[Marxism] Ronald Aronson considers Leon Trotsky

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

If cynical pessimism has become a trendy lifestyle at The Nation, it
shouldn't worry us. Best to leave these people to their ruminations, and
focus on all the successes and hopeful developments in the world. After all,
if all you need to get yourself some hope is just to read a book, then you
can be hopeful or hopeless for the same time and money.

In reality there is much more to be hopeful about nowadays, since a lot of
the muck of authoritarian, dogmatic socialism has been cleared away, since
the new conservatives are incapable of solving social problems beyond making
laws, repression or pretending the problems are not there, and since the
desire for human freedom and social justice has become much deeper and much
more pervasive globally.

The main response the political ideologues have is to play on popular fears
and anxieties to regiment people, including a mythical "war on terrorism."
But what is this "terrorism" in human terms compared to the gigantic horror
of the tsunami disaster, or the terror inflicted on Iraq by Western
armaments? Let's not be taken in by these warped views of the world. In
reality, neoliberalism has unleashed social forces it cannot control, and
that is the problem.

That aside, it is typical of most revolutions that they took the world by
surprise... whereas there is nothing particularly "revolutionary" in itself
about basing your life on a hoped-for revolution in the future. What is
revolutionary is to fight the battle for ideas and progressive political
goals in the here and now, regardless of popular prejudice, and defy dull
ideas about everything which cannot happen and cannot be done.

It is interesting to note in this regard what sociologists were saying on
the eve of May 1968. The erudite expert Raymond Aron for instance went on
record as saying that French society had never been so stable, and that the
prospect of revolutionary upheaval was remote. Famous last words... men of
great intelligence were suddenly left in the lurch by the rapids of history.
Others, perhaps less intelligent but more in touch with reality, suddenly
emerged from obscurity and found themselves in the centre of the social
movement.

Impressionistic analyses are a dime a dozen. To understand the real law of
motion of modern society takes serious research and real experience. What
stands out most of all about Isaac Deutscher is that he made a most
exacting, dispassionate and conscientious study of the historical and
political developments of his era. That is the reason why his work lives on,
and continues to inspire, four decades after he passed away.

Yet if all we have to inspire us today are texts from the past, we have
already fallen victim to moods of rheumy conservatism. And that was not
Deutscher's own approach; he sought in the spirit of Marx to understand
history, the better to see the contours of the future, and inform the new
generation with a realistic perspective on the modern era. What drove him as
a mature writer was not so much "hope for the world", but a Spinoza-like
will to understand it, so that men might make history in better awareness of
what they were doing.

Jurriaan






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