Draper knows better than Lenin

 In 1939 Trotsky engaged in a particularly interesting exchange of views on defeatism with a group of Palestinian Trotskyists. His article A Step Toward Social-Patriotism [133] was a polemic against the idea being advanced by this group (just before the Second World War broke out) that defeatism would apply in the fascist war bloc but not in the democratic camp, even though the latter was considered imperialist too. In both we oppose the war, they said, but only in one of them are we “defeatists”.

Apart from Trotsky’s reply, this position of the Palestinians has great interest for us in itself. It is the first case we know of where serious thinking about Lenin’s concept of defeatism led a group in an objectively social-patriotic direction; where, so to speak, the social-patriotic potential in it was acted out in politics.

Their document said: “The general schema is defeatism in all imperialist countries ... Defeatism, according to Lenin’s definition and as it has been generally understood, signifies a desire for defeat and giving aid to the latter. Is that slogan applicable in any imperialist country in any war?”

No, they answered, it is not applicable in every war. These Palestinians are thinking specifically of the coming war with Nazi Germany. “Do we really desire the defeat of the democratic camp which is at war with Hitler?” they no doubt asked themselves, and they could not find it in them to say yes – while accepting the “generally understood” meaning of defeatism. There can be little doubt that the course of thinking through which they were going was “a step toward social-patriotism”, but the form it took with them was the development of a “theory” of one-way or one-sided defeatism (so to speak) – a “defeatist” anti-war line in one camp, a “non-defeatist” but still presumably anti-war line in the other camp.

Given the fact that this distinction was being drawn on the basis of accepting the defeatist methodology itself, and not through an emancipation from it, it could mean only that they were saying: Let us be completely against the war in the Nazi camp, but in the democratic camp we are against the war only in part, or only in a certain sense, or only with certain reservations.