On Apr 4, 2009, at 2:37 PM, Somebody Somebody wrote:
> ...Trotsky is a well known example in this regard - voicing the need
> for socialist trade unions to be conveyors belts [the term was
> Lenin's not Trotsky's] of state policy [Lenin said "of Communism"]
> and instruments of labor compulsion when in power, and becoming a
> critic of authoritarian socialism in exile...
This is a typical comment, completely uninformed as usual, about Trotsky's position in the "Trade Union Question" debates during the winter of 1920-1921. Trotsky discussed this issue at pp. 263-266 of *My Life*. The context of these debates was the mistaken decision in 1920 of the Russian Communist Party's Central Committee, against Trotsky's proposal for a turn to what later became the NEP, to continue "War Communism" into 1921. Given "War Communism," the state- control option defended by Bukharin and Trotsky was the only logical one. The Kronstadt Mutiny completely upset the context of the discussion. Trotsky's proposed NEP became unanimous party policy, and the proposition that the trade unions should always be vigorous defenders of the workers' specific interests (as well as "transmission belts" for Communist education of the working class) became universally recognized Soviet labor policy until Stalin in 1930 purged Tomsky and converted the Soviet trade unions into tools of totalitarian state-capitalist industrial management.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos