Trotskyims as Neoconservatism

[Prometeo liberado]

This is a story that has been well documented as far back as at least the eighties. So my questions are: Are Trots and/or Trotskyism more prone(more so than other left tendencies) to deviate from Marxism to neoconservative activism? Second, is it fair to say that Trotskyism, as it has been perceived over the last 30 years, is/was driven more by anti-Sovietism rather than a growing and guiding theoretical force for socialist revolution? This article, though from a questionable perspective, certainly does raise some questions. As I have never really never looked into this much I welcome your input as to the nature of Trots in the white house as well as the questions I have asked.

Everyone, play nice goddamn it!




[SPOIL]
1 (http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/0304neocontrotp1.htm) | 2





"Inverted" Trotskyism
A more sophisticated version of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion focuses not on the pasts of individual neoconservatives but on the impact that Trotskyism has supposedly had on neoconservatism as a school of thought. This "neoconservatism-as-inverted-Trotskyism" approach is best exemplified by JP Zmyrak in his article entitled "America the Abstraction", which appeared in Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative, as well as in a follow up piece, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Anti-Semitism", that was posted on the website of the America's Future Foundation. Zmyrak maintains that the former Trotskyists who became Cold War anti-Communists, such as Kristol, Sidney Hook (who in fact was never a Trotskyist), and particularly James Burnham, brought with them a "… strong tendency towards pure abstraction, towards viewing national questions purely in ideological terms…." [19] According to Zmyrak this abstractionism would later become a hallmark of neoconservatism itself, and "…in some respects mirrors the Trotskyism [the neoconservatives] once held." [20]
While more sophisticated than the smears of the polemicists, this version of the assertion is perhaps even more flawed with regards to a connection between Trotskyism and neoconservatism. The "inverted" thesis has its roots at least in part in the academic works on neoconservatism that appeared in the 1990s. In particular, it can be traced back to Garry Dorrien's The Neoconservative Mind (1993), which Zmyrak cites in his article, and to a long book review by John B. Judis of John Ehrman's The Rise of Neoconservatism, entitled "Trotskyism to Anachronism: The Neoconservative Revolution" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1995. In his book, Dorrien argues for the centrality of James Burnham, who in the 1930s was a leading intellectual and leader of the American Trotskyists, as an ideological precursor of the neoconservatives. One of Dorrien's main contentions -- which is unfortunately not developed systematically but instead sprinkled frustratingly throughout the book -- is that through Burnham and later Irving Kristol, neoconservatism retained the "..rhetorical methods…" and "…chief concepts…" of Trotskyism. [21] This is evident in Burnham and Kristol's aggressive polemics and above all in their "contempt" for liberalism, which was brought over, according to Dorrien, directly from Trotskyism.
In his Foreign Affairs book review, Judis uses the same methodology as Dorrien with regards to the legacy of Trotskyism on neoconservative thought, and is more explicit in using the term "inverted Trotskyism". Writing specifically on the neoconservative view of foreign policy, Judis maintains that, "Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to ‘export democracy', in Muravchik's words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism", and that, "… [the] neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power." Behind this lay the fact that, "What both the older and younger neoconservatives absorbed from their [Trotskyist] past was an idealistic concept of internationalism." [22]
The main weakness of the Dorrien/Judis approach used by Zmyrak is, ironically, its own excessive abstractionism. The approach is based precisely on abstracting Trotskyism from the concepts that define it as a Marxist political ideology, such as the anti-capitalist class struggle and proletarian internationalism, and those that define it as a specific school within Marxism, such as the need for a Fourth International and the transitional program. As archaic and even quixotic as those principles seem, without them the term "Trotskyism" is reduced to a meaningless label. It then becomes deceptively easy to refer to anything as "inverted Trotskyism", from an aggressive polemical style and "contempt" for liberalism as argued by Dorrien, to an "idealist" concept of internationalism as argued by Judis. But what does that really say? Can such commonplace characteristics and widely held viewpoints seriously be considered in any way specific to, or constitutive of, Trotskyism as a political ideology? This approach focuses on elements that are at best incidental to Trotskyism, and for that reason it implies more than it can demonstrate and misleads more than it illuminates. This is even more the case when we consider that very few neoconservatives were ever Trotskyists. It perhaps goes without saying that this type of abstractionism is disastrous as an approach to history, but is tailor-made for making sensationalistic accusations.
Permanent Confusion
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/032204wolfowitzpaul.jpg
WolfowitzThe final variation of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is the one that received much attention during the debates over the war in Iraq, and which contributed the most to the assertion's current widespread popularity. It is also perhaps the most confused. The contention here, as ludicrous as it may seem, is that neoconservatives in the US Defense Department, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, are surreptitiously implementing Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution from the White House. [23]
This charge is associated primarily with the liberal pundit Michael Lind, who in a much quoted article in the New Statesman from April of this year wrote that, "…neoconservative defence [sic] intellectuals…call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism". [24] Even before Lind, however, the charge had already been made by Paris-based columnist William Pfaff, who had written in the International Herald Tribune in December of 2002 that, "The Bush administration's determination to deal with its problems through military means [….] seems a rightist version of Trotsky's "permanent revolution," destroying existing institutions and structures in the millenarian expectation that all this violence will come to an end in a better and happier world." [25] As recently as this past August, Pfaff was still insisting in the IHT that neoconservatives, "…are influenced by the Trotskyist version of Marxist millenarianism that was the intellectual seedbed of the neoconservative movement." [26]
Yet if anti-neocon liberals such as Lind and Pfaff -- together with an assortment of conspiracy theorists [27] -- have done the most to popularize the idea that neoconservatives adhere to the theory of permanent revolution, it is again the paleoconservatives that deserve the credit for coining the idea -- or at least some of the credit, for the actual origins are more varied than one would imagine. Paleoconservative criticism of the aggressive internationalism championed by some neoconservatives dates back to the origins of their dispute in the early 1980s. But at that time, neoconservatives were only being accused of "neo-Wilsonianism". Explicitly equating the belief in promoting a "global democratic revolution" with Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is a much more recent invention that started during the debates over how to respond to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 -- and it has some rather surprising roots.
In September of 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the paleoconservative author Joseph Stromberg devoted an article on the LewRockwell.com web site to attacking a piece by neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen entitled "Creative Destruction: How to wage a revolutionary war". Ledeen's main argument was that it was "…time once again to export the democratic revolution" as the best way to defeat the terrorists. [28] Polemicizing against this view, Stromberg questioned whether Ledeen's approach stemmed from "Schumpeter or Bakunin" and decided it was neither. Stromberg then quoted a Yugoslav bureaucrat from the 1960s, Edvard Kardelj, who at the height of the Soviet-Chinese dispute sought to discredit the "Chinese line of exporting the revolution by force" by labeling it as "Trotskyite". Stromberg, who at least gives credit to Commissar Kardelj, then went on to -- incredibly -- choose that very same label to smear Ledeen and the neoconservatives. Given these methods, one should perhaps refer to the paleocons as the "inverted Titoists" of conservatism!
In reality, while Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution can be called many things, including irrelevant, it has nothing whatsoever to do with exporting revolution. Much less does it extol upheaval for its own sake or the inherent virtues of violence and destruction -- something more akin to a blend of Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon than to Trotskyism. As defined in its final form by Trotsky in the late 1920s, the theory of permanent revolution held that in third world countries, attempts to carry out the tasks of the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, such as land reform and "authentic" national independence, would fail unless those attempts led to the seizure of power by the working class through a socialist revolution. [29] Rather than a theory of "exporting revolution", Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is above all a theory of the possibility of socialist revolution in the third world through combining and passing over the "historical stage" of a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution.
The claim that neoconservatives derive their view of foreign policy from an inversion of the American Trotskyists' call for permanent revolution in the 1930s and 40s is thus deeply flawed right from the start: Permanent revolution was never about using the Red Army to spread socialism. The Trotskyist movement's actual conceptual framework and political activity in the 1930s and early 40s consisted of trying to bring about world-wide revolutions "from below" as the way to break the Soviet Union out of its isolation and achieve world socialism. Calling for the Stalinist bureaucracy to export socialism by bayonet would not only have had nothing to do with permanent revolution, it would have been suicidal to boot! [30] It was, after all, that same Stalinist bureaucracy that the Trotskyists were seeking to overthrow through "political revolution" in the USSR, and which was itself actively strangling revolutions and annihilating Trotskyists wherever it could, from Siberia to Spain to Vietnam.
Even if one were to accept, for the purpose of example, that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was based on an idealist internationalism that called for the military expansion of the USSR, the anti-neocons would still be mistaken in their claim that there is a single neoconservative approach to foreign policy that emerged as an inversion of this theory. One need only note that Irving Kristol, the supposed "arch-Trotskyist" according to the paleocons, has never adhered to an internationalist or "crusading" view of international relations. Kristol has instead argued for a "global unilateralism", a hybrid view based on the criteria of American national interest, something which situates him closer to foreign policy realism than to an idealist focus on "global democratic revolution". [31] As John Judis himself pointed out in an earlier, more measured article, even James Burnham, often considered a forerunner to the neoconservatives, viewed American foreign policy, "…not in terms of a Wilsonian quest for global democracy, but in terms of American national interest." [32] And Burnham was once a leader of the American Trotskyists.
On the other hand, Joshua Muravchik, one of today's leading neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals, who does indeed argue for a "democratic internationalism", is not now nor has he ever been a "Trotskyite", "Shachtmanite", or a supporter of any of Trotsky's theories -- least of all his theory of third world revolution. The same applies to all the other second generation neoconservatives both in and out of the White House such as Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and former director of the CIA, James Woolsey. Beyond just a massive misreading of Trotsky, it is simply a lack of common sense to maintain that today's neoconservatives, all leading figures in the most powerful capitalist democracy in the history of the world, have been in any way influenced by a theory whose staunchest partisans have included insurgent Bolivian miners in the 1950s, Peruvian peasant militias in the 1960s, urban guerrillas in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s, and which today still has adherents among the many rabidly anti-American academics that can be found on university campuses throughout the world.
What paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals are really referring to when they talk about "permanent revolution" is a straw-man construct that could more accurately be labeled "perpetual war". This construct is then attributed to neoconservatives as "proof" that they have been influenced by Trotskyism. And just as this construct has no similarity to either neoconservatism or Trotskyism, one cannot help but notice the just as obvious lack of similarity between it and the current National Security Strategy being implemented by the Bush administration. Claims of a "perpetual war" waged by the Pentagon and of endless adventurism against all and sundry courtesy of the "War Party" stand in stark contrast to the actual course of American foreign policy since the formal end of the war in Iraq, in which diplomacy (backed by credible examples of force) has far outweighed military action.
Recognizing this fact does not entail glossing over the difficulties that the Bush administration faces -- and will continue to face if re-elected -- in the design and pursuit of its foreign policy objectives. Nor does it entail ignoring the fact that, as part of the ongoing war on terror, military force may well have to be used again in other parts of the world. What it does entail is seeing through the profoundly nonsensical notion that a desire to implement Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is motivating US foreign policy, rather than the need for a strategic response to a radical Islamist terrorism that has already taken the lives of over 3 000 Americans and many others around the world. And given this deadly menace, what further motivation could possibly be needed?
Ultimately, regardless of what aspect of the theory one chooses to examine, there is no real substance to the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion. Whether the result of polemical excess or simply the quest for spiced-up prose, the assertion is essentially a collection of fabrications, exaggerations, and distortions. It combines the historically inaccurate with the intellectually sloppy. Lost amidst all the abstraction and distortion are the real, distinct, and -- save for a few tenuous connections -- unrelated histories of neoconservatism and American Trotskyism.
What makes all this so ironic is that it is the paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals themselves who not so long ago marched together with Trotskyists -- the real ones that is -- in opposition to the toppling of Saddam's dictatorship in Iraq. Even more, they have featured articles attacking US foreign policy by prominent long-time Trotskyists on the very same web sites in which they have accused neoconservatives and the Defense department of… Trotskyism! Amidst the shrillness of their accusations one thing is certain: the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is without a doubt one of the major oddities of recent American intellectual life. http://www.enterstageright.com/images/esr.jpg
Bill King lives in Surrey, BC.

[9]

Eh. I think the historical link between a certain strand of American Trotskyism (i.e. a subset of The New York Intellectuals in particular} and neoconservatism is definitely an interesting subject. However—and I realize this isn't the most developed analysis to say the least—but it has always seemed much more likely to me that the whole transition from one to the other had more to do with the class position of the Trotskyists in question as well as the general period (post Holocaust/WWII, a massively demoralized working class, the rising popularity of Zionism among American Jews, etc.}, rather than being some sort of natural conclusion of the theories of third camp/anti–Soviet Trotskyism.

Also, the idea that the handful of Trotskyists–turned–neocons in question were somehow continuing to adhere to Trotsky's ideas after becoming out–and–out neoconservatives and were secretly attempting to implement some perversion of the theory of permanent revolution thru American foreign policy is pretty ludicrous, and seems more or less on the same level as ILLUMINATI conspiracy theories.

Sorry if my post is sort of all over the place, BTW; its late and I'm tired as hell.

[black magick hustla]

the whole gangster like oligarchy in russia is made of "ex marxist leninists", is there a tendency for marxist leninists to become corrupt oligarchs??????

[daft punk]

Are Trots and/or Trotskyism more prone(more so than other left tendencies) to deviate from Marxism to neoconservative activism?

I doubt it, why ask such a weird question? How many Stalinists became conservatives, have you counted that? The fact is that Stalinists are not really revolutionaries, so there isn't much to give up on. Actual revolutionaries can get worn out, disillusioned etc, and drift to reformism or even conservatism sometimes, sure.



Second, is it fair to say that Trotskyism, as it has been perceived over the last 30 years, is/was driven more by anti-Sovietism rather than a growing and guiding theoretical force for socialist revolution?

No, a ridiculous suggestion, Trotskyists were not anti-Soviet. They are for socialist revolution and that was opposed by Stalinism.



This article, though from a questionable perspective, certainly does raise some questions.
I might read it later if I am bored and remember.

[Zulu]

the whole gangster like oligarchy in russia is made of "ex marxist leninists", is there a tendency for marxist leninists to become corrupt oligarchs??????

There is a huge difference. The "ex-Marxist-Leninists" (ex-Revisionists-of-Marxism-Leninism, actually) in Russia entered the CPSU because it was the ruling party in the former USSR, and they wanted to make a career. They never cared about ideology much to begin with.

The "heroes" of this article, however, had no other reason to associate themselves with Trotskyism (which is still communism and therefore still evil, by the prevalent American standards), than that they were ideologically engaged. So we have here a bunch of guys that were somehow attracted to a particular version (or should I say - perversion?) of communism, and then joined the ranks of a proto-fascist movement... Now, would, say, comrade Stalin be surprised of that? I think: not in the slightest.

[hatzel]

The "ex-Marxist-Leninists" (ex-Revisionists-of-Marxism-Leninism, actually) in Russia entered the CPSU because it was the ruling party in the former USSR, and they wanted to make a career. They never cared about ideology much to begin with.

So what you mean to say is that they were pretty much just your typical standard everyday 'communist' politicians and ideologues?

[Zulu]

So what you mean to say is that they were pretty much just your typical standard everyday 'communist' politicians and ideologues?

I mean they were pretty much just your typical standard everyday [insert ideology here, add quotation marks if you feel like it] politicians and ideologues.

[Per Levy]

There is a huge difference. The "ex-Marxist-Leninists" (ex-Revisionists-of-Marxism-Leninism, actually) in Russia entered the CPSU because it was the ruling party in the former USSR, and they wanted to make a career.

just so, many of the greens here in germany are former maoists or marxist-leninists, now they are pretty much what the trots in the article became, neocons and neoliberals. you'll find cases like this in any country not just in the east block countries.


Now, would, say, comrade Stalin be surprised of that? I think: not in the slightest.

na stalin would make deals with them as he did with any imperialists/capitalist/fascist power back in the days while killing tons of actuall commies. anyway, tendency war ahoy.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

Trotskyists' views on history tend to be more accepting of western bourgeois propaganda, and as such I'd say that it's less of a jump from a Trot to a neocon than from a Marxist-Leninist to a neocon.

[Zulu]

just so, many of the greens here in germany are former maoists or marxist-leninists, now they are pretty much what the trots in the article became, neocons and neoliberals. you'll find cases like this in any country not just in the east block countries.

Hmmm... Trotskyist Neocons vs. Maoist Greens. Looks like the bad guys stay bad and the good guys stay good, even after both become/reveal themselves as cynical careerists.




na stalin would make deals with them as he did with any imperialists/capitalist/fascist power back in the days while killing tons of actuall commies.
"Actual commies"? Come on, he killed the types that wanted to be oligarchs! Without Stalin to kill them, those types actually become oligarchs. And the fascists Stalin made deals with tended to eventually kill themselves to the stomp of his troops heard from the surface above their bunker...

[Sasha]

Trotskyists' views on history tend to be more accepting of western bourgeois propaganda, and as such I'd say that it's less of a jump from a Trot to a neocon than from a Marxist-Leninist to a neocon.

May I introduce you to the late Pim Fortuyn (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn), ex ML professor turned racist extreme right neo-con...
I'm sure other comrades can give other examples...

[Per Levy]

May I introduce you to the late Pim Fortuyn (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pim_Fortuyn), ex ML professor turned racist extreme right neo-con...
I'm sure other comrades can give other examples...

he was not a true marxist-leninist, he was a revisionist. revisionism explains everything.

but yeah you have tons of former leftist who nowadays are rightwing or centre.


Trotskyists' views on history tend to be more accepting of western bourgeois propaganda, and as such I'd say that it's less of a jump from a Trot to a neocon than from a Marxist-Leninist to a neocon.

MLs views on history tent to be more accepting of national bourgeois propaganda, and such i'd say that it's less of jum for a ML to a homophobic, nationalistic, imperialistic conservative.

come on, that people change their views and become sellouts happens all the time.

[Omsk]

How did this thread change from: "Trotskyites who became neo-conservatives" to " 'Marxist-Leninists' who became /random reactionary stream/ " ? Pathetic.

[Per Levy]

How did this thread change from: "Trotskyites who became neo-conservatives" to " 'Marxist-Leninists' who became /random reactionary stream/ " ? Pathetic.

what really is pathetic is when MLs claim that trots are more prown to sellout while ML has has just as many if not more cases of sellout.

[daft punk]

"Actual commies"? Come on, he killed the types that wanted to be oligarchs! Without Stalin to kill them, those types actually become oligarchs.
support this claim



"Trepper was enrolled at the Marchlevski University, alongside the future leaders of the world’s communist parties, including Tito, where the students were lectured by Old Bolsheviks, like Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, the future victims of Stalin, who were already too well aware of their impending fate. Trepper remarks “When he (Bukharin) finished a lecture, he regularly received a veritable ovation – which he always greeted with a blank stare…One day, looking sadly over a roomful of students acclaiming him, he muttered, “Each time they applaud it brings me closer to my death.”
Trepper had arrived in the USSR in his own words “carrying the dreams of a neophyte. I was a young and an ardent communist…” but as he witnessed the rise of Stalin’s cult of the personality, the fake trials of “conspirators,” how “many militants publicly supported Stalin’s positions although they did not approve of them. This terrible hypocrisy accelerated the inner demoralisation of the party,” Trepper began to question the old certainties.
Lenin’s Testament, which had called for Stalin’s removal was being circulated amongst the students, but the completion of Stalin’s coup at the 17th Party Congress with the election of Kirov and Stalin, meant the pace of the incipient bureaucratism rapidly accelerated. The assassination of Kirov in 1934, probably the work of Stalin, was “Stalin’s Reichstag fire”, was the excuse for a general purge. The Old Bolsheviks were slaughtered on mass, Burkharin’s prophecy was fulfilled, forced to make tortured confessions, in mass show trials, before being dispatched with a bullet to the back of the head. No one felt safe.
No one was immune from the reach of the NKVD, Stalin’s secret police. Trepper describes how; “at night in our university…headlights would pierce the darkness… “They’re here! They’re here! When we heard that cry a wave of anxiety would run through the dormitories…stomachs knotted in insane terror, we would watch for the cars of the KNVD to stop… “They’re coming.” The noise got louder…shouts doors slamming. They went by without stopping. But what about tomorrow?”
Trepper was not alone in enduring the terror; “yet we went along sick at heart, but passive, caught up in machinery we had set in motion…all those who did not rise up against the Stalinist machine are responsible, collectively responsible. I am no exception to this verdict.”
Like most he was too lost to counter Stalin's assault on the party. A member from only the late 1920s onwards, he had neither the training, or experience to understand the political root of the degeneration of the revolution; “But who did protest…The Trotskyites can lay claim to that honour…let them not forget, however, that they had the enormous advantage over us of having a coherent political system capable of replacing Stalinism….they did not “confess,” for they knew that their confession would serve neither the party nor socialism.”"

source (http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/1009)

respond to the above if you wish

[black magick hustla]

There is a huge difference. The "ex-Marxist-Leninists" (ex-Revisionists-of-Marxism-Leninism, actually) in Russia entered the CPSU because it was the ruling party in the former USSR, and they wanted to make a career. They never cared about ideology much to begin with.


there isnt really a huge difference. that has been more or less the conclusion of marxism leninism applied to the real world, the rise of oligarchs, buisnessmen, etc. but lets return to your point that trots in the us didn't haa reason to be trots except ideological engagment. radical politics, and yes, including trotskyism, had career benefits/audience/market. trotskyism was somewhat a dominant ideology in some sectors of academia and intelligentsia, and there of course was a market outlet for that. a lot of the trotskyists that turned into neocons were in the intellectual market, and of course had good careers going on. coupled with like, what nine said, the dominance of jewish folks in radical circles and the rise of zionism, it seemed the natural conclusion

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Eh. I think the historical link between a certain strand of American Trotskyism (i.e. a subset of The New York Intellectuals in particular} and neoconservatism is definitely an interesting subject. However—and I realize this isn't the most developed analysis to say the least—but it has always seemed much more likely to me that the whole transition from one to the other had more to do with the class position of the Trotskyists in question as well as the general period (post Holocaust/WWII, a massively demoralized working class, the rising popularity of Zionism among American Jews, etc.}, rather than being some sort of natural conclusion of the theories of third camp/anti–Soviet Trotskyism.

Also, the idea that the handful of Trotskyists–turned–neocons in question were somehow continuing to adhere to Trotsky's ideas after becoming out–and–out neoconservatives and were secretly attempting to implement some perversion of the theory of permanent revolution thru American foreign policy is pretty ludicrous, and seems more or less on the same level as ILLUMINATI conspiracy theories.

Sorry if my post is sort of all over the place, BTW; its late and I'm tired as hell.

This is right on. In the end it comes down to class position. You have a group of people largely of the intelligentsia who ultimately can change ideology like a person changes their pants.

A certain layer was understandably wowed, inspired and influenced by the October Revolution and the larger working class wave of the time. When it failed to deliver as promised they became disenchanted, and began falling in on each other. As it became clear the wave was over, and that the outcome of things couldn't be "corrected" even by their "wise leadership," they began to jump ship. In the period of utter reaction that followed they abandoned the project completely and looked to either find safe positions for themselves somewhere or hitch their wagons to the "rising star" of conservatism. So many remained "professional thinkers," they just plied their trade elsewhere, like neo-con think tanks, government functionaries or assistants, etc. It was doubly easy to transition into rightist positions for some who saw the whole debacle as the fault of the workers themselves.

The proletariat is engaged in an inescapable struggle against capital by dint of its very position in society, whether or not it is conscious of that at any particular moment. It has to continue on no matter how bad the prevailing conditions. It can't abandon the fight when the going gets tough, because it's fighting for its very life.

The bourgeoisie has it's left and right wings. The petty-bourgeoisie too. And there are workers who old left wing or right wing positions at any given time. But in the end, the proletariat as a class is a class of wage-slaves situated against the rulers and exploiters and indeed against exploitation itself.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

There is a huge difference. The "ex-Marxist-Leninists" (ex-Revisionists-of-Marxism-Leninism, actually) in Russia entered the CPSU because it was the ruling party in the former USSR, and they wanted to make a career. They never cared about ideology much to begin with.

The "heroes" of this article, however, had no other reason to associate themselves with Trotskyism (which is still communism and therefore still evil, by the prevalent American standards), than that they were ideologically engaged. So we have here a bunch of guys that were somehow attracted to a particular version (or should I say - perversion?) of communism, and then joined the ranks of a proto-fascist movement... Now, would, say, comrade Stalin be surprised of that? I think: not in the slightest.
Duh, what with being dead and all, I think comrade Stalin's range of emotions are pretty limited nowadays.

Furthermore, the article cited thoroughly debunks the idiotic idea that neo-cons have any meaningful programmatic connection to Trotskyism.

Hook was never a Trotskyist, so that one is just stupid. Burnham was a bit of a special case. He was involved with the SWP and Trotskyism for a rather short period of time. He joined the US Trotskyist movement as the result of a fusion between the American Workers Party and the Communist League of America in 1935. He was one of three leaders in the newly founded SWP arguing against Soviet Defensism (along with Shachtman and Abern). The opposition in the SWP was unable to win a majority in the party. Because they were a large minority, and included some longtime cadre, the majority was willing to give the minority proportional representation on the CC and Politburo. The minority instead left the party. Abern and Shachtman founded the Workers Party -- Burnham was not involved. They abandoned Soviet defensism, but considered themselves Trotskyist (Trotsky's adamant opposition to their positions notwithstanding). It took Shachtman more than twenty years to follow the logic of his break with Trotskyism to wind up supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion and support the US in the Vietnam War.

Trotsky, writing from Mexico, strongly supported Cannon and the SWP majority. There are two very fine books about the fight in the SWP: In Defense of Marxism, by Trotsky, and The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, by Cannon.

In any case, By 1940 Burnham had renounced Marxism (He was 35). He was a smart guy who was never fully won over to Marxism. Under the pressure of the revulsion of petite bourgeois public opinion against the Soviet military incursions in the late 30s, he abandoned Trotskyism.

That being said, all kinds of leftists shift to the right over the course of their lifetimes. It is fairly unremarkable. They get older, they have families, perhaps they become more materially comfortable.

[daft punk]

Trotskyists' views on history tend to be more accepting of western bourgeois propaganda

On the contrary, it is Stalinist views that fit in with western propaganda and both Stalinism and the bourgeois media of the west unite to attack their common enemy, socialism and Trotskyism.

The only thing I can think of where the western media tended to agree with the Trots was on the Moscow Show Trials, but even that was lukewarm/nonexistant at the time, and only changed with things like Khrushchev's speech. They only conceeded that because the charges were so ludicrous.

But on most things the west and Stalinism agreed eg

1. Stalinism was a continuation of Bolshevism

2. Trotsky's battle against Stalin was personal

3. Russia was socialist - communist

4. Russia wanted to spread communism to Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Vietnam etc

5. The uprisings against Stalinist regimes were all pro-capitalist.

All these are lies I have proven a hundred times.

Churchill even backed the 1953 repression of East German workers, for his own reasons.

[Prometeo liberado]

I doubt it, why ask such a weird question? How many Stalinists became conservatives, have you counted that? The fact is that Stalinists are not really revolutionaries, so there isn't much to give up on. Actual revolutionaries can get worn out, disillusioned etc, and drift to reformism or even conservatism sometimes, sure.


No, a ridiculous suggestion, Trotskyists were not anti-Soviet. They are for socialist revolution and that was opposed by Stalinism.


I might read it later if I am bored and remember.

As the whole basis of this thread is the article I do not see this response as anything but reactionary. My OP is not meant to be an indictment of Trotsky or his disciples, but to address what seems to be an issue that has not been exhausted as far as discussion goes.

[Ocean Seal]

This is right on. In the end it comes down to class position. You have a group of people largely of the intelligentsia who ultimately can change ideology like a person changes their pants.
The proletariat is engaged in an inescapable struggle against capital by dint of its very position in society, whether or not it is conscious of that at any particular moment. It has to continue on no matter how bad the prevailing conditions. It can't abandon the fight when the going gets tough, because it's fighting for its very life.

Hit the nail on the head. When parties are composed of well endowed thinkers who can simply choose to desert the workers movement then there is no reason why they should continue when the going gets tough. A worker who has no other choice must continue down the road to revolution.

[Amal]

The so-called M-L's had denounced Marxism after they become oligarchs and most probably the "greens (former Maoists)" too. But, I want to know any example of former trot become Neocon and denounced Trotsky after that.

[Prometeo liberado]

The so-called M-L's had denounced Marxism after they become oligarchs and most probably the "greens (former Maoists)" too. But, I want to know any example of former trot become Neocon and denounced Trotsky after that.

I guess my answer would have to be that "you can not serve two masters" type of thing. How do you agitate for the neocon cause while still upholding the Marxist cause simultaneously? You can't. The very act of becoming a neocon should be equal to a denunciation of Trotsky itself. Unless of course Trotskyism is an inherently flawed and anti-Marxist ideology to begin with.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

This is a story that has been well documented as far back as at least the eighties. So my questions are: Are Trots and/or Trotskyism more prone(more so than other left tendencies) to deviate from Marxism to neoconservative activism? Second, is it fair to say that Trotskyism, as it has been perceived over the last 30 years, is/was driven more by anti-Sovietism rather than a growing and guiding theoretical force for socialist revolution? This article, though from a questionable perspective, certainly does raise some questions. As I have never really never looked into this much I welcome your input as to the nature of Trots in the white house as well as the questions I have asked.

Everyone, play nice goddamn it!

I think the article does a fine job of demolishing the idea that Trotskyism has any special like to neo-conservatism. And Trotskyism, as I understand it, leads to Soviet defensism up until the counter-revolution in 1991-92. If anyone has perceived Trotskyism as anti-soviet, then they were or are not talking about Trotskyism. Shachtmanism, Cliffism, yes. Again, I will call your attention to Trotsky's In Defense of Marxism as key evidence that Soviet defensism was a pillar of his approach.

[DaringMehring]

You can find people out of every tradition who have defected to the side of the extreme anti-communist right. Of the original CPUSA, Stalinists like Ben Gitlow and Whitaker Chambers, or the Bukharinist Jay Lovestone. You have Maoists and Trotskyists, like James Burnham.

There are two basic reasons.

The first is that it is hard to be a communist, to set against the dominant social power, and some people find it too hard after a while, and also realize by turning, they have a valuable money-making asset and moral hammer based on their "conversion." Like a reformed criminal lecturing against crime. Or a Muslim convert to Christianity preaching against "Islamic Jihad."

Second, the lies and horrors of so-called socialist countries have taken their toll. Undoubtedly exaggerated by bourgeois lies, but these people who turned often have personal experience, and not been particularly swayed by the bourgeois press. When your friends disappear and you see heavy handed politics presented as "scientific truth..." that change every few years, well...

And of course, anyone in a petit bourgeois layer is susceptible to the pressures of the general mood of bourgeois opinion...

[Omsk]

what really is pathetic is when MLs claim that trots are more prown to sellout while ML has has just as many if not more cases of sellout.

Why are you telling me this?

[marl]

It's an ad hominem attack on Trots that can apply to anybody - including M-L's.

[Prometeo liberado]

I don't know about "attack" but the purpose was to raise some questions. I don't read "indictment" anywhere as well in the OP.

[Red Commissar]

You can find people out of every tradition who have defected to the side of the extreme anti-communist right. Of the original CPUSA, Stalinists like Ben Gitlow and Whitaker Chambers, or the Bukharinist Jay Lovestone. You have Maoists and Trotskyists, like James Burnham.

There are two basic reasons.

The first is that it is hard to be a communist, to set against the dominant social power, and some people find it too hard after a while, and also realize by turning, they have a valuable money-making asset and moral hammer based on their "conversion." Like a reformed criminal lecturing against crime. Or a Muslim convert to Christianity preaching against "Islamic Jihad."

Second, the lies and horrors of so-called socialist countries have taken their toll. Undoubtedly exaggerated by bourgeois lies, but these people who turned often have personal experience, and not been particularly swayed by the bourgeois press. When your friends disappear and you see heavy handed politics presented as "scientific truth..." that change every few years, well...

And of course, anyone in a petit bourgeois layer is susceptible to the pressures of the general mood of bourgeois opinion...

I think this is a better line of inquiry to pursue than sectarian swipes and such. It's puzzled me too how some for example becoming part of the anti-Stalinist left or former members of 'Stalinist' outfits ended up making such big 180s in their views. Just a few more from the experience of CPUSA often ending up like that - Louis C. Fraina and Whittaker Chambers for two additional examples.

Where does disillusionment in a movement set in? Is it from these pressures of trying to reconcile their views when bourgeois media rails on about the horrors of Communism? Did they get tired of trying to wait out for some alternative to the Soviet Union to come about? Were they tired of trying to continue to defend the Soviet Union, in other cases? Did they join the movement for the wrong reasons in the first place?

Was their external factors in deciding to translate their problems into complete anti-Communism? Was it more convenient to act as the ex-Communist railing against Communism like you said? Were they careerists to begin with, or did they genuinely join with some hopes and dreams? We can find some figures that did come out of the New Left and Maoism that turned to the far-right in time, I think David Horowitz fell into that mold too. More annoying with the case of intellectuals like Max Eastman and Richard Wright who end up becoming the useful intellectual undercurrents for anti-Communism in the 50s and beyond.

Those who were on the left formerly who ended up kind of causing like what those who had been with Schachtman's camp in the US and following the movement transitioning into full bourgeois politics and setting the roots for neocons. Their anti-Stalinism kind of morphed into an odd sense of having to oppose the Soviet Union at everyturn, then acknowledging the US was the better of the two super powers, and then moving on to support the US to attack the Soviet Union at every turn so they could prevent the spread of its evil.

It's kind of depressing honestly when you have people who did appear to have been genuinely committed to the movement end up turning into the complete opposite of what they started off at. What differentiates between those who stay committed to the movement for a long time regardless of failures and inability to affect change, and what leads those to capitulate and change views? It's really interesting that some didn't even go through like a social-democratic phase or anything, just skipped over it entirely and became ardent supporters of free markets and the principles of capitalism, abandoning any semblance of claim to support labor or anything.

[blake 3:17]

Eh. I think the historical link between a certain strand of American Trotskyism (i.e. a subset of The New York Intellectuals in particular} and neoconservatism is definitely an interesting subject. However—and I realize this isn't the most developed analysis to say the least—but it has always seemed much more likely to me that the whole transition from one to the other had more to do with the class position of the Trotskyists in question as well as the general period (post Holocaust/WWII, a massively demoralized working class, the rising popularity of Zionism among American Jews, etc.}, rather than being some sort of natural conclusion of the theories of third camp/anti–Soviet Trotskyism.

I've said much the same in other threads. I do think there is a peculiar scholastic quality to Trotskyism that draws in certain types of intellectuals, organic or the usual sort, that may not have a genuine orientation to the broader working class.


Those who were on the left formerly who ended up kind of causing like what those who had been with Schachtman's camp in the US and following the movement transitioning into full bourgeois politics and setting the roots for neocons. Their anti-Stalinism kind of morphed into an odd sense of having to oppose the Soviet Union at everyturn, then acknowledging the US was the better of the two super powers, and then moving on to support the US to attack the Soviet Union at every turn so they could prevent the spread of its evil.

I know a few people who were in the Schachtman parties who have continued to move to the Left over the past 40 odd years. Probably quite a minority, but...

[Red Commissar]

I know a few people who were in the Schachtman parties who have continued to move to the Left over the past 40 odd years. Probably quite a minority, but...

I wasn't saying that all Schachtman supporters were in this mold, other wise I would have said 'all' rather than just 'those. There were those that continued the Third Camp stuff or stayed in the left in some form, I had the likes of Carl Gershman in mind though, who was a member of the YPSL and later SDUSA (as a high ranking member too), and entered into the Reagan Administration as the President of the National Endowment for Democracy. Or Tom Kahn, another SDUSAer, who worked with advancing the Reagan administration's favored faction in Solidarity in Poland. Or Penn Kemble and the support for Contras and other reactionaries in Central America to fight pro-Soviet groups. Another case of a 'leftist' kind of going vitriol over their anti-Soviet positions, though not in the Schachtman mold, was Sidney Hook and his fixation on hounding those affiliated with the Soviet Union because they were against 'democracy'.

I would not say that this was the ultimate trajectory of these movements- which is why I posed the question exactly what is it that has some people remain on the left, and others eventually settling for these kinds of politics? Personally, I think the accusations that Trotsykists were responsible for neoconservatism funny, I would say the roots like more within Democratic politicians like Scoop Jackson and their positions on foreign policy with respect to 'countering' evil and spreading 'democracy'.

[daft punk]

Ok I typed a load of stuff I genuinely believe, in fact know for fact, but had to delete it in case it sounded like trolling/flaming or whatever.

I will say- some Trotskyist groups are better than others. Trotskyists generally believe revolution is gonna happen. People get burned out. Especially revolutionaries.

The basis of Stalinism, Stalin's regime, no longer exists. Stalinism by definition is closer to reformism - Popular Fronts, Two Stage Theory.

[blake 3:17]

@ daft punk -- the serious issue that people are raising is that there have been quite a lot of Trotskyists, particularly in the US, who became a particular type of extremely aggressive rightist.

As someone who identifies as some sort of Trotskyist (I'd usually opt for revolutionary socialist), I do find it amazing and perplexing that some people who at certain points I would've felt a deep commonality with, became ABSOLUTE ENEMIES. This isn't simple factionalism or sectarian BS, it's in reference to ex-Trotskyists becoming odd proto-fascists, anti-Communist lunatics, and so on.

[rednordman]

I'm sorry people but the proof is in the pudding. The US government, are not stupid. Obviously, they have a rather opportunistic opinion of troskyism and thus feel comfortable about inviting them into there set-up. Questions need to be asked as to why this happens, because whether you like it or not, it happens a striking amount of times. What i mean is that you wouldn't expect any person who was formally a real leftist to get anywhere in US politics.

[rednordman]

One that note, id also ask if there have been any former Stalinists or any other far-leftwing tendencies within the US government?

[OHumanista]

This is a story that has been well documented as far back as at least the eighties. So my questions are: Are Trots and/or Trotskyism more prone(more so than other left tendencies) to deviate from Marxism to neoconservative activism? Second, is it fair to say that Trotskyism, as it has been perceived over the last 30 years, is/was driven more by anti-Sovietism rather than a growing and guiding theoretical force for socialist revolution? This article, though from a questionable perspective, certainly does raise some questions. As I have never really never looked into this much I welcome your input as to the nature of Trots in the white house as well as the questions I have asked.

Everyone, play nice goddamn it!





[SPOIL]
1 (http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/0304neocontrotp1.htm) | 2





"Inverted" Trotskyism
A more sophisticated version of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion focuses not on the pasts of individual neoconservatives but on the impact that Trotskyism has supposedly had on neoconservatism as a school of thought. This "neoconservatism-as-inverted-Trotskyism" approach is best exemplified by JP Zmyrak in his article entitled "America the Abstraction", which appeared in Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative, as well as in a follow up piece, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Anti-Semitism", that was posted on the website of the America's Future Foundation. Zmyrak maintains that the former Trotskyists who became Cold War anti-Communists, such as Kristol, Sidney Hook (who in fact was never a Trotskyist), and particularly James Burnham, brought with them a "… strong tendency towards pure abstraction, towards viewing national questions purely in ideological terms…." [19] According to Zmyrak this abstractionism would later become a hallmark of neoconservatism itself, and "…in some respects mirrors the Trotskyism [the neoconservatives] once held." [20]
While more sophisticated than the smears of the polemicists, this version of the assertion is perhaps even more flawed with regards to a connection between Trotskyism and neoconservatism. The "inverted" thesis has its roots at least in part in the academic works on neoconservatism that appeared in the 1990s. In particular, it can be traced back to Garry Dorrien's The Neoconservative Mind (1993), which Zmyrak cites in his article, and to a long book review by John B. Judis of John Ehrman's The Rise of Neoconservatism, entitled "Trotskyism to Anachronism: The Neoconservative Revolution" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1995. In his book, Dorrien argues for the centrality of James Burnham, who in the 1930s was a leading intellectual and leader of the American Trotskyists, as an ideological precursor of the neoconservatives. One of Dorrien's main contentions -- which is unfortunately not developed systematically but instead sprinkled frustratingly throughout the book -- is that through Burnham and later Irving Kristol, neoconservatism retained the "..rhetorical methods…" and "…chief concepts…" of Trotskyism. [21] This is evident in Burnham and Kristol's aggressive polemics and above all in their "contempt" for liberalism, which was brought over, according to Dorrien, directly from Trotskyism.
In his Foreign Affairs book review, Judis uses the same methodology as Dorrien with regards to the legacy of Trotskyism on neoconservative thought, and is more explicit in using the term "inverted Trotskyism". Writing specifically on the neoconservative view of foreign policy, Judis maintains that, "Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to ‘export democracy', in Muravchik's words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism", and that, "… [the] neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power." Behind this lay the fact that, "What both the older and younger neoconservatives absorbed from their [Trotskyist] past was an idealistic concept of internationalism." [22]
The main weakness of the Dorrien/Judis approach used by Zmyrak is, ironically, its own excessive abstractionism. The approach is based precisely on abstracting Trotskyism from the concepts that define it as a Marxist political ideology, such as the anti-capitalist class struggle and proletarian internationalism, and those that define it as a specific school within Marxism, such as the need for a Fourth International and the transitional program. As archaic and even quixotic as those principles seem, without them the term "Trotskyism" is reduced to a meaningless label. It then becomes deceptively easy to refer to anything as "inverted Trotskyism", from an aggressive polemical style and "contempt" for liberalism as argued by Dorrien, to an "idealist" concept of internationalism as argued by Judis. But what does that really say? Can such commonplace characteristics and widely held viewpoints seriously be considered in any way specific to, or constitutive of, Trotskyism as a political ideology? This approach focuses on elements that are at best incidental to Trotskyism, and for that reason it implies more than it can demonstrate and misleads more than it illuminates. This is even more the case when we consider that very few neoconservatives were ever Trotskyists. It perhaps goes without saying that this type of abstractionism is disastrous as an approach to history, but is tailor-made for making sensationalistic accusations.
Permanent Confusion
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/032204wolfowitzpaul.jpg
WolfowitzThe final variation of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is the one that received much attention during the debates over the war in Iraq, and which contributed the most to the assertion's current widespread popularity. It is also perhaps the most confused. The contention here, as ludicrous as it may seem, is that neoconservatives in the US Defense Department, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, are surreptitiously implementing Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution from the White House. [23]
This charge is associated primarily with the liberal pundit Michael Lind, who in a much quoted article in the New Statesman from April of this year wrote that, "…neoconservative defence [sic] intellectuals…call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism". [24] Even before Lind, however, the charge had already been made by Paris-based columnist William Pfaff, who had written in the International Herald Tribune in December of 2002 that, "The Bush administration's determination to deal with its problems through military means [….] seems a rightist version of Trotsky's "permanent revolution," destroying existing institutions and structures in the millenarian expectation that all this violence will come to an end in a better and happier world." [25] As recently as this past August, Pfaff was still insisting in the IHT that neoconservatives, "…are influenced by the Trotskyist version of Marxist millenarianism that was the intellectual seedbed of the neoconservative movement." [26]
Yet if anti-neocon liberals such as Lind and Pfaff -- together with an assortment of conspiracy theorists [27] -- have done the most to popularize the idea that neoconservatives adhere to the theory of permanent revolution, it is again the paleoconservatives that deserve the credit for coining the idea -- or at least some of the credit, for the actual origins are more varied than one would imagine. Paleoconservative criticism of the aggressive internationalism championed by some neoconservatives dates back to the origins of their dispute in the early 1980s. But at that time, neoconservatives were only being accused of "neo-Wilsonianism". Explicitly equating the belief in promoting a "global democratic revolution" with Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is a much more recent invention that started during the debates over how to respond to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 -- and it has some rather surprising roots.
In September of 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the paleoconservative author Joseph Stromberg devoted an article on the LewRockwell.com web site to attacking a piece by neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen entitled "Creative Destruction: How to wage a revolutionary war". Ledeen's main argument was that it was "…time once again to export the democratic revolution" as the best way to defeat the terrorists. [28] Polemicizing against this view, Stromberg questioned whether Ledeen's approach stemmed from "Schumpeter or Bakunin" and decided it was neither. Stromberg then quoted a Yugoslav bureaucrat from the 1960s, Edvard Kardelj, who at the height of the Soviet-Chinese dispute sought to discredit the "Chinese line of exporting the revolution by force" by labeling it as "Trotskyite". Stromberg, who at least gives credit to Commissar Kardelj, then went on to -- incredibly -- choose that very same label to smear Ledeen and the neoconservatives. Given these methods, one should perhaps refer to the paleocons as the "inverted Titoists" of conservatism!
In reality, while Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution can be called many things, including irrelevant, it has nothing whatsoever to do with exporting revolution. Much less does it extol upheaval for its own sake or the inherent virtues of violence and destruction -- something more akin to a blend of Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon than to Trotskyism. As defined in its final form by Trotsky in the late 1920s, the theory of permanent revolution held that in third world countries, attempts to carry out the tasks of the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, such as land reform and "authentic" national independence, would fail unless those attempts led to the seizure of power by the working class through a socialist revolution. [29] Rather than a theory of "exporting revolution", Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is above all a theory of the possibility of socialist revolution in the third world through combining and passing over the "historical stage" of a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution.
The claim that neoconservatives derive their view of foreign policy from an inversion of the American Trotskyists' call for permanent revolution in the 1930s and 40s is thus deeply flawed right from the start: Permanent revolution was never about using the Red Army to spread socialism. The Trotskyist movement's actual conceptual framework and political activity in the 1930s and early 40s consisted of trying to bring about world-wide revolutions "from below" as the way to break the Soviet Union out of its isolation and achieve world socialism. Calling for the Stalinist bureaucracy to export socialism by bayonet would not only have had nothing to do with permanent revolution, it would have been suicidal to boot! [30] It was, after all, that same Stalinist bureaucracy that the Trotskyists were seeking to overthrow through "political revolution" in the USSR, and which was itself actively strangling revolutions and annihilating Trotskyists wherever it could, from Siberia to Spain to Vietnam.
Even if one were to accept, for the purpose of example, that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was based on an idealist internationalism that called for the military expansion of the USSR, the anti-neocons would still be mistaken in their claim that there is a single neoconservative approach to foreign policy that emerged as an inversion of this theory. One need only note that Irving Kristol, the supposed "arch-Trotskyist" according to the paleocons, has never adhered to an internationalist or "crusading" view of international relations. Kristol has instead argued for a "global unilateralism", a hybrid view based on the criteria of American national interest, something which situates him closer to foreign policy realism than to an idealist focus on "global democratic revolution". [31] As John Judis himself pointed out in an earlier, more measured article, even James Burnham, often considered a forerunner to the neoconservatives, viewed American foreign policy, "…not in terms of a Wilsonian quest for global democracy, but in terms of American national interest." [32] And Burnham was once a leader of the American Trotskyists.
On the other hand, Joshua Muravchik, one of today's leading neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals, who does indeed argue for a "democratic internationalism", is not now nor has he ever been a "Trotskyite", "Shachtmanite", or a supporter of any of Trotsky's theories -- least of all his theory of third world revolution. The same applies to all the other second generation neoconservatives both in and out of the White House such as Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and former director of the CIA, James Woolsey. Beyond just a massive misreading of Trotsky, it is simply a lack of common sense to maintain that today's neoconservatives, all leading figures in the most powerful capitalist democracy in the history of the world, have been in any way influenced by a theory whose staunchest partisans have included insurgent Bolivian miners in the 1950s, Peruvian peasant militias in the 1960s, urban guerrillas in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s, and which today still has adherents among the many rabidly anti-American academics that can be found on university campuses throughout the world.
What paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals are really referring to when they talk about "permanent revolution" is a straw-man construct that could more accurately be labeled "perpetual war". This construct is then attributed to neoconservatives as "proof" that they have been influenced by Trotskyism. And just as this construct has no similarity to either neoconservatism or Trotskyism, one cannot help but notice the just as obvious lack of similarity between it and the current National Security Strategy being implemented by the Bush administration. Claims of a "perpetual war" waged by the Pentagon and of endless adventurism against all and sundry courtesy of the "War Party" stand in stark contrast to the actual course of American foreign policy since the formal end of the war in Iraq, in which diplomacy (backed by credible examples of force) has far outweighed military action.
Recognizing this fact does not entail glossing over the difficulties that the Bush administration faces -- and will continue to face if re-elected -- in the design and pursuit of its foreign policy objectives. Nor does it entail ignoring the fact that, as part of the ongoing war on terror, military force may well have to be used again in other parts of the world. What it does entail is seeing through the profoundly nonsensical notion that a desire to implement Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is motivating US foreign policy, rather than the need for a strategic response to a radical Islamist terrorism that has already taken the lives of over 3 000 Americans and many others around the world. And given this deadly menace, what further motivation could possibly be needed?
Ultimately, regardless of what aspect of the theory one chooses to examine, there is no real substance to the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion. Whether the result of polemical excess or simply the quest for spiced-up prose, the assertion is essentially a collection of fabrications, exaggerations, and distortions. It combines the historically inaccurate with the intellectually sloppy. Lost amidst all the abstraction and distortion are the real, distinct, and -- save for a few tenuous connections -- unrelated histories of neoconservatism and American Trotskyism.
What makes all this so ironic is that it is the paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals themselves who not so long ago marched together with Trotskyists -- the real ones that is -- in opposition to the toppling of Saddam's dictatorship in Iraq. Even more, they have featured articles attacking US foreign policy by prominent long-time Trotskyists on the very same web sites in which they have accused neoconservatives and the Defense department of… Trotskyism! Amidst the shrillness of their accusations one thing is certain: the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is without a doubt one of the major oddities of recent American intellectual life. http://www.enterstageright.com/images/esr.jpg
Bill King lives in Surrey, BC.


LMFAO
Considering that the whole stalinist elite converted oppenly to neo-conservative and now rules their previous countries just as before (just changing names and flags) I have to say no. :D

[A Marxist Historian]

I think the OP is falsely presented. The "New York Intellectuals" who went from Trotskyism to neoconservatism had a waystop along the way, namely James Burnham and Max Shachtman's theory of "bureaucratic collectivism" with respect to the USSR, which was fundamentally anti-Marxist, a non-class method of analysing the USSR which boils down to a "Marxist" version of "totalitarianism."

So yes, anybody upholding "bureaucratic collectivism" or similar theories is likely to go over to the side of the class enemy. This is also true, though to a somewhat lesser degree, of anybody who thinks the USSR was capitalist, as most varieties of "state capitalism" overlap strongly with "bureaucratic collectivism."

And here we're talking about probably half if not more of all Revleft posters.

And lots of examples of this happening can be gathered up, ranging far away from "Trotskyism." Notably the Maoist version of "state capitalist" theories. In France for example, just about all the reactionary French intellectuals who dominate the right wing of the French intelligentsia have a Maoist pedigree. And they have a lot more dominion over the chattering classes than neo-conservatism has in America, where it's largely gone out of fashion since Iraq.

-M.H.-


This is a story that has been well documented as far back as at least the eighties. So my questions are: Are Trots and/or Trotskyism more prone(more so than other left tendencies) to deviate from Marxism to neoconservative activism? Second, is it fair to say that Trotskyism, as it has been perceived over the last 30 years, is/was driven more by anti-Sovietism rather than a growing and guiding theoretical force for socialist revolution? This article, though from a questionable perspective, certainly does raise some questions. As I have never really never looked into this much I welcome your input as to the nature of Trots in the white house as well as the questions I have asked.

Everyone, play nice goddamn it!





[SPOIL]
1 (http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/0304neocontrotp1.htm) | 2






"Inverted" Trotskyism
A more sophisticated version of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion focuses not on the pasts of individual neoconservatives but on the impact that Trotskyism has supposedly had on neoconservatism as a school of thought. This "neoconservatism-as-inverted-Trotskyism" approach is best exemplified by JP Zmyrak in his article entitled "America the Abstraction", which appeared in Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative, as well as in a follow up piece, "Lies, Damn Lies, and Anti-Semitism", that was posted on the website of the America's Future Foundation. Zmyrak maintains that the former Trotskyists who became Cold War anti-Communists, such as Kristol, Sidney Hook (who in fact was never a Trotskyist), and particularly James Burnham, brought with them a "… strong tendency towards pure abstraction, towards viewing national questions purely in ideological terms…." [19] According to Zmyrak this abstractionism would later become a hallmark of neoconservatism itself, and "…in some respects mirrors the Trotskyism [the neoconservatives] once held." [20]
While more sophisticated than the smears of the polemicists, this version of the assertion is perhaps even more flawed with regards to a connection between Trotskyism and neoconservatism. The "inverted" thesis has its roots at least in part in the academic works on neoconservatism that appeared in the 1990s. In particular, it can be traced back to Garry Dorrien's The Neoconservative Mind (1993), which Zmyrak cites in his article, and to a long book review by John B. Judis of John Ehrman's The Rise of Neoconservatism, entitled "Trotskyism to Anachronism: The Neoconservative Revolution" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1995. In his book, Dorrien argues for the centrality of James Burnham, who in the 1930s was a leading intellectual and leader of the American Trotskyists, as an ideological precursor of the neoconservatives. One of Dorrien's main contentions -- which is unfortunately not developed systematically but instead sprinkled frustratingly throughout the book -- is that through Burnham and later Irving Kristol, neoconservatism retained the "..rhetorical methods…" and "…chief concepts…" of Trotskyism. [21] This is evident in Burnham and Kristol's aggressive polemics and above all in their "contempt" for liberalism, which was brought over, according to Dorrien, directly from Trotskyism.
In his Foreign Affairs book review, Judis uses the same methodology as Dorrien with regards to the legacy of Trotskyism on neoconservative thought, and is more explicit in using the term "inverted Trotskyism". Writing specifically on the neoconservative view of foreign policy, Judis maintains that, "Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to ‘export democracy', in Muravchik's words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism", and that, "… [the] neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power." Behind this lay the fact that, "What both the older and younger neoconservatives absorbed from their [Trotskyist] past was an idealistic concept of internationalism." [22]
The main weakness of the Dorrien/Judis approach used by Zmyrak is, ironically, its own excessive abstractionism. The approach is based precisely on abstracting Trotskyism from the concepts that define it as a Marxist political ideology, such as the anti-capitalist class struggle and proletarian internationalism, and those that define it as a specific school within Marxism, such as the need for a Fourth International and the transitional program. As archaic and even quixotic as those principles seem, without them the term "Trotskyism" is reduced to a meaningless label. It then becomes deceptively easy to refer to anything as "inverted Trotskyism", from an aggressive polemical style and "contempt" for liberalism as argued by Dorrien, to an "idealist" concept of internationalism as argued by Judis. But what does that really say? Can such commonplace characteristics and widely held viewpoints seriously be considered in any way specific to, or constitutive of, Trotskyism as a political ideology? This approach focuses on elements that are at best incidental to Trotskyism, and for that reason it implies more than it can demonstrate and misleads more than it illuminates. This is even more the case when we consider that very few neoconservatives were ever Trotskyists. It perhaps goes without saying that this type of abstractionism is disastrous as an approach to history, but is tailor-made for making sensationalistic accusations.
Permanent Confusion
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0304/032204wolfowitzpaul.jpg
WolfowitzThe final variation of the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is the one that received much attention during the debates over the war in Iraq, and which contributed the most to the assertion's current widespread popularity. It is also perhaps the most confused. The contention here, as ludicrous as it may seem, is that neoconservatives in the US Defense Department, such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, are surreptitiously implementing Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution from the White House. [23]
This charge is associated primarily with the liberal pundit Michael Lind, who in a much quoted article in the New Statesman from April of this year wrote that, "…neoconservative defence [sic] intellectuals…call their revolutionary ideology 'Wilsonianism' (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism". [24] Even before Lind, however, the charge had already been made by Paris-based columnist William Pfaff, who had written in the International Herald Tribune in December of 2002 that, "The Bush administration's determination to deal with its problems through military means [….] seems a rightist version of Trotsky's "permanent revolution," destroying existing institutions and structures in the millenarian expectation that all this violence will come to an end in a better and happier world." [25] As recently as this past August, Pfaff was still insisting in the IHT that neoconservatives, "…are influenced by the Trotskyist version of Marxist millenarianism that was the intellectual seedbed of the neoconservative movement." [26]
Yet if anti-neocon liberals such as Lind and Pfaff -- together with an assortment of conspiracy theorists [27] -- have done the most to popularize the idea that neoconservatives adhere to the theory of permanent revolution, it is again the paleoconservatives that deserve the credit for coining the idea -- or at least some of the credit, for the actual origins are more varied than one would imagine. Paleoconservative criticism of the aggressive internationalism championed by some neoconservatives dates back to the origins of their dispute in the early 1980s. But at that time, neoconservatives were only being accused of "neo-Wilsonianism". Explicitly equating the belief in promoting a "global democratic revolution" with Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is a much more recent invention that started during the debates over how to respond to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 -- and it has some rather surprising roots.
In September of 2001, just a few weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the paleoconservative author Joseph Stromberg devoted an article on the LewRockwell.com web site to attacking a piece by neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen entitled "Creative Destruction: How to wage a revolutionary war". Ledeen's main argument was that it was "…time once again to export the democratic revolution" as the best way to defeat the terrorists. [28] Polemicizing against this view, Stromberg questioned whether Ledeen's approach stemmed from "Schumpeter or Bakunin" and decided it was neither. Stromberg then quoted a Yugoslav bureaucrat from the 1960s, Edvard Kardelj, who at the height of the Soviet-Chinese dispute sought to discredit the "Chinese line of exporting the revolution by force" by labeling it as "Trotskyite". Stromberg, who at least gives credit to Commissar Kardelj, then went on to -- incredibly -- choose that very same label to smear Ledeen and the neoconservatives. Given these methods, one should perhaps refer to the paleocons as the "inverted Titoists" of conservatism!
In reality, while Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution can be called many things, including irrelevant, it has nothing whatsoever to do with exporting revolution. Much less does it extol upheaval for its own sake or the inherent virtues of violence and destruction -- something more akin to a blend of Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon than to Trotskyism. As defined in its final form by Trotsky in the late 1920s, the theory of permanent revolution held that in third world countries, attempts to carry out the tasks of the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution, such as land reform and "authentic" national independence, would fail unless those attempts led to the seizure of power by the working class through a socialist revolution. [29] Rather than a theory of "exporting revolution", Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is above all a theory of the possibility of socialist revolution in the third world through combining and passing over the "historical stage" of a "bourgeois-democratic" revolution.
The claim that neoconservatives derive their view of foreign policy from an inversion of the American Trotskyists' call for permanent revolution in the 1930s and 40s is thus deeply flawed right from the start: Permanent revolution was never about using the Red Army to spread socialism. The Trotskyist movement's actual conceptual framework and political activity in the 1930s and early 40s consisted of trying to bring about world-wide revolutions "from below" as the way to break the Soviet Union out of its isolation and achieve world socialism. Calling for the Stalinist bureaucracy to export socialism by bayonet would not only have had nothing to do with permanent revolution, it would have been suicidal to boot! [30] It was, after all, that same Stalinist bureaucracy that the Trotskyists were seeking to overthrow through "political revolution" in the USSR, and which was itself actively strangling revolutions and annihilating Trotskyists wherever it could, from Siberia to Spain to Vietnam.
Even if one were to accept, for the purpose of example, that Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution was based on an idealist internationalism that called for the military expansion of the USSR, the anti-neocons would still be mistaken in their claim that there is a single neoconservative approach to foreign policy that emerged as an inversion of this theory. One need only note that Irving Kristol, the supposed "arch-Trotskyist" according to the paleocons, has never adhered to an internationalist or "crusading" view of international relations. Kristol has instead argued for a "global unilateralism", a hybrid view based on the criteria of American national interest, something which situates him closer to foreign policy realism than to an idealist focus on "global democratic revolution". [31] As John Judis himself pointed out in an earlier, more measured article, even James Burnham, often considered a forerunner to the neoconservatives, viewed American foreign policy, "…not in terms of a Wilsonian quest for global democracy, but in terms of American national interest." [32] And Burnham was once a leader of the American Trotskyists.
On the other hand, Joshua Muravchik, one of today's leading neoconservative foreign policy intellectuals, who does indeed argue for a "democratic internationalism", is not now nor has he ever been a "Trotskyite", "Shachtmanite", or a supporter of any of Trotsky's theories -- least of all his theory of third world revolution. The same applies to all the other second generation neoconservatives both in and out of the White House such as Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and former director of the CIA, James Woolsey. Beyond just a massive misreading of Trotsky, it is simply a lack of common sense to maintain that today's neoconservatives, all leading figures in the most powerful capitalist democracy in the history of the world, have been in any way influenced by a theory whose staunchest partisans have included insurgent Bolivian miners in the 1950s, Peruvian peasant militias in the 1960s, urban guerrillas in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s, and which today still has adherents among the many rabidly anti-American academics that can be found on university campuses throughout the world.
What paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals are really referring to when they talk about "permanent revolution" is a straw-man construct that could more accurately be labeled "perpetual war". This construct is then attributed to neoconservatives as "proof" that they have been influenced by Trotskyism. And just as this construct has no similarity to either neoconservatism or Trotskyism, one cannot help but notice the just as obvious lack of similarity between it and the current National Security Strategy being implemented by the Bush administration. Claims of a "perpetual war" waged by the Pentagon and of endless adventurism against all and sundry courtesy of the "War Party" stand in stark contrast to the actual course of American foreign policy since the formal end of the war in Iraq, in which diplomacy (backed by credible examples of force) has far outweighed military action.
Recognizing this fact does not entail glossing over the difficulties that the Bush administration faces -- and will continue to face if re-elected -- in the design and pursuit of its foreign policy objectives. Nor does it entail ignoring the fact that, as part of the ongoing war on terror, military force may well have to be used again in other parts of the world. What it does entail is seeing through the profoundly nonsensical notion that a desire to implement Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution is motivating US foreign policy, rather than the need for a strategic response to a radical Islamist terrorism that has already taken the lives of over 3 000 Americans and many others around the world. And given this deadly menace, what further motivation could possibly be needed?
Ultimately, regardless of what aspect of the theory one chooses to examine, there is no real substance to the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion. Whether the result of polemical excess or simply the quest for spiced-up prose, the assertion is essentially a collection of fabrications, exaggerations, and distortions. It combines the historically inaccurate with the intellectually sloppy. Lost amidst all the abstraction and distortion are the real, distinct, and -- save for a few tenuous connections -- unrelated histories of neoconservatism and American Trotskyism.
What makes all this so ironic is that it is the paleoconservatives and anti-neocon liberals themselves who not so long ago marched together with Trotskyists -- the real ones that is -- in opposition to the toppling of Saddam's dictatorship in Iraq. Even more, they have featured articles attacking US foreign policy by prominent long-time Trotskyists on the very same web sites in which they have accused neoconservatives and the Defense department of… Trotskyism! Amidst the shrillness of their accusations one thing is certain: the "Trotskyist neocon" assertion is without a doubt one of the major oddities of recent American intellectual life. http://www.enterstageright.com/images/esr.jpg
Bill King lives in Surrey, BC.

[black magick hustla]

So yes, anybody upholding "bureaucratic collectivism" or similar theories is likely to go over to the side of the class enemy. This is also true, though to a somewhat lesser degree, of anybody who thinks the USSR was capitalist, as most varieties of "state capitalism" overlap strongly with "bureaucratic collectivism."

-M.H.-

of course, this is a fairy tale cooked up by the museum artifacts that constitute the spartacist league. my friend goes to the reading group of those weirdos, and she also got fed that silly fairy tale, that is not really based on historical materialism but on the idea that if you think "the wrong things" you will end up with bad politics. the deadweight of hegelianism, of course. probably the most intransingent people i've ever met were old left communists and they do think the ussr was capitalist. defend the "deformed workers' states right to nuclear weapons" starts to sound a bit ridiculous when we live in 2012

[black magick hustla]

And lots of examples of this happening can be gathered up, ranging far away from "Trotskyism." Notably the Maoist version of "state capitalist" theories. In France for example, just about all the reactionary French intellectuals who dominate the right wing of the French intelligentsia have a Maoist pedigree. And they have a lot more dominion over the chattering classes than neo-conservatism has in America, where it's largely gone out of fashion since Iraq.
-
maybe because "maoism" in france was adopted by professional thinkers who fouind a better career deal adopting other fashionable ideologies? i dont think it has anything to do with the ideological content of maoism.

[A Marxist Historian]

of course, this is a fairy tale cooked up by the museum artifacts that constitute the spartacist league. my friend goes to the reading group of those weirdos, and she also got fed that silly fairy tale, that is not really based on historical materialism but on the idea that if you think "the wrong things" you will end up with bad politics. the deadweight of hegelianism, of course. probably the most intransingent people i've ever met were old left communists and they do think the ussr was capitalist. defend the "deformed workers' states right to nuclear weapons" starts to sound a bit ridiculous when we live in 2012

Well yes, if you think the wrong things, your political conclusions will tend to be wrong, whereas if you think the right things, your political conclusions will tend to be right.

Marxists are materialists, so we recognize that class position can override thought easily. But denying that human thinking means anything at all politically is just ... thoughtless.

And if so, then Revleft is a waste of time, so why are you here?

-M.H.-

[black magick hustla]

Well yes, if you think the wrong things, your political conclusions will tend to be wrong, whereas if you think the right things, your political conclusions will tend to be right."

i think it is silly to think that people come up to political positions based on "reason" and "logic". actually, most of the times, the ideological justification behind such positions was thought out after the positions were taken. anarchists have better class sense that virtually most of "marxists" today for example, even if i think their premises are fundamentally wrong.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

of course, this is a fairy tale cooked up by the museum artifacts that constitute the spartacist league. my friend goes to the reading group of those weirdos, and she also got fed that silly fairy tale, that is not really based on historical materialism but on the idea that if you tthink "the wrong things" you will end up with bad politics. the deadweight of hegelianism, of course. probably the most intransingent people i've ever met were old left communists and they do think the ussr was capitalist. defend the "deformed workers' states right to nuclear weapons" starts to sound a bit ridiculous when we live in 2012
Yeah, it doesn't necessarily land you in the service of imperialism, it just tends to. For that matter, are there any actual parties that consider themselves "left communists"? I'm asking not to start a fight, but really I don't know of any. And I know the Sparts don't say anything remotely like "if you think bad things. . . " However, if you make major programmatic mistakes, like not defending the remaining gains of the Russian Revolution past say, 1923, then it will tend to lead you to problematic places. The Shachtmanites came into being due to pressure in their petite bourgeois, intellectual milieu that arose from people being horrified by the USSR's invasion of Poland and Finland. This, in my opinion, is actually lamer than the left coms as I understand them. They, at least, are consistent. But let's just say that during my political lifetime, being anti-soviet in the USA takes little courage or conviction.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

One that note, id also ask if there have been any former Stalinists or any other far-leftwing tendencies within the US government?

For starters, Jean Quan: the ex-Maoist mayor of Oakland who repeatedly called out the armed enforcers to break up Occupy Oakland... and the heads of the occupiers themselves.

[Geiseric]

How is what's happening in greece not an example of a "Stainist Sellout"? KKE is betraying the working class and pushing them away from communism!

[A Marxist Historian]

i think it is silly to think that people come up to political positions based on "reason" and "logic". actually, most of the times, the ideological justification behind such positions was thought out after the positions were taken. anarchists have better class sense that virtually most of "marxists" today for example, even if i think their premises are fundamentally wrong.

That's true but besides the point. The question is not how political positions are first invented, but what they tell you about the organizations that adopt them, and where the people who hold them are liable to end up. In particular Trotskyists according to the OP. So if somebody or some group has a political position that is "correct," that will tend to lead them in a revolutionary direction, if not, not.

Why is this? Because capitalism isn't working anymore, in fact really hasn't worked since the 19th century at the latest, so we need socialist revolution. If that were not true, then a correct position based on reason and logic would lead not to class consciousness but a desire for social reform and opposition to revolution, which after all disrupts things and gets people killed, etc. etc.

So where do political positions come from? Some theoretician applying reason and logic? No, they do tend to flow from the class position and location on the political landscape of an organization or individual, revolutionaries tend to come up with revolutionary analyses, reformist etc. don't. Indeed your point reminds me of Spartacist leader Robertson's favorite adage, "program generates theory."

In other words, what a political organization like say the Trotskyists and Shachtmanites we are discussing is doing determines what theories they are prejudiced in favor of. And Trotsky of course ascribed Shachtman's enthusiasm for bureaucratic collectivism to the petty bourgeois nature of the wing of the SWP (especially the college youth) that were in his faction.

But human beings are not simply prey to their social position, let's not be mechanical Marxists. The human mind is a very useful tool, and some individuals do manage to transcend their class positions to come over to the side of the oppressed, despite their social backgrounds. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (a capitalist) come to mind.

So yes, theory is important, and worth discussing and arguing about, even here on Revleft.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

For starters, Jean Quan: the ex-Maoist mayor of Oakland who repeatedly called out the armed enforcers to break up Occupy Oakland... and the heads of the occupiers themselves.

Actually, there used to be quite a lot, which freaked the US bourgeoisie out so much that in the '50s they supported that crazed drunken nutcase Joe McCarthy.

Since the Truman-McCarthy Big Cleanout of the late '40s and early 1950s, Stalinists in the US government have been few and far between. Lately you have some ex-Maoists and whatnot here and there creeping back into government, like Jean Quan. The mayor of Berkeley in the late '80s and '90s, whose name I can't remember, wasn't even an ex-CP'er, he was a CP member, and nobody cared, especially since he was seen as a relative moderate in Berkeley politics.

The OSS, predecessor organization of the CIA, had quite a few Stalinists in it during WWII. William Mandel formerly of KPFA and bunches of books on how great the USSR was, for example. Not ex-Stalinists, actual party members. Of course, they all got thoroughly rooted out.

-M.H.-

[Anarpest]

How did this thread change from: Trotskyites who became neo-conservatives; to 'Marxist-Leninists' who became /random reactionary / ? Pathetic. You think that there is no connection between accusations of Trotskyists tending to become neoconservatives and Stalinist self-justification?