Peter Hitchens on Trotskyism
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My preferred Hitchen brother has written a piece about his time as a Trotskyist (Chris never recanted his support for Leon, again, advantage Peter).Quote:They were ‘entryists’, who joined Labour because they hated it and wanted to take it over. As soon as anyone knew this was going on, it was more or less bound to fail. But in any case, Trotskyism was always too narrow and too romantic to succeed. Stalin, the cynical bureaucrat and master of manoeuvre, ended up as the head of a superpower. Trotsky, orator of genius, inspired general, superb journalist and true believer, ended up being murdered by one of Stalin’s agents in a suburb of Mexico City. Both men, I should stress, were merciless killers. But one understood politics and the other didn’t.
Stalin 'understood' politics? I thought he was merely a gangster with about as much knowledge of politics as has Peter Hitchens.
Thanks for this. Even Jeremy Corbyn has called the entryists 'sectarian extremists' and refused to endorse Leon Trotsky even in a choice between Blair and Trotsky. Stalin practised realpolitik which may not be the same as politics. Both Peter and Christoper were members of that ruthlessly ineffective sect then called the IS, now called the SWP in Britain.
Wez wrote:Stalin 'understood' politics? I thought he was merely a gangster with about as much knowledge of politics as has Peter Hitchens.He ran rings round the ineffectual Trotsky.
Just making the point that Stalin, Trotsky and Hitchens have not made any significant contribution to political philosophy (as far as I'm aware). The 'rings' he ran around Trotsky were those of, as jondwhite points out, realpolitik which are merely bourgeois strategic power plays. For Hitchens to ascribe Stalin with an 'understanding' of politics implies that he also has such an understanding, for which I see no evidence; just another example of his usual arrogance.
Ironically, Joseph Stalin knew what socialism really is, and Trotsky did not know that, for him state capitalism was socialism like Vladimir Lenin. The difference between Stalin and Trotsky were based on the concept of leadership, like the difference between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were on how to take control of the state, there were not any major differences among them, and when Trotsky was the commissar of the Red Army he was a despot, and the killing of workers did not start during the times of Stalin, it was started during the times when Lenin and Trotsky were commissars. With the Soviet Union socialism did not move forward, on the contrary, it was retarded and completely distorted by all of them. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2003/no-1183-march-2003/trotsky-and-stalin-rival-leaders
The leaders of the Western powers always want to present Stalin as a monster, but he was one of his allied and friends, they used him when they needed him, and then, they disposed him when they did not need him, and they were criminals like him too, and both blocks signed a pact to distribute and take over the whole earth among them. There were not any ideological difference between them
Young Master Smeet wrote:My preferred Hitchen brother has written a piece about his time as a Trotskyist (Chris never recanted his support for Leon, again, advantage Peter). http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/08/take-it-from-an-ex-trot-labour-neednt-worry-about-trotskyists/ Quote:They were ‘entryists’, who joined Labour because they hated it and wanted to take it over. As soon as anyone knew this was going on, it was more or less bound to fail. But in any case, Trotskyism was always too narrow and too romantic to succeed. Stalin, the cynical bureaucrat and master of manoeuvre, ended up as the head of a superpower. Trotsky, orator of genius, inspired general, superb journalist and true believer, ended up being murdered by one of Stalin’s agents in a suburb of Mexico City. Both men, I should stress, were merciless killers. But one understood politics and the other didn’t.I always find it really funny that so many Trotskyists are now lauding Cuban "Socialism", heading up "hands off Cuba" campaigns and praising Castro, considering that Ramon Mercador (Trotsky's killer) was welcomed to Havana by Castro with open arms and much celebration, following his release from prison. They clearly don't "do" history.
The Trotskyists from Argentina were endorsing the government of Fulgencio Batista, the same one that the Stalinists of Cuba overthrew, and now they are calling him a dictator, but some Trotskyists are supporting a dictator named Fidel Castro, and calling him the leader of the Cuban revolution.It looks like they have forgotten about the most basic principle of the Materialist Conception of HistoryCelia Hart who was a Cuban Trotskyist, she was one of the theoretician of the Communist Party of Cuba, and she supported Fidel Castro Cuban state capitalism, and the Soviet Union, The Trotsky's killer Ramon Mercado was an ex-Trotskyists who became an Stalinist, that is a reason why it was so easy for him to enter in the Fortress of CoyoacanGeneral Sanchez Salazar who was not a Trotskyist gave a much better description of his assassination than all the articles written by his followershttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1950s/1950/no-549-may-1950/book-review-murder-mexico-assassination-leon-trotsky
Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 3, Socialism and the State The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand – as it does not now in any well-off family or “decent” boarding-house – any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective “utopian.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm Trotsky’s Terrorism and Communism The Mensheviks are against this. This is quite comprehensible, because in reality they are against the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is to this, in the long run, that the whole question is reduced. The Kautskians are against the dictatorship of the proletariat, and are thereby against all its consequences. Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely connected regions. True, Abramovich demonstrated to us most learnedly that under Socialism there will be no compulsion, that the principle of compulsion contradicts Socialism, that under Socialism we shall be moved by the feeling of duty, the habit of working, the attractiveness of labor, etc., etc. This is unquestionable. Only this unquestionable truth must be a little extended. In point of fact, under Socialism there will not exist the apparatus of compulsion itself, namely, the State: for it will have melted away entirely into a producing and consuming commune. None the less, the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the State. And you and I are just passing through that period. Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction. Now just that insignificant little fact – that historical step of the State dictatorship – Abramovich, and in his person the whole of Menshevism, did not notice; and consequently, he has fallen over it. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch08.htm
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