Harold the Trot
AFTERTHOUGHT
By JOHN WELLS
SINCE his relatively recent
emergence into the public consciousness, the Prime Minister has frequently sought and won for him- self flattering comparisons to various political figures of the past. He has been likened to Mr Macmillan, for instance, and more recently by President
/50=' Johnson to Sir Winston Churchill. He has not so far been hailed as another Trotsky. This seems a pity, as the juxta- position could only enhance Mr Wilson's repu- tation with Young Liberals and Old Socialists alike.
Russia in 1919—and this only serves to sharpen the parallel—bore in many ways a startling resemblance to this country in 1966. Bankrupt and desolate, her industry in chaos, the nation appeared sunk in a slough of despondent apathy. Productivity had fallen over the previous seven years in some cases by as much as 95 per cent, and as the presses thundered late into the night producing banknotes and eye-catching stamps designed to blind a gullible public to the true state of affairs, money became virtually worthless. A few rusty railway trains clanked about the dismal countryside, but even these were doomed to seize up within weeks and finally to fall silent.
Faced with the immediate need to increase productivity and get the economy moving again, Trotsky began speculatively to stray some way from those political positions with which his name is normally associated. After his astonish- ing success in building up the Red Army, he submitted a plan to the Central Committee pro- posing the militarisation of labour. As they were in no position to increase production by pay incentives, he suggested, they should achieve the same result by imposing military discipline in the direction and use of labour, recruiting not for the battlefield but for the factory. Unfortunately, this scheme, intended only for submission to closed debate by the committee, immediately found its way into Pravda. The Wilsonian parallel here is attractive, but probably un- justified.
Nevertheless, students of Wilsonism will recog- nise more fruitful comparisons as the story unfolds. Addressing trade unionists after their immediately hostile and abusive reaction to the news, Trotsky urged them to accept his pro- posals. In times of national crisis, he said, as in the last war, they had responded to the cry, 'Proletarians, to horse!' Now he asked them to respond to the self-same call, 'Proletarians, back to the factory bench! Proletarians, back to production!' His audience remained sceptical, and the proposals were rejected.
Left with the prospect of asking the people to accept voluntarily some form of direction and control, he busied himself with various imagina- tive schemes, including the setting-up of com- munal feeding centres intended to attract workers to new areas; unfortunately, there was no food available, and the plan fell through. Meanwhile, however, units of the army had been turned over to civilian work, and in these labour camps he was able to see his theories put into practice, urging on the workers there with his inspiring directives. 'The political departments must cultivate the spirit of the worker in the soldier and the soldier in the worker. . . . A deserter from labour is as contemptible and despicable as a deserter from the battlefield. Severe punishment to both! Begin and complete your work, wherever possible, to the sound of socialist hymns and songs. Your work is not slave labour but high service to the socialist fatherland!' It was on a trip to one of these labour camps, to add a faintly satirical touch, that Trotsky's train was derailed just outside a small station and left unvisited by any member of the railway staff for thirty-six hours, as they apparently had got bored and gone away to live in the woods.
Trotsky's fury knew no bounds, and he was shortly afterwards put in charge of re-establish- ing the country's entire railway -system. He once again urged the militarisation of labour, demand- ing that deserters from work should be thrown into concentration camps, and that whereas such things were unthinkable in a fully-fledged Socialist state, they were necessary steps along the road from Capitalism to Communism. At the ninth party congress in the spring of 1920 there was a little resistance from the extreme left and a few 'libertarians,' but the plan was accepted in principle. Loyal Bolshevik papers confirmed that it was truly Socialist in its inten- tion, and Trotsky went on to address the leaders of the trade unions, asking them to discipline their workers, and teach them tci put the eco- nomic interest of the country above their own needs and demands. Dismissing the centuries of mismanagement by other governments, he re- minded them that they were working for the workers' state, and not for the old propertied classes.
'We are heading,' he went on, 'towards a type of labour that is socially regulated on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker.' He also answered his critics. 'Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive? This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery, too, was productive: compulsory serf labour did not grow out of the feudal lord's ill-will. It was, in its time, a progressive phenomenon.' There was a split between those unions who supported him, the `productionists,' and those who were more concerned about their rights, the `consumptionists': some Mensheviks complained that it was impossible to build a planned economy in the way the Pharaohs built their pyramids, but Trotsky at that time did not appear to agree.
Working on the reconstruction of the railways, in which he was once again successful, he had a head-on clash with union leaders, and sacked them. Encouraged, he decided to 'shake up' other unions, sacking dissident leaders and re- placing them with `productionist' nominees who would speak for the state to the workers rather than for the workers to the state. It was fortu- nately at this point that Lenin stretched out a restraining hand and decided that Trotsky had probably said about enough on the subject of trade unions. As Deutscher says, it was ironic that Stalin should be lurking in the wings, ready to assume and put into force all Trotsky's most extreme ideas—ideas which Trotsky himself had ridiculed in the past and was to disclaim later. Who knows, perhaps some new Stalin is at this moment watching the innocent Harold with a cat-like smile, and the day may come when dis- turbances at Brighton will automatically be blamed on bearded Wilsonite Pragmatists.
-Jo P:f
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