Trotsky: The Bankruptcy of Individual Terrorism

[LOLseph Stalin]

Well comrades, somebody has linked me to this article to read(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1909/xx/tia09.htm). It didn't take me long to read through, but now I just need to interpret it. If I read it correctly, it says that us as Marxists should be against terrorism. I'm just not sure though. I can never absorb stuff reading it off a computer screen. Help?

Sorry if this makes me look totally stupid.

[JimmyJazz]

Didn't read it but this Trotsky essay (http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm) is from just two years later (1911) and it's very explicit in its condemnation of individual acts of terrorism.

The Social-Democratic Party in Russia formally opposed the terrorist tactics of the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs). The Menshevik faction of the S-D party, of which Trotsky was still a member in 1911, was especially opposed.

[ComradeOm]

Well comrades, somebody has linked me to this article to read(http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1909/xx/tia09.htm). It didn't take me long to read through, but now I just need to interpret it. If I read it correctly, it says that us as Marxists should be against terrorism. I'm just not sure though. I can never absorb stuff reading it off a computer screen. Help?

Sorry if this makes me look totally stupid.Yes but that's not the best article from which to draw. Don't get me wrong, its an astute and well written analysis of contemporary Russia (although I can't say I fully agree with Trotsky's conclusions regarding the Tsarist state) but its more concerned with the organisational flaws of terrorism. The article posted by JimmyJazz provides a more theoretical condemnation. Long story short - Marxists understand that only a revolutionary class (as opposed to a terrorist cell or 'combat organisation') can bring about revolutionary change

To provide some historical background, one of the unique features of Tsarist Russia during the late 19th and early 20th C was the preponderance of acts of terrorism. It was surprisingly common for young students or nobles to assassinate disliked officials, Tsar Alexander II being the most notable victim. Trotsky gives an interesting explanation for this in your article but just as important as imported Western ideals was the lack of parliamentary expression in Russia. In the absence of the ballot box, and disconnected from the proletariat, young radicals turned to the gun and the bomb. Foremost amongst these organisations was Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) and its successor the Social Revolutionaries (who unfortunately returned to terrorism post-1917)

At its most theoretically advanced, this propaganda of the deed was supposed to 'spark' a revolution through a single daring act. So great were its shortcomings (and the response of authorities!) that even leading anarchists (Kropotkin being the most obvious) had begun to renounce it during the 1880s. The idea that a single assassination could somehow "stir the masses" was revealed to be absolute nonsense

Social-Democrats, in both the West and Russia, rejected acts of individual terrorism as ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst

[LOLseph Stalin]

Ok, to make a long story short i'm assuming it's saying that terrorism just causes more chaos. Gah...i'm terrible at this. xD

[piet11111]

you scare other workers by committing such acts so while they where originally sympathetic to your cause you then turn them against yourself and see them going to the state for protection.

that is why such actions are a bad idea and need to be opposed.

[Charles Xavier]

Communists are of course opposed to individual act of terror which are not only useless but also counter-productive.

[apathy maybe]

Communists are of course opposed to individual act of terror which are not only useless but also counter-productive.

Your words of wisdom astound me. Your brilliant use of the English language blows me away. You're arguments are some of the best I've read.

Wait. What? What arguments?

You posted one fucking sentence, with your opinion. Why are "individual acts of terror" useless? Why are they counter-productive?

What are "individual acts of terror" anyway? What about groups like the Weathermen, RAF, Japanese Red Army etc.?
---

Anyway, as I have said before, to condemn attacks on high ranking government and military targets by leftists, is just stupid. High ranking government and military officials are all legitimate targets, no matter how "useful" the attacks are.

[JimmyJazz]

that is why such actions are a bad idea and need to be opposed.

I'll go along with "condemned". To say that they should be "opposed" takes things way too far imo. And brings to my mind images of the liquidation of the POUM and of Russian "ultra-lefts".

[Rawthentic]

Terrorist acts in the name of "revolution", are futile and counterrevolutionary.

They are made by people who dont understand that revolutions are made through conscious, organized acts by masses of humans, not isolated and symbolic attacks that aren't grounded in the real support of the people.

[ComradeOm]

Anyway, as I have said before, to condemn attacks on high ranking government and military targets by leftists, is just stupid. High ranking government and military officials are all legitimate targets, no matter how "useful" the attacks are.I'm guessing that you didn't read the Trotsky articles linked above?

The whole point about propaganda of the deed (or "individual acts of terror", if you will) is that it doesn't work. This simple truth does not change with the status of the victim. In the past two centuries "leftists" have assassinated Tsars, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Directors, Archdukes, Generals and virtually every form of "high ranking government and military target". The strategy failed in practice and it is without basis in theory (as the articles in previous posts elaborate on)

But hey, don't take my or Trotsky's word for it. Let's ask our old friend Kropotkin what he thinks (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/kropotkin/kropotkintonetllau3502.html):

"...with the Boulangist* agitation' creating an alarming atmosphere, the young working class believed that a few heroic and devoted persons would be sufficient to provoke the revolution. Some serious and learned members of the bourgeoisie thought the same thing. Since then we have realized that this was an illusion, and have been forced, in France as elsewhere, to join the slow process of organization and preparatory propaganda among the working classes. This is the point where we are now"

*A short lived populist and reactionary movement in the Third Republic that was centred around General Boulanger. Think of (a failed) Napoleon III without such a famous name

[Die Neue Zeit]

At its most theoretically advanced, this propaganda of the deed was supposed to 'spark' a revolution through a single daring act. So great were its shortcomings (and the response of authorities!) that even leading anarchists (Kropotkin being the most obvious) had begun to renounce it during the 1880s. The idea that a single assassination could somehow "stir the masses" was revealed to be absolute nonsense

Social-Democrats, in both the West and Russia, rejected acts of individual terrorism as ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst

Comrade, I could easily substitute "action obsession" for "propaganda of the deed" in referring to the "anarcho-ultraleft-Trot" fetish for protests, general strikes, mass strikes (and wildcat strikes more generally), and ultimately the insurrectionary strike (based on 1905-like soviets emerging from earlier strikes). :(

Too bad Trotsky didn't renounce this twin. :(

[Charles Xavier]

What are "individual acts of terror" anyway? What about groups like the Weathermen, RAF, Japanese Red Army etc.?
---

Anyway, as I have said before, to condemn attacks on high ranking government and military targets by leftists, is just stupid. High ranking government and military officials are all legitimate targets, no matter how "useful" the attacks are.


I am of course opposed to Ultra-leftist cliques like the Weathermen and the RAF. I am not opposed to revolutionary violence but I am opposed to these groups running around bombing things because they think its going to make a difference. What use is a small group divorced from the masses going to do by killing military officials? These military officials can be replaced with new ones and the state will only intensify the struggle against the people because of a group who because they are divorced from the masses greatly overestimate the revolutionary situation.

Mass struggle is the working man's way to change power, not conspiracy.

"
Permit me to say a few words on another point which is being very much discussed these days and on which we Russian Social-Democrats are particularly rich in experience, namely, the question of terrorism.

We have no information yet about the Austrian revolutionary Social-Democrats. We know that there are revolutionary Social-Democrats in Austria, but information about them is very meagre anyway. Consequently, we do not know whether the assassination of Stuergkh by Comrade Fritz Adler was the application of terrorism as tactics, THAT IS, systematic organization of political assassinations unconnected with the mass revolutionary struggle; or whether it was a single act in the transition from the opportunistic socialist defence of the fatherland tactics of the official Austrian Social-Democrats to the tactics of revolutionary mass struggle.
The latter assumption seems to fit in more with the circumstances. The message of greeting to Fritz Adler proposed by the Central Committee of the Italian party and published in Avanti! of October 29, therefore, deserves the fullest sympathy.

At all events, we are convinced that the experience of revolution and counter-revolution in Russia has proved the correctness of our Party's more than twenty-year struggle against terrorism as tactics. We must not forget, however, that this struggle was closely connected with a ruthless struggle against opportunism, which was inclined to repudiate the use of all violence by the oppressed classes against their oppressors. We have always stood for the use of violence in the mass struggle and in connection with it.

Secondly, we linked the struggle against terrorism with many years of propaganda, started long before December 1905, for an armed uprising. We have regarded the armed uprising not only as the best means by which the propletariat can retaliate to the government's policy, but also as the inevitable result of the development of the class struggle for socialism and democracy.

Thirdly, we have not confined ourselves to accepting violence in principle and to propaganda for armed uprising. For example, four years before the revolution we supported the use of violence by the masses against their oppressors, particularly in street demonstrations. We sought to bring to the whole country the lesson taught by every such demonstration. We began to devote more and more attention to organizing sustained and systematic mass resistance against the police and the army, to winning over, through this resistance, as large as possible a part of the army to the side of the proletariat in its struggle against the government, to inducing the peasantry and the army to take a conscious part in this struggle.

These are the tactics we have applied in the struggle against terrorism, and it is our firm conviction that they have proved successful."



Lenin, Complete Works, V. 23, pp. 122-124






We Marxists must walk a tight rope.

[apathy maybe]

@ComradeOm I don't care if it works or not. I'm not going to condemn folks who get rightly pissed off with the state and start killing heads of state for it.

@GeorgiDimitrovII Thank you for providing a response longer than your original post. You do know that both the RAF and the Weathermen considered themselves to be Marxist-Leninist. Oh, and at least some groups try and use "terrorism" to encourage a more general up rising. It hasn't worked yet, but still the tried...

[Dimentio]

Terrorist acts in the name of "revolution", are futile and counterrevolutionary.

They are made by people who dont understand that revolutions are made through conscious, organized acts by masses of humans, not isolated and symbolic attacks that aren't grounded in the real support of the people.

Funny that 100% of movies about revolutions in the west are recommending individual acts of terrorism. Just look at "V for Vendetta".

[Tower of Bebel]

Anyway, as I have said before, to condemn attacks on high ranking government and military targets by leftists, is just stupid. High ranking government and military officials are all legitimate targets, no matter how "useful" the attacks are.
If these attacks result in counterattacks from the bourgeoisie on the freedom of the workers (militarism, police action, boarder controls, ...) then it is all right to condemn terrorism, for it serves the objective interests of the capitalist class. If this terrorism is part of the workers' class struggle then we could say terrorsim is a useless act because it's is not the individual terrorist act but the class struggle that provides the road to workers' power.

[ComradeOm]

Comrade, I could easily substitute "action obsession" for "propaganda of the deed" in referring to the "anarcho-ultraleft-Trot" fetish for protests, general strikes, mass strikes (and wildcat strikes more generally), and ultimately the insurrectionary strike (based on 1905-like soviets emerging from earlier strikes). :(

Too bad Trotsky didn't renounce this twin. :(Trotsky did denounce the syndicalist myth of the mass strike in his 1905 (see quote below) but, this misguided myth aside, there is no reason for him to have condemned the practice of striking as a strategy. Obviously ultra-leftists are mistaken to favour violent and undirected strikes but strikes themselves, to quote Lenin, remain "one of the most imposing manifestations of the working-class movement"

Trotsky: "In struggle it is extremely important to weaken the enemy. That is what a strike does. At the same time a strike brings the army of the revolution to its feet. But neither the one nor the other, in itself, creates a state of revolution

The power still has to be snatched from the hands of the old rulers and handed over to the revolution. That is the fundamental task. A general strike only creates the necessary preconditions; it is quite inadequate for achieving the task itself"

(Which is not to say that otherwise orthodox Marxists have been immune to the logic behind the propaganda of the deed. Bela Kun's "revolutionary offensive", for example, during the German Revolution was an unmitigated disaster)


@ComradeOm I don't care if it works or not. I'm not going to condemn folks who get rightly pissed off with the state and start killing heads of state for it. Well frankly - and there's no real way to say this without coming off as overly antagonistic, which is not my intention - that sounds like the words of someone unconcerned or unconnected with the workers movement. Trotsky and Kropotkin did not condemn the strategy of propaganda of the deed because it was morally wrong or because it contravened some integral 'right to life' but because they were active revolutionaries who saw first hand both the pointlessness and detrimental impact of such assassinations on the working class. There is no reason needed to condemn those who carry out such attacks, without regard to circumstances or those who will suffer the consequences, other than to state that their actions are simply counter-productive

Indeed if you'll look through this thread you'll see that the only person who has taken a moral stance, for or against, such assassinations is yourself. Everyone else has limited themselves to pointing out the obvious shortcomings of the strategy

[Charles Xavier]

@ComradeOm I don't care if it works or not. I'm not going to condemn folks who get rightly pissed off with the state and start killing heads of state for it.

@GeorgiDimitrovII Thank you for providing a response longer than your original post. You do know that both the RAF and the Weathermen considered themselves to be Marxist-Leninist. Oh, and at least some groups try and use "terrorism" to encourage a more general up rising. It hasn't worked yet, but still the tried...


It matters not to be if they told me they were clones of marx and lenin and were giving out free turkeys and sirloin steaks.

They can call themselves whatever they want. But the fact remains they were divorced from the masses and they were conspiratorial rather than open.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Trotsky did denounce the syndicalist myth of the mass strike in his 1905 (see quote below) but, this misguided myth aside, there is no reason for him to have condemned the practice of striking as a strategy. Obviously ultra-leftists are mistaken to favour violent and undirected strikes but strikes themselves, to quote Lenin, remain "one of the most imposing manifestations of the working-class movement"

Trotsky: "In struggle it is extremely important to weaken the enemy. That is what a strike does. At the same time a strike brings the army of the revolution to its feet. But neither the one nor the other, in itself, creates a state of revolution

The power still has to be snatched from the hands of the old rulers and handed over to the revolution. That is the fundamental task. A general strike only creates the necessary preconditions; it is quite inadequate for achieving the task itself"

A recent article by someone other than a CPGB comrade (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1203523&postcount=32) illustrates the Trotskyist fetish for combining the anarcho-syndicalist general strike with an invisible Bakuninist hand:

http://www.thecommentfactory.com/as-the-global-recession-takes-hold-the-left-needs-to-get-its-house-in-order-1713


In 1968, in the wake of the Paris uprisings, French theorist Alain Touraine pegged the student movement as the successor to the working class as the main agent of social change. This may still be true. But groups like SA, who attempt to use sweaty undergraduates as vanguards to a general strike, have perverted that legacy and destroyed any chance of truly progressive movement emerging Down Under any time soon.

As this week’s events in Europe demonstrate, the angry response by those bearing the brunt of the global depression is only beginning to emerge. When the local crunch comes and the stimulus package inevitably follows the Reserve Bank into impotence, there will be no shortage of demagogues promising salvation. But for the moment there’s no chance of the Australian Left abandoning either its cynicism, or its hunger for out-of-the-box media stunts spruiked by an unaccountable political elite.

[LOLseph Stalin]

you scare other workers by committing such acts so while they where originally sympathetic to your cause you then turn them against yourself and see them going to the state for protection.

that is why such actions are a bad idea and need to be opposed.

Thank you. Your description works. That's kinda what I thought it was saying, but it's good to double check...

[Black Dagger]

If these attacks result in counterattacks from the bourgeoisie on the freedom of the workers (militarism, police action, boarder controls, ...) then it is all right to condemn terrorism, for it serves the objective interests of the capitalist class.

What if the attacks are successful and gather support, or otherwise do not provoke a strong counter-response, would you then support them? I don't think so.

If anything i would say at times of state repression solidarity must be at its strongest.

You don't have to agree with the tactics of other communists, but to throw your hat in with the state criminals and the 'horrified' bourgeois media when things get violent seems a very dubious course to take. From my experience this course ends badly - in oz for example, a trotskyist group named and blamed a specific anarchist group for a riot that occurred - result? Targetted police repression.

Condemning these people will not help to prevent any state repression if it is to occur, so why do it? By all means reject tactics, but a distinction needs to be made between opposing people and tactics- from what i have seen this is not done, and the trotsykist groups simply lined up behind the police commissioner. It should also be said that the state and police do not need significant pretext to pursue, harrass or abuse - arrests and 'crowd dispersal' are so common as to be a banal response - even at the most peaceful gatherings.

This is sort of like the media's wowserism/moralism - setting communists apart between the 'good' and 'bad' ones', 'violent' and 'peaceful'- again i've seen this in australia where trotsykist groups organise actions on the basis that they are explicitly 'peaceful protests' - well, don't advertise a 'violent protest' - but perhaps we should wait and see? We are not liberals after all, we have no committment to pacifism, non-violence or reformism.



If this terrorism is part of the workers' class struggle then we could say terrorsim is a useless act because it's is not the individual terrorist act but the class struggle that provides the road to workers' power.

I agree that terrorism is not a means to workers power, but i don't agree that that entails we should 'cast out' violent workers and side with the police and bourgeois media against them. Rather i think we should support people who face state repression, even if we disagree with their tactics.