What I have found fascinating with this conversation is that the option that Trotsky was a profoundly contradictory individual seems to be off the table. If you look at his record, he says some fairly horrifying things in the 20-21 period (within a fairly specific framework.... the argument of Terrorism and Communism (think that's the name of the text) is making an argument for what would have to happen if a NEP like program wasn't passed.), specifically around the militarization of labor, but if you look at his military texts at the same time, he is curiously writing about the democratization of the military. When you move to his texts from the period of 23-28, he's arguing for a set of reforms that would open up the system towards more democratic structures. When you look at his project of industrialization compared to Preobrhazensky (sic), there is much more emphasis on democratic consent and self-organization (I think there are still problems with the program... see Scott's Seeing Like a State for more details on that)
I find myself on the same page as CLR James when you come down to a basic assessment of Trotsky. The big problem with his project is that he accepts too many of the premises of Marxist Leninist party to be a genuinely revolutionary project (offering a tragic contradiction between a revolutionary proletarian goal and a method that is put in place for other purposes.) (When I use the term, Marxist Leninist, I mean the set of practices that Stalin coagulated together, some of which draw from Lenin, but a coagulation which is not Lenin's)
I say this as someone who discovered Marxism through Trotsky, and still have some fondness for the man, although my politics have changed quite a bit. Personally, I still find Deutcher's biography the best assessment of the man, and I think that it's notable that it is precisely what is best in Trotsky that causes him to 'lose' in Deutscher's eyes.
robert wood
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 4:56 PM, James Heartfield
> <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>> OK, so now SA makes himself clear: he favours the free market and
>> opposes
>> socialism. He considers democratic planning an impossibility ("it
>> probably
>> could not have been so formulated even if that had been the intention")
>> and
>> SA thinks that the coercion of capital over labour through the market
>> preferable to the self-determination of society. And because Trotsky
>> favours
>> socialism over capitalism, SA calls him a jerk!
>>
>> So, finally, it turns out that SA was not making a case against the
>> usurpation of the workers' state by the bureaucracy (which was Trotsky's
>> unique contribution, not SA's), but rather SA is arguing that socialism
>> is
>> an impossibility, and only the free market can govern the direction of
>> labour.
>
> I wonder if it's possible to count how many times in the last 80 years
> this conversation arc has happened: The Trot is faced with
> overwhelming historical evidence that Trotsky was a tyrant, and lots
> else besides. Cornered, the Trot starts accusing his opponent of being
> a closet capitalist and bourgeois apologist. Not a novel approach you
> are taking here, James.
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