> I think the issue turns on the question
> which has always divided revolutionary Marxists like Trotsky from social
> democrats and left liberals like Dewey: Can a successful class
> struggle for
> power be conducted peacefully or must it necessarily resolve itself
> through
> violence?
>
> Dewey would have us believe "there are presumably several, perhaps many,
> different ways by means of which the class struggle may be carried on"
> but
> he doesn't indicate what these other possibilities are. History shows
> pretty
> conclusively that classes don't surrender their property and power
> peacefully, and that the transition is a brutal one, so Dewey's charge
> that
> Trotsky is a fanatic and a mystic for subscribing to this "law" seems
> to me
> to be wildly unfair.
Yeah, I don't think you've met the point of Dewey's essay at all.
The body of the essay is a somewhat technical analysis of Trotsky's core argument - an argument that boiled down to "the end justifies the means." Dewey's position on this is quite clear: Trotsky is right. The end *can* justify the means; violence *can* be justified if the end is just; if you will the end, you must will the means.
Dewey's critique lies elsewhere. It's focused on the relationship between ends and means. We might well decide that violence is justified in order to achieve the "emancipation of mankind" (these are Trotsky's words for the communist goal). So does that mean if I shoot my wife I should be absolved just for saying I did it for the emancipation of mankind? Obviously no - there has to be some demonstrated *relationship* between ends and means - and the burden of proof is on the one who undertakes the otherwise unjustifiable act.
This is where Dewey disagrees with Trotsky. According to JD, Trotsky rejects the notion that he has to demonstrate any relationship at all. Trotsky claims that the relationship can simply be "deduced" from the "law of class struggle." In other words, (1) class struggle leads to the emancipation of mankind; (2) my violence is furthering the class struggle; (3) therefore, my violent means are leading to emancipatory ends. This is one reason why Dewey called Trotsky's thinking "fanatical" and "mystical." It posits that you can dump 1,000 bodies in a mass grave and justify it not by any circumstances or consequences specific to the case but simply on the basis of its imputed role in the historical dialectic.
SA