>> Actually, I'm not sure "jerk" is the right word. Maybe this can clarify:
>>
>> http://s11131978.150m.com/trotsky.pdf
>>
He's actually pretty open about this in his autobiography too. The attitude to forced labour I think is especially repellent, because he's not really arguing that it's just an unfortunate necessity due to the struggle against the Whites. Of course it doesn't make his whole corpus useless, but surely it's at least a little embarrassing for Trotskyists.
James is turning this into a false binary: question any particular action or attitude of revolutionaries and you're a pacifist. The fact that he felt the need to argue the point is proof that it was a live political issue and called into question by his comrades.
Mike Beggs