Quote:
"The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans. They have mad a fetish of democratic principles. They have places the workers' right to elect representatives above the party, as it were, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy .... It is necessary to create among us the awareness of the revolutionary birthright of the party. The party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering in the spontaneous moods of the masses, regardless of the temporary vacillations even in the working class. This awareness is for us the indispensable unifying elements. The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principles of a workers' democracy...." - Trotsky, on page 509 of the Vintage Edition (1965). The footnote for this quote is Desyatyi Syezd RKP, pp. 192.
"We are now heading towards the type of labour [he stated] that is socially regulated on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker. This is the basis of socialism.... The militarisation of labour, in this fundamental sense of which I have spoken, is the indispensable basic method for the organisation of our labour forces.... Is it true that compulsory labour is always unproductive?.... This is the most wretched and miserable liberal prejudice: chattel slavery too was productive.... Compulsory serf labour did not grow out of the feudal lords' ill-will. It was [in its time] a progressive phenomenon." On page 501 of the same edition. The foot note indicates it was made in a report to the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions. The source given is Tretii Vserossiskii Syezd Profsoyuzow pp 87-96.
"The working class cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers. Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism. Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps." - Trotsky
For the first selection, as other comrades have already pointed out, you must account for the historical context during which these remarks were penned. Without such considerations, you are bound to end up a response marked primarily by thoroughness and even infantile analysis.
The workers opposition emerged in the midst of a sprawling civil war which was being fought for proletarian control over roughly one sixth of the worlds land mass, meaning the lives and futures of millions of workers were on the line. The RSFSR was surrounded on all sides by the venomous snare of the worlds leading capitalist nations, all of whom desired to bleed the revolution dry in Russia and beyond.
Naturally, this isn't exactly the time in a revolution where you really want to be calling for direct workers democracy and it is not a time when subverting the aims of the party in this crude and baseless sense is fitting or productive to the cause. Trotsky was entirely right when speaking to the need for the revolution to be organized and led by the vanguard of the proletarian as it existed in the communist party of the era, as the Russian territories were in complete and utter chaos at the time, at the whims of the white army and the remaining vestiges of the smashed social orders of capitalism and even feudalism. They required such oversight from the communist party if they sought to defend the revolution from the expansive white armies and their capitalist backers abroad. The pressing content of the situation demanded nothing short of a centralized command structure in the affairs of labor and the party, as that is how the preparatory stages of early socialism need to be forwarded in such material backdrops.
As for your vulgar analysis of what reads as a very orthodox and straightforward application the dialectical materialist thought, I fail to see its relevance to this matter. Trotsky was entirely correct in his assertions, feudalism is indeed a progressive force when it is a step forward from tribalism and other variations of underdeveloped society.