In a recent Blanket
article, Anthony McIntyre not for the first
time had some fun at the expense of the ultra left
in an amusing article in which he castigated the
Trotskyist groups for the hapless political imbeciles
many of them at times can undoubtedly be. (Although
it is only fair to add, if some poor soul or a particular
section of society is getting it stuck up them by
the State or Business, they will campaign vigorously
on their behalf.) At much the same time over at
the
Slugger O'Toole web site, one of the more astute
left-wing contributors was playing down the part
played by Leon Trotsky in some of the major and
most traumatic events that shaped the 20th century,
and in doing so it was impossible not to conclude
this contributer was sympathetic to the work of
Iosif Dzhugashvili [Stalin]. The thought of which
made me shudder, and question why, with all the
information that is now available to us, would someone
who claims to be a socialist ignore or discount
the crimes against humanity committed by Stalin
and his wretched acolytes.
Trotsky
intuitively described Stalin as the grave-digger
of the Russian Revolution. In this he was undoubtedly
correct, for just prior to its demise, Russian workers
whose grandfathers and fathers had brought the Soviet
Union into being and heroically defended it against
the Nazi hordes in WW2 felt its bureaucratic corpse
was not worth an iota, let alone worth defending
with their own blood.
This
being so, Stalin was more than simply the grave-digger
of the Russian revolution; he came very close to
becoming the grave-digger of socialism itself, which
is something Trotsky's heirs have given little real
thought to. For if they had, they would understand
that the working classes are never again going to
place their trust in a party that calls for a dictatorship,
whether it be that of the proletariat or any other
force. If Socialism is to emerge today, it must
be as a democratic extension of bourgeois democracy,
not something that begins in year zero swirling
in blood.
Thus there is little doubt the political groups
that today term themselves Trotskyist, most of which
are little more than sects, do the reputation of
Lev Davidovich Bronstein [Trotsky] less than justice.
Not least because most of these groups seem to be
made up of individuals who have absolutely none
of the necessary attributes it takes to engage successfully
in party politics in the 21st Century, seemingly
being devoid of the one attribute that almost all
politicians and leaders of mass struggles need to
progress their cause, i. e., Patience. There also
seems to be a total lack of rebelliousness within
these sects, which whilst somewhat amusing, does
make one wonder if they are in the correct profession.
For surely at the heart of the business of revolution
is an ability to rebel. Yet with their life long
adherence to democratic centralism, any thought
of rebelling has become anathema to today's leading
Trotskyists. Hence most of these Trotskyist groups
have had much the same self perpetuating leadership
in place for the last three if not four decades—and
this despite their pitiful record of winning working
class people to their cause.
They proclaim, just as those who lead religious
sects, that they have the one true path, although
instead of holding up this or that Religious Tome,
they claim due to their study of Marxism and the
works of Lenin and Trotsky, that they are able and
willing to lead the Masses to a better world; next
year we will be in Jerusalem, so to speak! Yet far
from the Trotskyist groups actually doing this,
they often move from one political strategy to the
next at a startling speed, which was the reverse
of all their hero believed. They proclaim they have
founded a new mass socialist party of the left,
but when this fails to materialize as such within
a a short period of time, they abandon it without
a backward glance, having moved on to claim their
latest creation is to be the harbinger of a Socialist
Dawn or some such pretentious rot. They remind me
of the contestants on TV shows like Pop Idol or
Big Brother, who, rather than putting in their time
as performers, learning their craft in Halls, Clubs
and Pubs up and down the motor-way, expect to display
their raw talent to the viewers and be acclaimed
an immediate star and thus all their desires will
be met.
However, having written the negative comments above
about those who claim to be Trotsky's political
heirs, and despite being someone who strongly believes
in No Gods and No Masters and the philosophy
that goes with it, I feel we do a great disservice
to ourselves if we allow the sects who claim to
represent Trotsky's ideas to become the sole keepers
of his flame and thus the legacy of his life and
work. There is no need to place people like Leon
Trotsky on a pedestal, as little good will come
of doing so; one only has to look at those who claim
to be Trotsky's heirs to understand this. Not least
because, like any human being, he was a mass of
contradictions, some good, some bad. As to him being
a genius, well, I have little idea who classes as
such, but it seems to me when we tag people with
this term, it wipes their slate so clean of common
humanity that it separates them from the rest of
us, which cannot be good either for those categorized
as geniuses or us lesser mortals.
There
is little doubt Trotsky was an exceptional man who
played a very important role in both the Russian
Revolution and analyzing Stalinism to be the cancer
within the international socialist movement it undoubtedly
was. He was also a very, very fine writer indeed.
I can only think of one other 20th century politician
who combined politics and literature with such effect
and that was Winston Churchill. Trotsky's history
of the Russian Revolution is a masterpiece. What
makes it almost unique is that it was written by
one of the main participants in the Revolution.
Trotsky's History takes us into every corner and
cubby hole of the days leading up to the February
Revolution, through to the July Days and finally
the successful Bolshevik grab for power in what
history knows as the October 1917 Revolution, but
which if it had failed would probably be known today
as Lenin's attempt at a military coup.
Not
only did Trotsky play a major role in the events
of 1917, but he personally knew almost all of the
leading socialists who participated in these momentous
events, whether they were Bolsheviks, Mensheviks,
Social Revolutionaries or Anarchists. Thus he is
able in the book to shed light on what motivated
them, what their politics were about under the fluff,
and, in many cases, whose interest they served.
This enabled Trotsky to write a history that makes
John Reed's excellent book on the same subject look
like a collection of newspaper stories (Ten Days
That shook The World, John Reed, Penguin Classics).
Trotsky was what today would be called a politician
with a hinterland, sadly as rare in the political
elite of his day as it is in ours.
However,
perhaps his real claim to greatness should be based
on his refusal to bend the knee to Stalinism, for
unlike many other decent men and women, Trotsky
had the advantage over old Bolsheviks like Bukarin,
Tukhachevesky, Kollontai and countless others, as
well as leading European communists like Togliati
and Dimitriov, to understand that capitulating to
Joseph Stalin would nether serve the Party nor Socialism
but the reverse; and so it proved.
Unfortunately,
what Trotsky refused to understand or at least accept
publicly, was that the bacteria that infected the
Russian Revolution, and eventually all of the Communist
Parties within the Comintern, was placed there by
Lenin and his Bolshevik Party, which eventually
included Trotsky himself. Thus, when it erupted
into the Stalinist epidemic which cut down many
of the finest heads within the Soviet Union and
the International Socialist Movement, Trotsky had
no real organizational alternative to offer the
masses, bar a nicer, more humane version of the
Bolshevik Party. (Founded in March 1919, the
Communist International, or Comintern, was set up
by the Russian Communist Party along with foreign
comrades to help coordinate the revolutionary overthrow
of capitalism around the world.)
When
it comes down to it, the Leninists theory is based
on the subjugation of the democratic will of the
masses to that of the Party. Which in turn, as Rosa
Luxemburg was amongst the first to point out, would
mean the subjugation of the Party to its brightest
heads, who in turn would find themselves subjugated
by the most devious or violent amongst them. The
fact that Trotsky himself foresaw this happening
and wrote about it in the early part of the 20th
century, makes one think he may have had his head
turned by the prospect of power when he joined the
Bolsheviks in July 1917. But even when the sheer
awfulness of Stalinism became obvious to him, he
could not admit to himself that he had been mistaken
in supporting Leninism against his former comrades
like Martov. Instead, he stuck with the Leninist
concept of the Party and by doing so sidelined his
political heirs to the ghetto of the sects.
(For
more on Trotsky's life see Isaac Deutscher's three
volume Biography of Trotsky. The Prophet Armed,
1879-1921, The Prophet Unarmed, 1921-29, The Prophet
Outcast, 1929-1940. Oxford University Press.
It should be a port of call to all those who wish
to understand Trotsky and the Russian Revolution
which made his name.)
