Leon
Trotsky: Preface to a Book on War and Peace
March-April
1940
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 14, New York 1979, p. 886-891]
To
begin with, I am printing an article first published in May 1929,
i.e., several weeks after my deportation to Turkey. This article
will, to a certain extent, serve as an introduction to several of the
other articles, providing a perspective on the overall development.
It has undergone eleven years of serious testing since that time. The
article was printed in the American magazine The
New Republic,
before its editors had received their revelation of the “true word”
from the Kremlin. The editors supplied my article with their own
commentary, which now, eleven years later, acquires special interest.
My principal misfortune, in the opinion of the editors, consisted in
a “rigid Marxism,” which prevented me from fathoming or grasping
the “realistic view of history.” The most glaring lack of a
realistic view of history was shown in my evaluation of formal
democracy, i.e., the parliamentary regime, which, I said in that
article, had for the first time come into conflict with the
development of society and would necessarily disappear from one
country after another. The New
Republic
editors contended against me that democracy was subject to ruin only
in those countries where it had established only “the feeblest
beginnings” and in countries where “the industrial revolution has
hardly more than started.” The editors did not explain, or trouble
themselves with the impossibility of explaining, why these feeble
beginnings of democracy, if it is a viable form, did not undergo
further maturation, as had happened with the older capitalist
countries, but instead were swept away by various systems of
dictatorship. The second reference, to the inadequacy of industrial
development, or, more correctly, of capitalist development, holds
relatively true for Russia, Italy, the countries of southeast Europe,
the Balkans, and Spain. But one can hardly speak of the inadequacy of
industrial development in Austria and Germany. Moreover, in these two
countries democracy held out for about fifteen years before giving
way to fascist dictatorships. The New
Republic
editors did not foresee this, although my own “rigid Marxism” and
lack of “a realistic view of history” did not prevent me from
forecasting such developments.
The
third argument of the then editors of The
New Republic
is still more striking. Kerensky, with his weakness and
indecisiveness, was, you see, “an historic accident, which Trotsky
cannot admit, because there is no room in his mechanistic schema for
any such thing.” The weakness of Kerensky’s character as an
individual was, to be sure, an accident from the point of view of
historical development. But the fact that a historically belated
democracy, condemned from its very beginnings, could not find anyone
but the weak and vacillating Kerensky to be its leader is no
accident.
★ ★ ★
Democrats
of various shadings ruled in Germany and Austria for a number of
years. All allowed themselves to be removed from the political scene
without resistance. One may say, of course, that the weakness of
Scheidemann, Ebert, Renner, and others was “an historic accident.”
But why were these people allowed to assume the leadership of the
democracy? Are we not entitled to conclude that a historically
belated democracy, tom by internal contradictions and condemned to
historical death, cannot find anyone for its leadership other than
people without clear ideas and strong wills? Or, if not, are we not
justified in asserting that, independently of their personal
character traits, the leaders of formal democracy in times of crisis
lose their composure under the pressure of historical contradictions
and give up their positions without a fight? If this kind of
historical accident repeats itself time after time in states at
various levels of development, then we have the right to conclude
that before us are not isolated historical exceptions, but instances
of a general historical law.
The
most recent verification of this law was the fate of the Spanish
republic.
One
may say, to be sure, that the personal characters of Zamora, Azana,
Caballero, Negrín, and others are their unfortunate personal
property and, in this sense, “an historic accident.” But it was
no accident that precisely these people assumed the leadership of the
decadent, belated democracy and, although they put up a fight this
time, they did surrender all their positions to a worthless clique of
generals. I will therefore allow myself to think that a “mechanistic
schema” is not so bad, if it allows one to foresee major events.
★ ★ ★
In
the bourgeois press of the world it has now become the custom to
depict the [present situation] as the product of the evil will of one
man. The initiative for this concept belongs to France: “Isn’t it
really because of the will of one person, a single madman, that
Europe and all humanity will again be plunged into the abyss of war?”
This concept then crossed over to England and the United States. The
story goes that the whole world is generally the flourishing site of
peaceful and fraternal relations. But a dictator appeared from
somewhere and this one person was able to plunge the whole world,
with its millions of inhabitants, into war. This is the same concept
The
New Republic elaborated
in regard to Kerensky and the October Revolution. There the trouble
was that a weak person assumed the leadership of the democracy and
did not know how to prevent strongmen from toppling the democracy and
replacing it with a dictatorship. Here the misfortune is that in
Germany a strongman in power has upset the peace that is favored by
the more powerful democracies.
★ ★ ★
That
which has happened is not, by far, what was foreseen in these
articles. And what they foresaw is not, by far, what has happened.
Such is the fate of every political prognosis. Reality is
immeasurably richer in resources, variants, and combinations than any
imagination. That the war would begin with the division of Poland
between Germany and the USSR, we did not predict. A more attentive,
detailed analysis might well have suggested that variant too. But
when all is said and done, the division of Poland is only an episode.
A
prognosis is valuable not insofar as it expresses or finds
photographically exact confirmation in subsequent developments but
rather in the extent to which, by projecting historical factors
ahead, it helps us to orient ourselves in the actual development of
events. From this point of view it seems to us that the articles
collected in this volume have withstood the test. The author feels he
has the right to add that even now, by illuminating the present in
the light of the past, they [can still be of value].
Events
work at such a pace that some predictions are realized or confirmed
much earlier than one could suppose. Thus, when we spoke in an
interview [with the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch,
February 14, 1940] of the inevitability of United States intervention
in the war, it was seen as heresy which every party and every shading
of party opinion in the United States rejected. That was only about a
month ago, and today, as these lines are being written, the American
press, commenting on the invasion of Scandinavia by the Germans, is
saying that intervention by the United States is entirely possible in
the year ahead.
★ ★ ★
On
March 9, 1939, Mr. Chamberlain assured foreign correspondents that
the international situation had improved, that Anglo-German relations
had thawed, and that disarmament could be placed on the order of the
day. Six days later the German army occupied Czechoslovakia.
In
1937 Mr. Roosevelt proclaimed neutrality, not foreseeing at all the
incompatibility of that doctrine with the global position of the
United States.
Such
examples can be cited without end. One can almost state it as a law
that the ruling posts in contemporary democracies are filled only by
those who have demonstrated for a period of years that they cannot
orient themselves in the present situation and can foresee nothing.
★ ★ ★
In
June 1939 I had a chat with a group of American travelers on
questions of world politics. The talk touched upon the World’s Fair
in New York. This exhibit is undoubtedly a magnificent triumph of
human genius. But when they call it “the world of tomorrow,” they
give it a one-sided name — one-sided at the very least. Tomorrow’s
world will appear differently. To give a true picture of tomorrow’s
world, they should have had bombers fly over and drop their loads for
hundreds of miles around. The presence of human genius side by side
with terrifying barbarism — that is the image of tomorrow’s
world. Here too our “rigid schema” has proved to be correct.
What
is important in scientific thinking, especially in complicated
questions of politics and history, is to distinguish the basic from
the secondary, the essential from the incidental, to foresee the
movement of the essential factors of development. To people whose
thinking goes only from day to day, who seek comfort in all kinds of
episodic occurrences without bringing them together into one overall
picture, scientific thinking that proceeds from basic, fundamental
factors seems dogmatic; in politics this paradox is met with at every
turn.
★ ★ ★
If
the author has foreseen some things correctly, the credit for this
belongs not to him personally, but to the method which he applied. In
any other field, people — or at least specially trained people —
consider the application of a definite method to be essential. It’s
a different matter in politics. Here sorcery predominates. Highly
educated people believe that, for a political operation, one’s
powers of observation, eye measurements, a certain stock of slyness,
and common sense are sufficient. The illusion of free will is the
source of this subjective arbitrariness. In America, the view of the
politician as an “engineer,” who takes the raw material and
builds according to his own blueprints is especially widespread.
Nothing is more naive and barren than this point of view. However, as
in any philosophy, including the philosophy of history, there is a
correct way of conceiving the interrelation of the subjective with
the objective. In the final reckoning the objective factors always
predominate over the subjective. Therefore correct politics begins
with an analysis of the real world and an analysis of the trends at
work within it. Only thus can one arrive at a correct scientific
prediction and a correct intervention into a process on the basis of
this prediction. Any other approach would be sorcery.
People
of a vulgar turn of mind could now allude to the defeat of that
political current to which the author of this book belonged and still
belongs. How could it happen that the empiricist Stalin defeated the
faction which followed the scientific method? Doesn’t this mean
that common sense has the advantage over doctrinairism? Every
sorcerer has a certain percentage of patients who recover. And every
doctor has a certain percentage of patients who die. From this, many
primitive people are inclined to give preference to sorcery over
medicine. But in fact, science can demonstrate that in the one case
the patient recovered in spite of the intervention of the sorcerer,
and in the other the patient died because medical science, at least
at its present state, could not effectively overcome the destructive
powers affecting the organism; in both cases one must correctly
determine the relation between the objective and subjective.
In
politics the scientific method cannot provide victories in all cases.
Sorcery, on the other hand, in certain cases provides a victory when
this victory is founded on the objective alignments and general
tendencies of development.
★ ★ ★
There
are people who consider themselves educated but who permit themselves
such summary judgments as that “the October Revolution was a
failure.” And what about the French Revolution? It ended in the
restoration, though episodic, of the Bourbons. And the Civil War in
the United States? It led to the rule of the Sixty Families. And all
of human history in general? So far it has led to the second
imperialist war, which threatens our entire civilization. It is
impossible not to say, then, that all of history has been a mistake
and a failure. Finally, what of human beings themselves — no small
factor in history? Isn’t it necessary to say that this product of
prolonged biological evolution is a failure? No one is forbidden of
course to make such general observations. But they derive from the
individual experience of the petty shopkeeper, or from theosophy, and
[do not] apply to the historical process as a whole or to its overall
stages, its main chapters, or its episodes.