Some Questions about Trotskyism

[FONT=Verdana]1. [/FONT][FONT=Calibri][FONT=Calibri]How do many Trotskyist feel about violence (war (including violent class war), the death penalty, etc.) and respect for human life? As the People's Commissar of War, Trotsky made use of the death penalty often. Also, Trotsky said in his 1930 work, The Russian Revolution, “[/FONT][FONT=Calibri]We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life.”[/FONT][FONT=Calibri] However, shortly before he died he said, “[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman]Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]2. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]Trotsky was an authoritarian figure. How do Trotskyists feel about the freedom of information (speech, press, etc.) in a future workers’ state.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]3. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]What is Trotskyism’s relationship to other tendencies? Is it hateful or just critical?[/FONT][/FONT]
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[FONT=Verdana]1. [/FONT][FONT=Calibri][FONT=Calibri]How do many Trotskyist feel about violence (war (including violent class war), the death penalty, etc.) and respect for human life? As the People's Commissar of War, Trotsky made use of the death penalty often. Also, Trotsky said in his 1930 work, The Russian Revolution, “[/FONT][FONT=Calibri]We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life.”[/FONT][FONT=Calibri] However, shortly before he died he said, “[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman]Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

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[FONT=Times New Roman]The best reading on this is Trotsky's famous pamphlet, Terrorism and Communism. He pointed out that all those who oppose all violence are hypocrites, unless they are total pacifists who believe the police and the army should be abolished and believe that if somebody punches you in the face, you should turn the other cheek like it says in the Bible, instead of punching back or calling the cops. Which few do.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]It's kind of hard to talk about the sanctity of human life when the ruling classes are killing off people by the hundreds of thousands. As was happening then, and as is happening now, with Obama and his wars all over the world.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]You have to draw the line between the violence of the oppressor and the violence in self defense of the oppressed. Which is what revolution is all about.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]The much criticized Cheka in Russia for example was a body for the *defense of the Revolution* vs. counterrevolution. And its famous leader, Felix Dzherzhinsky, was a firm opponent of the death penalty. He opposed the introduction of the death penalty into the Soviet legal code in 1921. Sure, the Cheka killed a lot of opponents of the revolution, but that was strictly to defend the revolution and the Soviet people. As he put it himself, "the Cheka does not judge, it strikes."[/FONT]
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[FONT=Times New Roman]-M.H.-[/FONT]
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[FONT=Verdana]2. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]Trotsky was an authoritarian figure. How do Trotskyists feel about the freedom of information (speech, press, etc.) in a future workers’ state.[/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana]3. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]What is Trotskyism’s relationship to other tendencies? Is it hateful or just critical?[/FONT][/FONT]

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How do many Trotskyists feel about the militarization of labor?

I have qualms about the Bolsheviks in general. I don't think the ideal Trotskyist movement in a modern-day first-world nation needs nearly as fiercely an authoritarian state as Tzarist Russia did; Russia was burdened with centuries of brutality and was caught in painful resource scarcity, not to mention the civil and world wars. Those conditions will most likely reappear in the third world, however.

The Trotskyist model of revolution seems the most balanced to me. An unorganized revolution cannot withstand military conditions, but what is called Marxist-Leninism is essentially fascism with a better justification. Marxism must be able to criticize itself.

How do many Trotskyists feel about the militarization of labor?

I think most think it was a mistake. The only question was whether it was a temporary necessity at the time or a mistake from the getgo.

Trotsky's own opinion was that it was necessary because the other Bolsheviks hadn't followed his spring 1920 suggestion of stepping back from war communism and making concessions to capitalism a year earlier.

Certainly militarizing the railroads to get them moving again was necessary in the summer of 1920, they were completely breaking down and the danger of total economic collapse, mass starvation etc. because of that was real.

Trying to extend that to the rest of the economy was a bright idea of Trotsky's that worked poorly and caused much resentment, including from the Bolshevik union leaders who responded by forming the Workers Opposition.

Thus Trotsky sent Pyatakov off to militarize the Donbass and get coal production going again, coal being the energy source. I've seen a letter Trotsky wrote to Pyatakov after his own inspection tour saying something on the order of that it was amazing those poor bastards in the coalfields weren't revolting, given how awful the conditions were.

The economic and social conditions in Soviet Russia after years and years of imperialiast war were truly *awful* when the workers finally had won. The country needed time to recover and catch its breath.

Making some concessions to small scale capitalism and free trade was what was needed, not trying to shift the methods of warfare onto the economic front, and produce coal and get the factories running the same way the counterrevolutionaries were defeated.

Presumably things would be a lot better nowadays. Though, given what the capitalists are doing to the world now, you have to wonder what will be left of it when the revolution finally wins.

Maybe if global warming means that large parts of the planet have to be evacuated, you'd have to militarize the situation to avoid catastrophe.

-M.H.-

Sometimes violence is self defense, both personally and as a class. And Trotsky was only authoritarian when the "centralism" part of democratic centralism was needed. Interparty democracy was one thing that he died for,

[FONT=Verdana]1. [/FONT][FONT=Calibri][FONT=Calibri]How do many Trotskyist feel about violence (war (including violent class war), the death penalty, etc.) and respect for human life? As the People's Commissar of War, Trotsky made use of the death penalty often. Also, Trotsky said in his 1930 work, The Russian Revolution, “[/FONT][FONT=Calibri]We must rid ourselves once and for all of the Quaker-Papist babble about the sanctity of human life.”[/FONT][FONT=Calibri] However, shortly before he died he said, “[/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman]Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”[/FONT][/FONT]

The death penalty was used as a way to enforce discipline in and around the newly formed Red Army. Also, the post-war chaos made it impossible for the Bolshevik regime to root out the social ills that created sabotage, rebellion, civil war, etc. Thus they created short-term solutions hoping that the civil war would end soon and the revolution would spread far beyond Russian borders.

The death penalty, like many other dictatorial measures and the practice of both 'war communism' and the 'New Economic Policy', were temporary attempts to save the country and the regime from war and famine. They were not communist(ic) and not even always socialist(ic) measures. In the end some of them lost their temporary character and became permanent however.

Communists respect human life as it wants to liberate humanity from class antagonisms that can create wars, poverty, etc. But there are many ways in which different classes or different layers of people 'respect' human life. In Trotsky's 'Their moral and ours' he explains how different classes develop a different moral. The moral of the religious elite differs from the moral of the exploited peasants. The Church condems the violence peasants inflict upon the big landowners (one of which is the Church), while they're not afraid of using violence to extort payments and other such things from the peasants who have to work on their land. That's probalby one of the reasons why Trotsky attacked the concept of "[FONT=Calibri][FONT=Calibri]the sanctity of human life".[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana]2. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]Trotsky was an authoritarian figure. How do Trotskyists feel about the freedom of information (speech, press, etc.) in a future workers’ state.[/FONT][/FONT]

The programme for workers' rule is the programme of democracy, because if the oppressed want to end exploitation they must make sure that all oppressed - the whole of the people, and not just some people - can rule. Freedom of assembly, freedom of press, freedom of opinion, free elections, etc. are all principles of the democratic republic, which is by its most extreme - when workers' are the majority and politically organised in their proper revolutionary organisations - a workers' state.

However, as explained above, once in power the Bolsheviks used temporary measures to save a regime - that was essentially a minority regime after the Best-Litovsk Treaty of 1918 - from collapse. These measures were used against layers of the population and especially those who supported the counterrevolution. But those measures changed from means to an end into ends themselves. The bureaucrats, officers and other layers that benifited from those measures wanted to keep them - that's one reason why the secret service became so powerful and could eventually even terrorise the Bolshevik party.

At that time (1918-1922) many Bolsheviks were still in favour of the democratic rule of the prolateriat and poor peasants (not the big landowners of course), but democracy started to become an instrumental idea, not a programmatic principle. In practice this meant that democracy became the rule of the proletariat and peasants as represented by the rule of the Bolshevik Party (all power to the soviets became all power to the communist party), and that it turned from the gradual disappearance of state power to the extended use of state power (in the interest of the the party).

So that's why 'democracy' lost its value as a principle, as and end. Eventually when many of the measures became permanent the concept of democracy was ignored all together. But Democracy is not an end in or by itself. It is again a means for a greater end: communism. Communism is stateless and classless and altough it needs democracy to be reached it transcends it. Democracy is in essence the rule of one group - that calls itself 'the people' - over the other; even if it's a genuine majority rule (of workers or common people). When there is no minoritary enemy to control (bureaucrats, capitalists, big landowners, etc.) there's no need for 'rule' or dominance - but only formal governance. This is sometimes called demarchy.

[FONT=Verdana]3. [/FONT][FONT=Times New Roman][FONT=Calibri]What is Trotskyism’s relationship to other tendencies? Is it hateful or just critical?[/FONT][/FONT]

Both. Trotskyism has a wide variety of sub-divisions, and it concists of both cult-like sects and groups that belong to the broader workers' movement. Some groups have a history of both tendencies.

How do many Trotskyists feel about the militarization of labor?

It's not on the agenda and it is not part of our programme.