this only means that the English proletariat must also look for allies beyond the borders of its own country. We believe it will find them. The result will be that the English revolution will inevitably assume international proportions. We have not the least intention of dispelling that. But our critic wants to say something different. He expresses the hope that America will support the existence of the British bourgeoisie in such a way that it will help it to avoid any outbreak of revolution.

Nothing better than that can be imagined. Every new day bears witness to the fact that American capital is the historical tyrant who, intentionally or unintentionally, will strike the most deadly blows at Great Britain’s predominant position and the firmness of its internal structure. This however does not prevent our “Left” friend from hoping that American capital will graciously exert itself in the interest of British capital. To begin with, he evidently expects that America will waive her claim to the payment of the English debt: that it will hand over to the British Treasury, without indemnification, the 300 million dollars which form the reserve of the British currency; that it will Support Great Britain’s policy in China; that it will even perhaps hand over to the British fleet a few new cruisers and to English firms some Canadian shares at a discount of 50%. In other words, it is to be expected that the Government in Washington will hand over the management of State affairs to the “Ara” (American Relief Agency in the Soviet Union during the famine. Editor) and choose the most philanthropic Quakers for the job. Persons who concern themselves with nonsense of this kind, had better not dare to aspire to the leadership of the British proletariat!

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. Inprecorr is an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1926/v06n19-mar-11-1926-Inprecor.pdf