Re: [Marxism] THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia): Nuclear no nightmare, says unionism's new face

["Ratbag Radio" <ratbagradio@xxxxxxxxx>]

One of the major attributes of Trotskyism is that it can serve as the last
hesitation to communism. and I think it fulfilled that role for a few from
the '40s at least. It gives you an alternative view of the Soviet Union et
al so that you don't have to accept Stalinism -- or other nasties (and you
get to pick what you embrace as kosher). Also consider the estwhile "New
York Intellectuals"  who embraced Trotsky in the '30s. I think this gets
played out in state capitalist theory such that these comrades can be
extremely hostile to already existing socialist experiments and quite prone
to adapting to bourgeois commie baiting.

Trotskyism also has its own extremely articulate pope -- promoted &
mythologised   as "the prophet"  by his biographer --who is a great
intellectual draw card for the diletantism prone. Go try selling Lenin to
the creative artists. Lenin vogue went out with Myakoxsky!

Consider the cultural edge that historically hovered around Trotsky &
Trotskyism. It's a marker of the movement right up to Healeys' WRP..

Some of the key 'turncoats' in Australian political history began life as
Trots -- Laurie Short who was the most succesful trade unionists of the cold
war, white anted the Federated Ironworkers and took it from the CPA--and his
mate, Sir John Kerr , was around Short's group for a time before going on in
1975 to sack the Whitlam Labor government.

You only have to consider the founding international committee for the
Fourth International to get a feel for this capacity of Trotksyism to breed
a rush to the right and odd later indulgences....(Didn't one of em end up a
fascist?)

Nonetheless, the main reason -- the driving context  -- that fosters this
shift (which  may or may not be statistically significant) is that when
you're a Trot in the 20th century at least you were always outside the main
battalions of the working class, being , in the main, an isolated
propagandist current who was always right despite that isolation. So in a
very real sense you don;t access the real McCoy of political motion because
most of the time you're a pariah, even on the left. So you don't have the
living experience of people in motion as you are always outside that to some
degree. You don;t get to touch base very often. As Lenin pointed out,
allegiance and discipline has to be bred in living struggle and the merging
of the vanguard with the actual dynamic of the working class movement.

Stalinism was always more succesful at that -- for good or ill -- than the
Trotskyist upstarts. Thats' the main tragedy of Trotskyism. Good in theory
but the Stalinists were always way ahead in practice.They were born with
red spoon in  their mouths perhaps? The buggers owned the franchise...

I also think Trotskyism plays up to this adaption to right ward politics
because it is, essentially, so often a ultra left current (permanent
revolution is ultra left theorising for instance and panders to this
response).Consider how the issue of Cuba is played out across the Trotskyist
spectrum -- by Healey in his day, and by a state cap currents today.
Consider the present debate around Venezuela.  The supposed inadequacies of
Cuba to fulfil a template which often effectively aligns these currents up
with the right -- unintentional as it may be.God, look at Moreno!

[This was of course the genesis of the debate with Shackman et al in the US
SWP in regard to the USSR. In contrast the Stalinist parties seem to have
weathered the Hitler Stalin pact much better to then later grow under the
spotlight of Stalingrad.]

Finally I guess the handicap with Trotskyism is  the rhetoric it is driven
by :Leon Trotsky's pen and that can at times be prone to a lot of romantic
drivel even though he is possibly the best creative writer in Marxism during
the 20th century.The prophet/ pope can seduce you with words and distract
you from living realpolitick and replace actual activity with yearning. And
when the yearning runs out -- bingo! -- like some petulant school kid you
make up for your lost time by going up market as quick as you can and
burning your Marxist reference library and hating the Trots for taking away
your youth with fancies & theories....

After all anything "other than Trotskyism" is, by definition within the
circle spirit you embraced -- a drift to the right. So if you drift an inch,
why not a mile and  go all the way?

Then later on on your bio -- it looks so darn good to boast of a radical
past when the journoes come a calling to interview the upstart pollie, trade
union official or sponsored public intellectual who now serves the bosses so
consciously and offers a  CV that attests to an ability to read the tactical
capacities of the left from first hand experiences. And when you sell your
Trot past you also trade on the same romance that caught you up in the first
place. It proves how 'mature' you are -- like a benchmark.So mention it by
all means to the scribes...

So if Arthur Koestler could shepherd a book into being called "The God That
Failed -- some one else surely could manage an update for modern times: "The
Prophet that Failed."

It's still up to the Trotskyists to prove otherwise....

dave riley
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