A panel held on April 4, 2014 at the Sixth Annual Platypus International Convention at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Audio Recording
Panelists
James Heartfield (audacity.org)
Tarek Shalaby (Revolutionary Socialists)
Description
I became a Trotskyist in 1933. The theory of state capitalism is a development of Trotsky’s position… But at the end of the Second World War, the perspectives that Trotsky had put forward were not realized. Trotsky wrote that one thing was certain, the Stalinist bureaucracy would not survive the war. It would either be overthrown by revolution or by counterrevolution… The assumption was that the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy would be a fantastic opening for the Trotskyist movement, for the Fourth International. The Stalinist bureaucracy not only didn’t collapse but it expanded… Therefore, at that time, Stalinism had a fantastic strength. And we had to come to terms with it.’ —Tony Cliff, interview with Ahmed Shawki (1997)
Tony Cliff’s recognition in his own moment of a certain kind of impasse within Trotskyism and his attempt to overcome it require full consideration and appreciation both in terms of the merits of its potential and a consciousness of its limits. Panelists will address this legacy for the Left today.