[lbo-talk] Meditations on Trotsky and Occupy

turbulo at aol.com turbulo at aol.com
Tue Sep 25 09:18:03 PDT 2012


Chuck Grimes is reminded by Trotsky's "History", as I was when I read it many years ago, that, contemprary prejudices aside, the October Revolution was history's most radical experiment in direct mass democracy (if a short-lived one). But whatever similarities there may be between then and now, I think we should also be mindful of the differences, especially regarding contemporary Western countries. Here are three differences that seem to me important (though they certainly don't exhaust the list).

1) Russians in 1917 had never lived under an elected government. Its regimes (including the Provisional Government) therefore lacked the popular legitimacy, however bogus, that regular elections confer. The Soviets were the only means of popular political expression.

2) There are in the US today far fewer permanent mass concentrations of the "popular orders". Petrograd had some of the world's biggest factories, and workers and peasants were mobilized in the army and navy during WW One. Such standing bodies tend to demystify the workings of society in the eyes of the masses, and especially reveal the extent to which society depends upon their collective efforts. The fact that people are already organized in large numbers to serve the powerful makes it much easier for them to organize in their own name. Occupy participants, on the other hand, came from a lot of different places, to which many of them had to return in order to make a living or complete their studies. Unemployed or semi-employed people were the only ones who could contemplate camping out in public squares for months at a time. They--not workers or peasants or soldiers--formed the core of Occupy

3) Lenin and Trotsky were, as Chuck says, journalists (among other things). But they did not pursue normal journalistic careers, or normal bourgeois careers of any kind. (As far as I know, Trotsky only worked once for the bourgeois press, when he covered the Balkan Wars). Their activity took place almost exclusively within the socialist movement. It's true that Occupy and related movements have produced some seat-of-the-pants journalists and activists. But the elite of this intelligentsia are journalists and professors who make a sometimes comfortable living in established media and universities. Very few of them will be found trying to win support among workers.

This is not intended as a personal criticism of people like Noam Chomsky or Naomi Klein. They probably couldn't go among workers even if they wanted to; their way of life is as much determined by how society is stuctured as by personal choice. It is nevertheless the case that American society, at least until very recently, offered greater opportunities for intellectuals than Russian society c. 1917--opportunities of which many did not hesitate to avail themselves of. There are thus enough of them to form a world of their own, which many inhabit almost exclusively. The world they live in fosters a mentality of individual self-promotion as opposed to collective discipline. One doesn't learn political organization from writing articles, teaching seminars or appearing on talk shows or at conferences (although political activity includes these things). One learns politics by doing it. Lenin and Trotsky did mass politics. Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, etc. do not. They are mainly commentators. That is another crucial difference.

Jim Creegan



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