The Proletarian Military Policy was a policy adopted by the Fourth International in response to World War II.[1] It was an attempt to apply transitional demands such as trade union control of military training and the election of officers to transform what it characterised as an imperialist war into a revolutionary struggle against Nazism.[2]
Alongside his call for an unconditional defence of the Soviet Union, Trotsky outlined the approach to be adopted by Marxists who were conscripted into the military,
"We are absolutely in favor of compulsory military training and in the same way for conscription. Conscription? Yes. By the bourgeois state? No. We cannot entrust this work, as any other, to the state of the exploiters. In our propaganda and agitation we must very strongly differentiate these two questions. That is, not to fight against the necessity of the workers being good soldiers and of building up an army based on discipline, science, strong bodies and so on, including conscription, but against the capitalist state which abuses the army for the advantage of the exploiting class."[3]
The policy provoked controversy within the Trotskyist movement with some seeing it as a concession to social patriotism.[4] In the American SWP, Max Shachtman and James Burnham characterised the Soviet Union as 'state capitalist' and disagreed with the policy.