Date: Sat, 13 Aug 1994 15:32:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com> Subject: Trotsky's marxism I think that Trotskyism in all its variants can be characterized as Stalinism's masochistic, even suicidal, loyal opposition. It shares with its alter ego (another definition--Stalinism out of power) the exaltation of labor, productivism, and "revolution from above." This is Trotsky from _Terrorism and Communism_: "The entire history of humanity is a history of the organization and education of social man for labor, with a view to obtaining from him greater productivity." Including under Socialism as administered by the Bolshevik Party. Yeah, not much trace there of the spirit of Marx's 1844 manuscripts. If you have any doubts about the Old Man's capacity for ruthlessness, look at what he did to the Kronstadt soviet in 1921. And he insisted, right up until ice-pick time, that the USSR was a "deformed workers' state." For him, the principal remaining "gain of October" was the nationalization of industry, as if that in itself were proof of worker control. Certainly, Trotsky was many times more sophisticated than Stalin, but he firmly identified the proletarian revolution with an organization of hierarchy and ideology that made Stalin and other monsters possible. His followers never learned anything from this; witness their "critical support" for just about every Stalinist-nationalist front since 1945. --AT ------------------
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