Trotsky on the impotence of assassination (and why terrorism is stupid too)

[yurbud]

I'm no fan of communism, and Trotsky didn't really stick to this anyway, but his analysis here is hard to find fault with.

Most people here probably haven't read this but know it intuitively, which is why we are far less likely to turn to ''Second Amendment remedies;'' it changes nothing or at best leads to temporary confusion and an excuse for repression.

I can see why it is appealing to the right though. Since they believe in hierarchy and are always waiting for a strong leader on horseback to tell them what to do, they believe that their political opponents operate the same way and will be demoralized and aimless if they kill our leaders. With today's progressives, nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead of looking to leaders to tell us what to do and believe, we are looking to elected representatives to do WHAT WE TELL THEM, and while we mourn those who fall to right wing violence (or more often scandal mongering, ridicule, or freezing out by the press), violence directed against our reps doesn't change our aims, or even betrayal by those we worked and voted for does not changes our ideas that are not so different from those of our founding fathers: we want an educated electorate that can knowledgeably participate in self-governance, free from hunger and want with access to health care that doesn't bankrupt them, with jobs that provide enough income to support a family and enough leisure time to spend with them, and knowledge that they will be protect from criminals with money as well as the garden variety kind.

If Democrats in Congress and the White House state such goals clearly and actually pursued them, there might be fewer ignorant and desperate people for the right to manipulate into acts of violence.

A strike, even of modest size, has social consequences: strengthening of the workers' self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently even an improvement in productive technology. The murder of a factory owner produces effects of a police nature only, or a change of proprietors devoid of any social significance. Whether a terrorist attempt, even a 'successful' one, throws the ruling class into confusion depends on the concrete political circumstances. In any case, the confusion can only be short-lived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function.

But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one's goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organization? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission...

Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more 'effective' the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy.

http://www.socialistalternative.org/literature/terrorism/

[Drale]

1. Its sort of ironic then that Trotsky

ended up with one of Stalins bullets in his brain.

[yurbud]

2. I thought it was an axe

[Drale]

3. Your correct it was but

the point was he was assassinated by Stalin.

[backscatter712]

7. It was actually an ice-pick, or more correctly, an ice-axe.

[readmoreoften]

4. I don't see the irony. Stalin and Trotsky were always enemies.

It was precisely because of Stalin's tactics that Trotsky despised him.

That'd be like saying that it's ironic if someone who is for gun control was killed by the gun of a right-wing militia guy. That's just tragic and predictable. Ironic would be if the right-wing militia guy was killed by the gun of another right-militia guy in the name of the 2nd amendment.

Irony would be if Trotsky was killed by a labor strike, not political assassination. Although it's hard to imagine being killed by a labor strike.

[yurbud]

10. he lived through the ice axe attack only to be done in by an ambulance driver strike

[readmoreoften]

12. That'd be irony.

[Hannah Bell]

8. ice-pick

[readmoreoften]

5. Excellent quote, btw. Thanks.

[denem]

6. OK: The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK made no difference

to the balance of power in America. And if Lenin or Stalin had been assassinated, the outcome in Russia would be been same as well.

[yurbud]

9. with JFK, RFK, & MLK it was the cumulative effect

taking out Lenin might have made a difference, but Stalin seemed to be surrounded by equally assholy guys (though there seems to be pretty compelling evidence he was offed).

[MattSh]

18. Attempting to take out Lenin DID make a difference...

As it happens, the attempt to kill Lenin has made him much more popular than he was. One hears a great many people, who are far from having any sympathy with the Bolsheviks, saying that it would be an absolute disaster if Lenin had succumbed to his wounds, as it was first thought he would. And they are quite right, for, in the midst of all this chaos and confusion, he is the backbone of the new body politic, the main support on which everything rests.<71>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin (It's about half way down).

[yurbud]

20. I let this thread go for a while but my main reason for posting was I knew righties were reading

yesterday and wanted to thumb my nose at their action movie view of the world, and maybe give them a half second of self-doubt and fear that all their guns and violence weren't really making them powerful.

[readmoreoften]

14. He doesn't say it makes "no difference." He says it doesn't bring about revolutionary change.

Killing JFK, MLK, and RFK did not end civil rights--proving Trotsky's point. Why? Because there were movements of people and that's what makes change. He didn't mean that assassinations have no effects on movements.

[yurbud]

19. also, did their ideas die with them? The New Deal/Great Society consensus survived until

Reagan, and some parts of it like trust in Social Security and Medicare survive still.

Killing the people might have impeded progress but it didn't stop it.

The negative example would be more useful: would killing Hitler have changed anything? In the broadest sense, it wouldn't have since Hitler's war aim of unifying Europe under German leadership was the same as the Kaiser's goal in World War I, and even though Hitler lost the war spectacularly, today we have a European Union with Germany as the hub.

History is against the right. You cannot organize a society to benefit a very, very few and expect it to survive long

[socialist_n_TN]

11. Kick. Another thing that Comrade Trotsky was...........

right on about. This sounds like an argument against the anarchists.

His whole deal was the bottom up uprising against the capitalists on an international scale. Individual terrorist strikes against anybody in government doesn't do anything for the overall struggle BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT THE ONES IN CHARGE ANYWAY. And he would DEFINITELY be against the types of terror attacks exemplified by the 9/11 attacks. Why kill the very people you need for the revolution? Indiscrimate attacks don't do anybody ANY good.

[Scruffy1]

13. Great post. This is why I am an organizer.

I have no deep seated philosophical underpinnings in non-violence, but unless we are organized on just principles we would just be maintaining the status quo. Eugene Debs once told an audience he wouldn't lead them to the promised land because anyone who could lead them in could lead them out. (No I didn't bother to find the exact quote in my library or web). It is in the act of organizing that we gain power and enfranchise workers. I have come to believe that it must be a continual process in order to keep the members involved.

[readmoreoften]

15. Agreed.

[socialist_n_TN]

16. Props to you Scruffy.............

I'm in awe of organizers. I just can't do it and I SO admire those who can.

[yurbud]

17. I was very involved in my union until very recently but was mystified why we never went on strike or

even threatened it.

The one local that did in the state made management fold in a couple of days and got just about everything they were asking for.

Unions seem to be on the defensive when they should be fighting for the survival of workers.