Trotsky justified individual asassination under some circumstances

[Saorsa]

I'm fairly certain Trotsky justified individual asassination under some circumstances under certain circumstances. Anyone able to get me a quote? And a link?

[h0m0revolutionary]

I have this bookmarked, makes ok reading, tihnk ti's what you're after:
http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm

[Yehuda Stern]

What do you need it for? Just out of curiosity.

[Black Sheep]

Well,that certainly backfired, didnt it.

[Yehuda Stern]

Of course, if Trotsky had only been against individual assassinations, he would not have been assassinated!

[Black Sheep]

I was kidding of course. :)

[Leo]

I have this bookmarked, makes ok reading, tihnk ti's what you're after:
http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm)

Uh... where is individual assassination justified in this article? If anything, it is the contrary:


The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister – all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international social democracy ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism, and done so in the most irreconcilable way.

[Yehuda Stern]

Yeah, but I don't think anyone would doubt that Trotsky would argue, correctly, that sometimes as part of the fight against the counterrevolution, all sorts of terrorist tactics might have to be employed, assassination included.

[pastradamus]

Whatever Trotsky may have done during his time in Russia is no worse than any of the main Bolshevik leaders in simular positions to his. However I must say that despite this i've never been fully able to digest Trotsky and his theories and I feel that the most of the modern Trotskyiest's I know of know little of the man himself IMO.

[Revy]

More quotes:


In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of “the propaganda of the deed” can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more “effective” the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education.

But the smoke from the explosion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement come disillusion and apathy.

There is no need to belabour the point that social democracy has nothing in common with those bought-and-paid-for moralists who, in response to any terrorist act, make solemn declamations about the “absolute value” of human life. These are the same people who, on other occasions, in the name of other absolute values – for example, the nation’s honour or the monarch’s prestige – are ready to shove millions of people into the hell of war. Today their national hero is the minister who gives the order for unarmed workers to be fired on – in the name of the most sacred right of private property; and tomorrow, when the desperate hand of the unemployed worker is clenched into a fist or picks up a weapon, they will start in with all sorts of nonsense about the inadmissability of violence in any form.
If we oppose terrorist acts, it is only because individual revenge does not satisfy us. The account we have to settle with the capitalist system is too great to be presented to some functionary called a minister. To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system – that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

You might also want Their Morals and Ours. (http://trotsky.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm)

Is individual terror, for example, permissible or impermissible from the point of view of “pure morals”? In this abstract form the question does not exist at all for us. Conservative Swiss bourgeois even now render official praise to the terrorist William Tell. Our sympathies are fully on the side of Irish, Russian, Polish or Hindu terrorists in their struggle against national and political oppression. The assassinated Kirov, a rude satrap, does not call forth any sympathy. Our relation to the assassin remains neutral only because we know not what motives guided him. If it became known that Nikolayev acted as a conscious avenger for workers’ rights trampled upon by Kirov, our sympathies would be fully on the side of the assassin. However, not the question of subjective motives but that of objective expediency has for us the decisive significance. Are the given means really capable of leading to the goal? In relation to individual terror, both theory and experience bear witness that such is not the case. To the terrorist we say: it is impossible to replace the masses; only in the mass movement can you find expedient expression for your heroism. However, under conditions of civil war, the assination of individual oppressors ceases to be an act of individual terror. If, we shall say, a revolutionist bombed General Franco and his staff into the air, it would hardly evoke moral indignation even from the democratic eunuchs. Under the conditions of civil war a similar act would be politically completely expedient. Thus, even in the sharpest question – murder of man by man – moral absolutes prove futile. Moral evaluations, together with those political, flow from the inner needs of struggle.