File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/marxism.Jul12-Aug17.94, message 358


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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