Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 16:45:00 -0600
Subject: Re: The Old Man


When I said Trotsky was a dictator I meant a would-be. Obviously, he never
held a position of supreme power. I also didn't mean to impute any venality
to him. There are enough examples in the history of communism of people
being unprincipled about power without wanting to drive fancy limousines
(though Lenin liked those too). This is a field where the waters have been
muddied so much that there's little to choose between a harsh and a lenient
construction of events. I pick the one that accords with my own prejudices
based on whatever lessons I can draw from history, while explicitly not
making the assumption so often made that the Russian Revolution was an
event that hangs suspended out of time, space, and the ordinary run of
history. I'm happy with the idea that Lenin and Trotsky had a mass of
conflicting principles, moving more toward autocracy when they were in
power and more toward democracy when they were out of it. Stalin is of
course a different story. This is perhaps not worth pursuing, since nothing
is more necessary for Marxists than to let the dead finally bury their
dead. As long as we can reach agreement on what principles should be upheld
in a mass movement, in what ways these principles can be jeopardized, and
how structures can be evolved to safeguard these principles, we might as
well stick an ice-pick through the question of Trotsky.

The important question is whether a modern revolutionary movement can
afford to have leadership, and, if so, how.

Rahul

PS I give Trotsky a great deal of credit for, along with Gramsci, who
couldn't get much press, being the first to bring the true enormity of
fascism to the attention of the world.




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