Re: Stalinist aspects of Trotsky

[jc mullen <100663.643@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Do people have aspects of other people ?
Usually Trotsky gets accused of being like Stalin in that he sometimes had
people shot, wa simpolite or inconsiderate or severely polemical.
        Well I like cats and so did Hitler, but this is not the problem. The
problem is what class did Stalin represent and what what his project for this
class, and ditto for Trotsky.
        As soon as Stalin gave up on the idea of internationla revolutiona nd
decided on a socalled socialism in one country which would carry out the
industrial revolution in Russia at  a very high speed, he decided for
accumulation of capital as the be all and end all of the russian economy for a
whole historical period. The speed he wanted to do this at to "catch up withthe
rest of the world" necessarily involved enslaving millions and killing hundreds
of thousands.
        Trotsky preferred exile, watching his family being slaughtered and
working with tiny groups of wellmeaning but inexperienced revolutionaries. This
is not essentially cos he was a nicer guy, though he was a very nice guy, but
because he represented theinterests of a different class, theinternational
working class, and he knew that socialism in one country was impossible.
        But he couldn't understand how a nationalized economy could grow a new
kind of ruling class who ruled through controling capital against labour and
therefore were a new capitalist class. Noone had imagined that capitalism could
be restored while keeping the vocabulary of socialism and the state juridical
form of property of the means of production. But it happened,and Trotsky didn't
understand why.... big mistake, though he was under a lot of pressure at the
time...
John Mullen
Socialisme International



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