Re: [OPE] One party state?

Anders,
this is surprising.. surely you must be aware of Trotsky's early centrism,
and what I think was an invidious role for many years with respect to
Bolshevism. He tried to reconcile parties/ sections of the movement that
were clearly impossibly at odds. His early judgements eg on the Irish Easter
Rising are shockingly patronising compared to Lenin's astute judgements.
This doesn't meean to say lenin wouldn't talk to him of course! Trotsky
himself relates ( in his rather self satisfied 'My Life',) the dressing down
he got from Lenin in a railway station about his attitude to 'fund raising'
and the 'respectibility' of the opposition/revolutionary trends/ movement.
Once reconciled to Bolshevism there is no doubt he played a first class
role, but as soon as we get to the question of the organisation of labour
after the revolution he still doesn't seem to get it. The debates, the real
struggles for party policy demonstrate, as any historical period will, real
futility in the simplistic views about individuals.

But the main issue is why TODAY, NOW, the modern Trotskyists label
themselves such. In my opinion, because they took a systematically anti
Soviet position and tioday usually an anti communist position, and have
sought (ironically for them exactly like the neo-cons by the way
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/01/GR2008020102389.html
) to link themselves to Trotsky's positions in later life. In general they
are radical petty bourgeoise socialists who draw the line at actually
confronting their domestic imperialism (its ok to attack other imperialisms,
indeed the further away from home the more radical they will sound -
although their attacks on Chavez or Cuba are solid instances of this role.)
as such. eg Look at their support for Polish 'Solidarity' and how history
has already revealed its reactionary role to the lay observer. But that is a
completely different story.

regards

Paul B
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anders Ekeland" <anders.ekeland@online.no>
To: "Outline on Political Economy mailing list" <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 12:36 PM
Subject: Re: [OPE] One party state?

> David Yaffe wrote:
>>Your resort to slogans when your back is against the wall. I am a Marxist
>>and a Leninist. I believe Lenin was correct in his ideological struggle
>>against Stalin and Trotsky.
>
> The idea that Lenin waged an "ideological struggle" against both Stalin
> and Trotsky sees strange to me. Where in Lenin's writings do you find such
> struggles, and to do regard Lenin to always have been correct in these
> struggles in the light of historical experience, i.e. with the benefit of
> hindsight.
>
> Regards
> Anders
>
>
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Received on Tue Jun 9 09:20:48 2009