[lbo-talk] Robert Frost Defends Robespierre, Lenin, Mao

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Apr 27 01:35:38 PDT 2009


Mike Beggs says he finds my argument "really annoying" because I pushed the point to its logical conclusion to show that there was a basic choice before us, for Trotsky's socialism, or for SA's Austrian School methodological individualism.

Robert Wood, too, thinks that it is frustrating that we do not make Trotsky "profoundly contradictory", which would of course make it easier to avoid the choice that is set out between "Trotsky the Socialist Jerk" and Trotsky the defender of workers' control.

No doubt there are interesting contradictions in Trotsky's life and work, but that was not what SA was addressing. (S)he was attacking Trotsky in a peculiarly unelaborated way ("jerk") ("read this") because SA was hiding more than his or her identity, (S)he was smuggling a criticism of socialism as such into a bullish attack on Trotsky.

And why would one want to blame Trotsky for Stalinism? Because Trotsky's reputation as Stalin's main opponent is intact. As we speak, I am looking at the KGB mugshots of the victims of the terror from David King's new book, reproduced in the Sunday Times colour magazine. Strangely, none of them are Austrian School followers of von Mises, like SA, but are mostly Trotskyists. As Stalin rarely tired of saying, Trotskyism was his greatest foe.

SA writes: "I think this speaks for itself." - begging the question, why are you replying, stating the obvious, and giving me another opportunity to speculate what SA stands for:

School: Austrian;

Subtly Absent;

Socially Awkward;

Studied Autism;

Self Aggrandizing ...



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