1) > But I cannot think of a major historical change
> involving major conflict that was brought about by
> pure and totally ethical means. ...
> By way of illustration, and assuming that we are not
> pacificts, if there ever was a just war it was thewar
> against the Nazis. But that war, like all wars,
> necessarily involved killing innocents, and would have
> done even if firebombing cities had not been adopted
> as a policy. Does that mean that we should not have
> fought the Nazis?
Certainly not. But I do think that even in the war against the Nazis there is a necessity to act within a moral universe. It makes sense to me to debate whether or not the bombing of Dresden should have taken place. I don't think it an answer to say that victory against the Nazis was so important that ‘anything went’. Were the Russians right to rape their way through Berlin? Should the allies have set up their own death camps to eliminate the SS? To ask such a question is to answer it.
Neither Dresden nor the rapes were necessary for victory. Both tell us something about the states whose armed forces did these acts. Would real ‘socialist’ forces rape German women? Bomb a populated city?
You have posed a question that does not put the moral dilemmas that could and no doubt will confront any revolutionary army. It’s easy to set one up. Would we kill a captured enemy general whom we had taken prisoner? She surrendered gracefully. An enemy unit is attacking in an attempt to free her. If she is freed, she will doubtlessly wreak havoc in our ranks. Well I don’t have a neat answer. I’d probably vote for shooting the prisoner, knowing that the evils of a lost revolution are the resurgence of capitalism would be horrific. In this situation, I think it makes sense to say that we were forced to an evil in order to avoid a greater evil. I think that in a revolutionary army, as far as possible, such issues ought to be debated. If socialism does not mean equality and debate (both sides of the same coin), then I’d wonder if we were really fighting for socialism.
Letting THE party decide such matters is rather like abandoning morals into the hands of the omnipotent and infallible God (just like the vanguard party, God has many who claim to be his true representatives, but there are many false prophets).
Now that is alienation (James Mill, The King of Prussia and Social Reform). Within socialism, I guess we have to come to terms with the fact that morality will be ours to choose. What is there but the voluntary exercise of our own powers within that free society?
2) > Incidentally I don't buy the slippery slope that
> Trotsky's easy resort to violence, e.g., at Kronstadt,
> made Stalin's terror possible or necessary or
> something of the sort.
I didn't offer a slippery slope argument. I'm sorry if that was not clear. This is my point.
With characteristic brilliance, Trotsky stated the vanguard party doctrine that became a model for the later Comintern and seriously blunted opposition to Stalin and his followers, both in Russia and in the rest of the world. We know Trotsky’s words: No one can be right against the party. And as the party speaks for the authentic interests of the working class, there can be no other voice than that of the party. The Party leadership at the decisive 10th Congress silenced other voices including, in the Trades Union debate, that of the workers. Trotsky did not invent these party doctrines, of course, but his genius brought a sharpness and clarity to the notion of party-mindedness, an idea crucial to the Stalinists and later to orthodox Trotskyism, courtesy of James Cannon.
I am not suggesting that Trotsky caused Stalinism, even less that Stalin imitated Trotsky. Both are silly ideas. But both Stalin and Trotsky are men of the new style Bolshevik party, the one born out of the experience of the bitter fighting needed to hold onto state power. It is a party that did not tolerate dissent and in this important respect was really quite different from the old party. To remake Korsh’s point, bureaucratism and discipline smell of the state rather than the workers movement.
Throughout the 20s Trotsky could only manoeuvre within the party, to Stalin's great advantage, even though there were at times active oppositions such as Workers Truth and the Workers Group. Trotsky's belief in the Party obscured his vision of the working class. It seems to me that this puts him firmly in a tradition that runs straight into the politics of the 1930s.