- Capitalism and Alternatives -
Sincereity and other points....
Posted by: Lark on December 02, 1999 at 11:10:15:
In Reply to: An answer for the Cold War hysterics posted by Stoller on December 02, 1999 at 00:19:32:
Right barry I've been up a lot of last night reading 'revolution betrayed' and 'State and Revolution' my thoughts are:-Trotsky ordered the murder of the Kronstadt sailors, yet decided to ally himself with them following Stalins takeover which is real hypocritical, was he prior to this shift a 'Ceasarist'?
-Trotsky did say that he was impressed by the english imperialist idea of 'right or wrong my nation' and that it should be grafted on to socialism as 'right or wrong my party', now that is hardly consistant with his new found anti-state, anti-dictator sentiments in 'Revolution Betrayed' (by this stage I'm getting the impression that he was either totally inconsistant and incapable of formulating theories that wherent grounded in his own experience)
- Lenin's 'state and revolution' was written in a specific context aswell, it isnt in tune with 'Can the Bolsheviks maintain power' or any of the other leader centric rants that he wrote so he's very like Trotsky in this respect.
- Why is it so important to defend the reputations etc. of these people when they where so obviously human and prone to error? Error that ended in a brutal, horrorific regime but error none the less (I'm being generous here who is to say the authoritarian, if your not with us your probably dead notion wasnt popular with them)
- Trotsky's criticisms in the 'revolution betrayed' are but a palid analysis of statism, Machavelli's accounts in 'The Prince' or 'The Discourses' are much better and Gransci's 'The Modern Prince' and 'Prison notebooks' give good modern accounts, that is not to even mention the host of anarchist or libertarian socialist literature on the subject.
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