By Doug Lorimer
[This article first appeared in the Democratic Socialist Party's internal discussion bulletin, The Activist, volume 10, number 7, August 2000.]
The Communist Party of Australia has recently published a pamphlet by
David Matters entitled Putting Lenin's Clothes on Trotskyism which
claims that the DSP's rejection of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution
is really a cover for its support for Trotskyism. However, the real purpose
of the pamphlet is to criticise the DSP's position on the 1998 waterfront
dispute.
This is made clear in the introduction to Matters' pamphlet by CPA general
secretary Peter Symon:
In writing Putting Lenin's clothes on Trotskyism, David Matters
has contributed to the task of clarifying ideas and maintaining the validity
and truth of Marxism...
The attack on Marxism in the name of Marx, or on Lenin in the name of
Lenin, is a particularly pernicious form which can easily mislead those
who are not familiar with what Marx, Engels and Lenin actually said and
wrote.
The pretension that Trotsky was a great Leninist is one of these misrepresentations
and was refuted time and again by Lenin.