On Methods in Historical Research – By W.B. Bland
COMpass,June 2001;
Bland W.B.; Notes on Historical Research
First placed on web at: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/compass/compass/comjun01.html#histres – This took place upon Bland’s death. It was never published previously, but it was received in letter form to various comrades. It had no date attached to it.
The first web publication carried the dating comment: “The following is the text of a talk delivered by comrade Bland to a Communist League summer school in 1977, detailing his method of historical research.”
Our note on datings – This is not recalled by any of the participants at that meeting of the 1977 Summer School. It is conjectured that this was put together much later. In fact most likely, at a time that was congruent with the publication of ‘The Assassination of Trotsky” in the February 1994 edition of “COMpass: Theoretical Journal of the Communist League.” This latter was first web-published by H. Kumar and B Mike in 2019 – at: Marxist-Leninist Currents, now at the archives of ‘Red Phoenix’ with the American Party of Labor at: https://mlcurrents.net/2019/07/19/the-assassination-of-trotsky-by-william-b-bland
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I have been asked by the Political Bureau to set down the method which I use in conducting historical research. In doing so, I must make it clear that this is a method I have evolved without specialised training, by common sense and trial and error over some years. I make no claim that it is the best possible method, and I am sure that the Political Bureau would wish to publish any comments which other comrades may have.
I feel it would be easier to illustrate this method by taking a concrete piece of research which I am at present working on for the autumn school on trotskyism — the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.
I had, of course, certain preconceived ideas on the subject: the belief that all trotskyite groups agree that the assassination was carried out by the Soviet security police on Stalin’s orders, while the Communist Parties at the time portrayed the act as that of a disillusioned trotskyite.
In my view the first and most important step in any research project is to do one’s best to suppress the prejudices which all of us have – my own hostility to trotskyism and admiration for Stalin as a Marxist-Leninist tending to make me reject from the outset the trotskyite theory. This is fatal. The purpose of historical research is not to uncover facts which support one’s own prejudcies, one’s preconceived theory, but to establish the objective truth, so far as this is possible. A theory which is not based on the objective truth is useless to the cause of changing the world.
Where, then, to make a start?
I began with Deutscher’s biography of Trotsky – with that section covering the assassination. I first read it through and then went through it again underlining the sentences which appeared to have significance. I then typed out these sentences on separate sheets of paper, headed by the date (e.g., August 17th., 1940) to which the material below related.
Here one must note that Deutscher favours the trotskyite theory – that the assassination was carried out by agents of the GPU. But this is irrelevant. What one is concerned with is the “factual details” which Deutscher gives.
But, of course, the “factual details” given by Deutscher may be untrue.
The next step, therefore, is to note below each “factual detail” the source cited by Deutscher for it. For example, the confession note which the assassin “Jacson” had with him at the time of the assassination in which he states his premeditated intention to kill Trotsky because he came to the conclusion that he was a “phoney revolutionary”; this source is given as the police records published by the Mexican Chief of Police in a book which he published on the investigation later.
It is, of course, impossible to buy all the books referred to in the course of a research project – and in any case this book is long out of print. If it is a book from which only one or two points are required, I consult it at a university library – where it is generally much quicker to obtain than at the last resort, the British Museum reading room. If, however, it is a book likely to contain much valuable material, as in this case, I prefer to obtain it on loan from or through my local library, so that I can browse over it at home. I find that if I have to make voluminous notes from a particular book in a reference library, there are invariably some words in my notes which I am unable to decipher when I type them up on my return home. This necessitates a second visit to check the typewritten notes from the source, and to fill in any indecipherable words!
Having consulted the account of the Chief of Police, I find that Deutscher’s account of the confession note is accurate. (It need not have been, of course; one can take nothing for granted in research!).
This appears to establish the fact that the assassin wished the world to believe that he was a disillusioned trotskyist, and that his disillusionment was the motive for his act. It does not, of course, establish that this was, in fact, the real motive; if as the trotskyites claim “Jacson” was a GPU agent he could have had reason to present a false motive.
The process of research goes on in this way. Each new book referred to contains details of other books or articles which need to be consulted. At first, the list grows and grows, but as the work proceeds one finds that the number of unconsulted works decreases until finally one can say that one has consulted, so far as one can tell, all the relevant works.
This is inevitably a time-consuming process. It may take a whole day to track down a reference where the citer has failed to give a page reference. I think, therefore, that there is some truth in my old joke that only an obstinate, anti-social element like myself is capable of sustained research!
In checking facts, one may be able to ascertain that so-and-so said something. But the question remains: was he speaking the truth? This may be difficult to ascertain with certainty, and I think it is fair to assess the truth of a statement on the basis that an admission which is contrary to the case of the admitter is very likely to be true.
In the case of the present research project, for example, one finds that some days after the assassination, Joseph Hansen – the guard on duty who admitted the assassin to Trotsky’s “fortress” in Mexico City, now leader of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party in the USA – had a secret interview with an FBI agent at the US Embassy in Mexico City. This fact is revealed in documents of the US State Department recently published for the first time, and is confirmed by Hansen’s own belated admission in the pages of the SWP journal.
One finds further the admission of the head of the counter-espionage section of the FBI at the time that his agents were working in cooperation with oppositionist agents of the GPU in the United States, who were functioning as double agents.
These two facts alone throw doubt on the orthodox trotskyite theory that Trotsky’s assassination was simply that of a “Stalinist execution squad”.
I believe that a valuable guide to assessment of facts is the principle “Cui bono?” (Who benefits?).
The official GPU in 1940 was controlled by Beria, whom countless other facts establish as a Marxist-Leninist collaborator of Stalin. Now Marxist-Leninists condemn political assassination, and it must be remembered that at this time Trotsky’s supporters in the Fourth International were a negligible force, and already in process of splitting into rival factions. From the point of view of Marxist-Leninists in the Soviet Union, the assassination of Trotsky would have been counter-productive. Indeed, Marxist-Leninists are on record as having warned of an attempt to assassinate Trotsky by right-wing forces as a provocation to stir up hatred against the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, the facts show that the assassination was not a purely individual act, but was part of a planned conspiracy. What political forces stood to gain in 1940 by Trotsky’s murder?
In the study of the role of Stalin already published, the Communist League has accepted that the plan of the opposition conspiracy in the Soviet Union was to open the front to German forces in the anticipated future war with Nazi Germany and to overthrow the Soviet government in a military coup.
What was the position of Trotsky, the founding father of the opposition in this plan?
Trotsky persisted right up to his death in insisting that the Soviet Union represented a workers’ state, and that it was the duty of opposition elements in the Soviet Union to fight alongside the “Stalinists” in the defence of the Soviet Union in the event of an imperialist attack upon it.
Clearly, by 1940 – when the German attack upon the Soviet Union was only months away – Trotsky had become an obstacle to the full realisation of those plans. It can, therefore, hardly be regarded as accidental that it was precisely at this time (1939-40) that a section of the leaders of the Trotskyite SWP in the USA broke with Trotsky precisely upon this point – maintaining the Soviet Union was no longer a workers’ state, but one of state capitalism, in which it would be “criminal” for “Marxists” to cooperate with the “Stalinist bureaucracy” in defence against imperialist attack.
The research is not, at the time of writing, completed. But already it has reached the point where, I believe, it has refuted both the Trotskyite theory that the assassination of Trotsky was carried out by “Stalin’s agents” and the contemporary CP theory that it was the work of an individual disillusioned Trotskyite. Already it has reached the stage of pointing to the probability of the truth of a new theory: that the assassination was the work of opposition conspirators working in conjunction with the US intelligence service, carried out under the slogan put forwards by Max Shachtman (the leader of the “state capitalist” theoreticians within the SWP) of “saving Trotskyism from Trotsky”.
It is also understandable, on the basis of the new theory, why the demand of the Trotskyite Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) for a new investigation into the assassination of Trotsky has met with the violent hostility of a “united front” of virtually all other Trotskyite groups – from the “Militant” group to the International Marxist Group and the Socialist Workers’ Party (formerly International Socialists), who complain that the WRP’s campaign is equivalent to “slandering” Hansen as an agent not only of the “GPU” but also of US Intelligence.
Out of the facts accumulated on a particular event, a picture inevitably begins to emerge. The essence of dialectical materialism, to my simple mind, is that “everything makes sense” – so that the picture which emerges from the accumulated facts must be the one that makes sense. If it contains inherent contradictions, then either one or more of the facts on which it is based must be incorrect or the interpretation placed upon them must be incorrect.
Once a coherent picture has been drawn with regard to a particular event, it is necessary to go through the entire material again. It is my experience that, once the correct picture has been drawn, other facts which one has dismissed as of negligible importance on the first lap acquire significance and need to be incorporated in the work.
In summing up what I feel is the basis of historical research, I would put forward what I feel is a fundamental principle: Take nothing for granted; check everything!
Of course, in emphasising the importance of research, I do not want to counterpose it to practical work. But practical work is useless unless it is based on a correct theory. And a correct theory is impossible without research. For example, the correct practical work which Comrade PT is pursuing in building an anti-fascist movement is based on a theory of fascism and the anti-fascist united front which it was possible for the Communist League to elaborate only out of research into the experience of the working class movement in Italy and Germany. There is no conflict between theory and practice; the two are inseparable and essential.
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