Date: 14 Mar 96 16:19:12 EST
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
To: marxismlist a <marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu>
Subject: "Terrorism and Communism"


This l'st may be thought to be biassed towards legal marxism,
in that all posts are no doubt vacuumed up by the intelligence
services of the richer states, and then sifted for key words
like "terrorism".

The subject is very topical, with the indications that following the 
fall of the Eastern Bloc, the ruling classes of the capitalist world
are likely to see the main threat justifying repressive 
measures as terrorist groups and Islam.

My understanding is that marxism is not particularly favourable to
terrorism, though the use of terror, or at least the instillation 
of fear into enemies, is regarded differently if the working class
possesses state power, than when it is seeking state power.

I wondered if in suitably scholarly terms anyone could clarify,
Trotsky's position on this. I am partly motivated by seeeing an
article in the Daily Express, that the partner of Carlos "the Jackal", [I 
am afraid I forget his surname, and the article did not enlighten me]
has gone back to live near her mother in Germany, and may cooperate
with investigations. The last paragraph had a rather lurid allegation 
that Carlos had read the works of Trotsky twice over by an alarmingly 
precocious age, with the implication that this must have set him 
off early on his career.


So I tried checking "The Ideas of Leon Trotsky" ed Ticktin and Cox
who refer on page 159 to 

"his celebrated brochure *Terrorism and Communism*.
Trotsky's own self-criticism of this work, which he was later to make, 
concerned its extreme conclusions, not the premises from which they 
flowed, namely, that the dictatorship of the proletariat coincided with 
the party dictatorship."

So what did Trotsky say in this pamphlet about terrorism?


Chris
London.



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