SubscribeCuando pienso en Aragón, Eluard, Neruda y otros famosos poetas y escritores estalinistas, siento el calosfrío que me da la lectura de ciertos paisajes del infierno. Empezaron de buena fe, sin duda. ... Experimentaron un impulso generoso de indignación ante el mal y de solidaridad con las víctimas. Pero insensiblemente, de compromiso en compromiso, se vieron envueltos en una malla de mentiras, falsedades, engaños y perjurios hasta que perdieron el alma.And greymouser, Trotsky's view of Kronstadt is exactly parallel to Bush's view of Iraq. I'd be happy to debate the matter with you if I thought you had the slightest interest in facts as opposed to Communist talking points.
When I think of Aragón, Eluard, Neruda, and other famous Stalinist poets and writers I feel the gooseflesh that reading certain passages of the Inferno gives me. No doubt they started out in good faith ... They felt a generous impulse of indignation at evil and solidarity with its victims. But insensibly, commitment by commitment, they saw themselves wrapped in a mesh of lies, falsehoods, deceits, and perjuries, until they lost their soul.
The cover of the New York Review of Books, a biweekly publication that offers highly literate book reviews to highly literate readers, normally carries nothing more than large-type announcements of what is inside. What is inside is words, with a sprinkling of pen-and-ink caricatures with oversized heads by David Levin. Last week, to the wondering eyes of its white, middle-class readers, Review devoted the lower third of a cover dealing with books on Negro rebellion to a detailed, do-it-yourself diagram of a Molotov cocktail. Some were amused, some were startled, none were likely to make much use of the blueprint. What was meant to give everybody a bang turned out to be just a little pop art.languagehat and nasreddin are presenting, here, a fundamentally falsified view of history.
Mr. Alsberg believes that the present title of my book is more appropriate to its contents than the name I had chosen. My disillusionment, he asserts, is not only with the Bolsheviki but with the Revolution itself. In support of this contention he cites Bukharin's remark to the effect that "a revolution cannot be accomplished without terror, disorganization, and even wanton destruction, any more than an omelette can be made without breaking the eggs." But it seems not to have occurred to Mr. Alsberg that, though the breaking of the eggs is necessary, no omelette can be made if the yolk be thrown away. And that is precisely what the Communist Party did to the Russian Revolution. For the yolk they substituted Bolshevism, more specifically Leninism, with the result as shown in my book-a result that is gradually being realized as an entire failure by the world at large.
Mr. Alsberg also believes that it was not "grim necessity, the driving need to preserve not the Revolution but the remnants of civilization, which forced the Bolsheviki to lay hands on every available weapon, the Terror, the Tcheka, suppression of free speech and press, censorship, military conscription, conscription of labour, requisitioning of peasants' crops, even bribery and corruption." Mr. Alsberg evidently agrees with me that the Communists employed all these methods; and that, as he himself states, "the 'means' largely determines the 'end"'-a conclusion the proof and demonstration of which are contained in my book. The only mistake in this viewpoint, however-a most vital one-is the assumption that the Bolsheviki were forced to resort to the methods referred to in order to "preserve the remnants of civilization." Such a view is based on an entire misconception of the philosophy and practice of Bolshevism. Nothing can be further from the desire or intention of Leninism that the "preservation of the remnants of civilization." Had Mr. Alsberg said instead "the preservation of the Communist dictatorship, of the political absolutism of the Party", he would have come nearer the truth, and we should have no quarrel on the matter. We must not fail to consider that the Bolsheviki continue to employ exactly the same methods to-day as they did in what Mr. Alsberg calls "the moments of grim necessity, in 1919, 1920, and 1921."
We are in 1924. The military fronts have long ago been liquidated; internal counterrevolution is suppressed; the old bourgeoisie is eliminated; the "moments of grim necessity" are past. In fact, Russia is being politically recognized by various governments of Europe and Asia, and the Bolsheviki are inviting international capital to come to their country whose natural wealth, as Tchicherin assures the world capitalists, is "waiting to be exploited." The "moments of grim necessity" are gone, but the Terror, the Tcheka, suppression of free speech and press, and all the other Communist methods enumerated by Mr. Alsberg still remain in force. Indeed, they are being applied even more brutally and barbarously since the death of Lenin. Is it to " preserve the remnants of civilization," as Mr. Alsberg claims, or to strengthen the weakening Party dictatorship?
The organization of labor is in its essence the organization of the new society: every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first attempt in world-history to organize labor in the interests of the laboring majority itself. This, however, does not exclude the element of compulsion in all its forms, both the most gentle and the extremely severe. The element of State compulsion not only does not disappear from the historical arena, but on the contrary will still play, for a considerable period, an extremely prominent part...There's the essence of the Communist system: "demanding from each and all complete submission." It has nothing to do with personality.
The introduction of compulsory labor service is unthinkable without the application, to a greater or less degree, of the methods of militarization of labor. Why do we speak of militarization? Of course, this is only an analogy—but an analogy very rich in content. No social organization except the army has ever considered itself justified in subordinating citizens to itself in such a measure, and to control them by its will on all sides to such a degree, as the State of the proletarian dictatorship considers itself justified in doing, and does. Only the army—just because in its way it used to decide questions of the life or death of nations, States, and ruling classes—was endowed with powers of demanding from each and all complete submission to its problems, aims, regulations, and orders.
Our disagreements are about questions of the means by which to strengthen labor discipline in the working class, the methods of approach to the mass of the workers who are being drawn into the work of reviving industry, the ways of transforming the present weak trade unions into powerful, genuinely industrial unions, capable of reviving our industry.
There are two methods: the method of coercion (the military method), and the method of persuasion (the trade-union method). The first method by no means precludes elements of persuasion, but these are subordinate to the requirements of the coercion method and are auxiliary to the latter. The second method, in turn, does not preclude elements of coercion, but these are subordinate to the requirements of the persuasion method and are auxiliary to the latter. It is just as impermissible to confuse these two methods as it is to confuse the army with the working class.
A group of Party workers headed by Trotsky, intoxicated by the successes achieved by military methods in the army, supposes that those methods can, and must, be adopted among the workers, in the trade unions, in order to achieve similar successes in strengthening the unions and in reviving industry. But this group forgets that the army and the working class are two different spheres, that a method that is suitable for the army may prove to be unsuitable, harmful, for the working class and its trade unions ...
Disregarding the irrelevant talk about "Kautskyism," "Menshevism," and so forth, it is evident that Trotsky fails to understand the difference between labor organizations and military organizations, that he fails to understand that in the period of the termination of the war and the revival of industry it becomes necessary, inevitable, to contrast military with democratic (trade-union) methods, and that, therefore, to transfer military methods into the trade unions is a mistake, is harmful ...
Democracy in the trade unions, i.e., what is usually called "normal methods of proletarian democracy in the unions," is the conscious democracy characteristic of mass working-class organizations, which presupposes consciousness of the necessity and utility of systematically employing methods of persuasion among the millions of workers organized in the trade unions. If that consciousness is absent, democracy be comes an empty sound.
« Older 38 unreprinted Jack Kirby monster stories.... | Fire Roasted Salsa. Chipotle S... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Firas at 8:27 PM on November 11, 2007