Stalinist aspects of Trotsky

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I thought I would provoke more reaction by
my remark on the passage I quoted from Trotsky about
Kronstadt.

I wrote

>>
I was surprised by the Stalinist tone of the following,
ie it sounds like the attitudes
of mind that Trotskyists usually label as Stalinist.
<<

It was interesting to hear that the subject of Kronstadt has
now been debated on several lists. It sounds as if we are
building up a relatively mature understanding of the issue.

But even allowing for some people wisely side-stepping a
controversial point, I did expect some reaction. Perhaps I
was not provocative enough.

I read Trotsky's remarks on Kronstadt as pretty typical of
much of what Trotskyists attack as Stalinism. The brutal imposition
of force by administrative measures. The stifling of real
debate by the utter dismissal of political opponents.

I was
shocked by the assurance that all the best elements of the
proletariat had already left Kronstadt and therefore Trotsky
had the right to discount the opinions of those he did not
consider to be genuinely proletatian.

This is the decisive theoretical step for marxists in going from
the leading role of the working class to being arbiters of who
actually is a genuine and pure member of that class, and therefore
making the party, your party, the party of the self-appointed
elect, the rightful agent of history who can suppress with force.
Crisply and efficiently. Cockroaches sometimes have to be
stamped upon, don't they?

So what are we looking at?

I suggest that there is much more that links Stalin and Trotsky
than divides them.

Despite the fact that Stalin insisted that Trotsky was a Menshevik
in disguise, Trotsky was a member of the Bolshevik wing from
1912 along with Stalin and Lenin. They are close theoretical and
practical blood relatives.

Of course after Lenin's death they fought for the succession.
Stalin made his pitch as being the more orthodox and reliable
of Lenin's possible Bolshevik heirs. Trotky's pitch was that
he was more in touch with the spirit of the revolution. But I
suggest (comments please) there was not much between them.

Trotsky has been praised by Lenin and his followers as a
decisive administrator, and a leader of the Red Army. He had the
ability to be ruthless in the use of power, and he had a streak
of arrogance and irritability.

If he had won the battle within the Bolshevik party for the
succession, the momentum of events and the reality of the need to
defend what power had been gained could easily have ended up with
him in power doing much the same thing as Stalin, possibly
only a little less paranoid. As for what subsequently became a
great issue that Socialism could not succeed in one country, Lenin
also argued that.

But when you read Trotsky himself on Kronstadt, it is clear he
would have had a damn good try.

I suggest, dear fellow subscribers, that  Trotsky and
Stalin were all close ideological, political, and organisational
Bolshevik cousins.

Could Trotskyists please respond to this post and itemise
the points on which Trotsky was fundamentally different?

Chris Burford
London.


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