Quotations from Commissar Trotsky

(This is a work in progress - it is being modified over time to produce the best page possible)

On Strikes and Unions

"Only for its own purposes did the strike allow itself to break the vow of immobility. When it needed news bulletins of the revolution it opened a printing works; it used the telegraph to send out strike instructions; it let trains carrying strikers’ delegates pass.

Nothing else was exempt: the strike closed down industrial plants, chemists’ and grocers’ shops, courts of law, everything.

From time to time its attention wearied and its vigilance slackened, now here, now there. Sometimes a reckless train would break through the strike barrier: then the strike would set off in pursuit of it. The guilty train, like a criminal on the run, raced through dark and empty stations, unannounced by the telegraph, leaving a wake of fear and uncertainty behind it. But in the end the strike would catch up with the train, stop the engine, immobilize the driver, let off the steam.

It used every possible means. It appealed, convinced, implored; it begged on its knees—that is what a woman orator did at the Kursky Station in Moscow—it threatened, terrorized, threw stones, finally fired off its Brownings. It wanted to achieve its aim at whatever cost. It staked too much: the blood of fathers, the bread of children, the reputation of its own strength. An entire class obeyed it; and when a negligible fraction of that class, corrupted by the very forces it was fighting, stood in its path, it is scarcely surprising that the strike roughly kicked the obstacle aside."

 ~Chapter 7 of 1905 (1907)

" (a) Trade unions do not offer, and in line with their task, composition. and manner of recruiting membership, cannot offer a finished revolutionary program; in consequence, they cannot replace the party. The building of national revolutionary parties as sections of the Fourth International is the central task of the transitional epoch. 

(b) Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 20 to 25 per cent of the working class, and at that, predominantly the more skilled and better paid layers. The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labor movement. During such moments it is necessary to create organizations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets. 

(c) As organizations expressive of the top layers of the proletariat, trade unions, as witnessed by all past historical experience, including the fresh experience of the anarcho-syndicalist unions in Spain, developed powerful tendencies toward compromise with the bourgeois-democratic regime. In periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the trade unions aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless. This is already occurring during the period of simple strikes, especially in the case of the mass sit-down strikes which shake the principle of bourgeois property. In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers. 

Therefore, the sections of the Fourth International should always strive not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and resolutely in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine functionaries and careerists, but also to create in all possible instances independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the tasks of mass struggle against bourgeois society; and, if necessary, not flinching even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions"

 ~Transitional Program (1938)

"It is necessary to adapt ourselves to the concrete conditions existing in the trade unions of every given country in order to mobilize the masses not only against the bourgeoisie but also against the totalitarian regime within the trade unions themselves and against the leaders enforcing this regime. The primary slogan for this struggle is: complete and unconditional independence of the trade unions in relation to the capitalist state. This means a struggle to turn the trade unions into the organs of the broad exploited masses and not the organs of a labor aristocracy."

 ~Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay (1940) 

"The general strike is only a mobilization of the proletariat and its setting up against its enemy, the State; but that the strike in itself cannot produce the solution of the problem, because it exhausts the forces of the proletariat sooner than those of its enemies, and this, sooner or later, forces the workers to return to the factories. The general strike acquires a decisive importance only as a preliminary to a conflict between the proletariat and the armed forces of the opposition – i.e., to the open revolutionary rising of the workers. Only by breaking the will of the armies thrown against it can the revolutionary class solve the problem of power – the root problem of every revolution. The general strike produces the mobilization of both sides, and gives the first serious estimate of the powers of resistance of the counterrevolution." 

~Terrorism and Communism (1920)

"In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defense. It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defense, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms.

A new upsurge of the mass movement should serve not only to increase the number of these units but also to unite them according to neighborhoods, cities, regions. It is necessary to give organized expression to the valid hatred of the workers toward scabs and bands of gangsters and fascists. It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organizations, meetings and press.

Only with the help of such systematic, persistent, indefatigable, courageous agitational and organizational work always on the basis of the experience of the masses themselves, is it possible to root out from their consciousness the traditions of submissiveness and passivity; to train detachments of heroic fighters capable of setting an example to all toilers; to inflict a series of tactical defeats upon the armed thugs of counterrevolution; to raise the self-confidence of the exploited and oppressed; to compromise Fascism in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie and pave the road for the conquest of power by the proletariat.

Engels defined the state as “bodies of armed men.” The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle for liberation. When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and the means to arming. In this field, also, leadership falls naturally to the sections of the Fourth International."

~Transitional Program (1938)

Bureaucratism

"Bureaucratism is not a fortuitous feature of certain provincial organizations, but a general phenomenon. It does not travel from the district to the central organization through the medium of the regional organization, but much rather from the central organization to the district through the medium of the regional organization. It is not at all a survival of the war period; it is the result of the transference to the party of the methods and the administrative manners accumulated during these last years."

~The New Course (1923)

"In playing the role of party leader and being absorbed by the questions of administration, the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party. For the communist masses, it brings to the forefront purely bookish, pedagogical methods of participating in political life: elementary political training courses, examinations of the knowledge of its members, party schools, etc. Thence the bureaucratism of the apparatus, its cliquism, its exclusive internal life, in a word, all the traits that constitute the profoundly negative side of the old course."

~The New Course (1923)

"Those comrades who assert most flatly, with the greatest insistence and sometimes most brutally, that every difference of opinion, every grouping of opinion, however temporary, is an expression of the interests of classes opposed to the proletariat, do not want to apply this criterion to bureaucratism."

~The New Course (1923)

"Mechanical centralism is necessarily complemented by factionalism, which is at once a malicious caricature of democracy and a potential political danger."

~Letter to Party Meetings (1923)

"Freedom from control inevitably entails abuse of office, including pecuniary malfeasance."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"The Soviet bureaucracy is like all ruling classes in that it is ready to shut its eyes to the crudest mistakes of its leaders in the sphere of general politics, provided in return they show an unconditional fidelity in the defense of its privileges."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

On Marxist Philosophy

"The essence of Marxism consists in this, that it approaches society concretely, as a subject for objective research, and analyzes human history as one would a colossal laboratory record. Marxism appraises ideology as a subordinate integral element of the material social structure. Marxism examines the class structure of society as a historically conditioned form of the development of the productive forces; Marxism deduces from the productive forces of society the inter-relations between human society and surrounding nature, and these, in turn are determined at each historical stage by man’s technology, his instruments and weapons, his capacities and methods for struggle with nature. Precisely this objective approach arms Marxism with the insuperable power of historical foresight."

~Dialectical Materialism and Science (1925)

"If it is possible to place a given person’s general type of thought on the basis of his relation to concrete practical problems, it is also possible to predict approximately, knowing his general type of thought, how a given individual will approach one or another practical question. That is the incomparable educational value of the dialectical method of thought."

~A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party (1939)

"Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality."

~The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (1939)

"The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism."

 ~The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (1939)

"We must give a scientific explanation of society, and clearly explain it to the masses. That is the difference between Marxism and reformism."

~Discussions on the Transitional Program (1938)*

"Such categories as ‘commodity’, ‘money’, ‘wages’, ‘capital’, ‘profit’, ‘tax’, and the like are only semi-mystical reflections in men’s heads of the various aspects of a process of economy which they do not understand and which is not under their control. To decipher them, a thoroughgoing scientific analysis is indispensable."

~Marxism in Our Time (1939)

"It was not Marx’s aim to discover the ‘eternal laws’ of economy. He denied the existence of such laws. The history of the development of human society is the history of the succession of various systems of economy, each operating in accordance with its own laws. ... In his Capital, Marx does not study economy in general, but capitalist economy, which has its own specific laws. Only in passing does he refer to the other economic systems to elucidate the characteristics of capitalism."

~Marxism in Our Time (1939)

"Just as the operation of the laws of physiology yields different results in a growing than in a dying organism, so the laws of Marxist economy assert themselves differently in a developing and disintegrating capitalism."

~Marxism in Our Time (1939)

"Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects. In the elaboration of baring-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are considered as being equal. (‘A’ is equal to ‘A’). When the tolerance is exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings become inferior or completely worthless.

Our scientific thinking is only a part of our general practice including techniques. For concepts there also exits “tolerance” which is established not by formal logic issuing from the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’, but by the dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing. 'Common sense' is characterised by the fact that it systematically exceeds dialectical 'tolerance'."

~The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (1939)

"In a word, if in the pacific and "organic" period (before the war) one could still live on the revenue from a few readymade abstractions, in our time each new event forcefully brings home the most important law of the dialectic: The truth is always concrete." 

~Bonapartism and Fascism (1934)

"The democratic regime is the most aristocratic way of ruling. It is possible only to a rich nation."

~Discussions on the Transitional Program (1938) 

On Revolution

"Just as a blacksmith cannot seize the red hot iron in his naked hand, so the proletariat cannot directly seize the power; it has to have an organisation accommodated to this task. The co-ordination of the mass insurrection with the conspiracy, the subordination of the conspiracy to the insurrection, the organisation of the insurrection through the conspiracy, constitutes that complex and responsible department of revolutionary politics which Marx and Engels called 'the art of insurrection.' It presupposes a correct general leadership of the masses, a flexible orientation in changing conditions, a thought-out plan of attack, cautiousness in technical preparation, and a daring blow."

~History of the Russian Revolution, Chpter 30 (1930)

"Entirely exceptional conditions, independent of the will of persons and parties, are necessary in order to tear off from discontent the fetters of conservatism, and bring the masses to insurrection. The swift changes of mass views and moods in an epoch of revolution thus derive, not from the flexibility and mobility of man’s mind, but just the opposite, from its deep conservatism."

 ~~The History of the Russian Revolution, Preface (1930)

"Eclectics live by means of episodic thoughts and improvisations that originate under the impact of events. Marxist cadres capable of leading the proletarian revolution are trained only by the continual and successive working out of problems and disputes."

~What Next for the German Revolution? (1932)

"A revolution is 'made' directly by a minority."

~Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt (1938)

"Nothing is more dangerous in politics, especially in a critical period, than to repeat general formulas without examining their social content."

~Whither France? (1934)

"'Guerrillaism' was the military expression of the peasant background of the revolution."

~Preface to the Military Writings (1923)

"Arguments to the effect that all violence, including revolutionary violence, is evil and that Communists therefore ought not to engage in 'glorification' of armed struggle and the revolutionary army, amount to a philosophy worthy of Quakers and the old maids of the Salvation Army. Permitting such propaganda in a Communist Party is like permitting Tolstoyan propaganda in the garrison of a besieged fortress."

~Introduction to the Military Writings (1923)

"The decisive condition for the seizure of power is the decomposition of the enemy army. This decomposition is achieved not by mechanical destruction but by political work among the soldiers. Engels wrote that when one-third to two-fifths of the soldiers are socialist, the military machine ceases to function. The revolution does not conquer the army by force, but wins it over through political work in the barracks. The soldiers must be convinced that the workers’ government will give them land, peace, and freedom. The officers must be isolated. The rank-and-file must be organized into committees. Only then does the army become an instrument of the revolution instead of the bourgeoisie."

~Military Writings (1923)

"At the present time, according to this paper, it is inadmissible to advance a slogan which is only opportune “in a full revolutionary crisis”. It is dangerous to load your rifle, says the “too-prudent” hunter so long as the game remains invisible. But when the game puts in an appearance it is a little too late to load the rifle. Do the strategists of l’Humanité really think that in “the full revolutionary crisis” they will be able without any preparation to mobilize and arm the proletariat? To secure a large quantity of arms, one needs a certain quantity on hand. One needs military cadres. One needs the invincible desire of the masses to secure arms. One needs uninterrupted preparatory work not only in the gymnasiums but in indissoluble connection with the daily struggle of the masses. This means:

It is necessary immediately to build the militia and at the same time to carry on propaganda for the general armament of the revolutionary workers and peasants."

 ~Whither France? (1934)

"But if the actual conquest of the apparatus of society depended on the previous coming over of the intelligentsia to the party of the European proletariat, then the prospects of collectivism would be wretched indeed – because, as we have endeavoured to show above, the coming over of the intelligentsia to Social Democracy within the framework of the bourgeois régime is getting, contrary to all Max Adler’s expectations, less and less possible as time goes by." 

~The Intelligentsia and Socialism (1910)

On Permanent Revolution

"With regard to countries with a belated bourgeois development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks of achieving democracy and national emancipation is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses."

~Theory of Permanent Revolution (1931)

"The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and, very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution."

~Theory of Permanent Revolution (1931)

"The utopian hopes of the epoch of military communism came in later for a cruel, and in many respects just, criticism. The theoretical mistake of the ruling party remains inexplicable, however, only if you leave out of account the fact that all calculations at that time were based on the hope of an early victory of the revolution in the West."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable."

~Theory of Permanent Revolution (1931)

"Just as liberalism was national, so socialism is international. Starting from the worldwide division of labour, the task of socialism is to carry the international exchange of goods and services to its highest development."

~The History of the Russian Revolution (1930)

"Itself born of the contradictions between his world productive forces and capitalist forms of property, the October revolution produced in its turn a contradiction between low national productive forces and socialist forms of property."

 ~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

On Planning

"If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace – a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions – such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan. The bureaucracy often imagines that just such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market and of Soviet democracy."

~The Art of Planning (1932)*

"The politicians of reformism, these dexterous wirepullers, artful intriguers and careerists, expert parliamentary and ministerial maneuvrists, are no sooner thrown out of their habitual sphere by the course of events, no sooner placed face to face with momentous contingencies, than they reveal themselves to be utter and complete fools."

~What Next for the German Revolution? (1932)*

"And as to prices, they will serve the cause of socialism better, the more honestly they begin to express the real economic relations of the present day."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic command – although, to be sure, at triple the normal cost. But the farther you go, the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the gray label of indifference. Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

The Party

"If the leaders seek only to preserve themselves, that is what they become; preserves – dried preserves." 

 ~Some Questions on American Problems (1940) 

"The tradition of a revolutionary party is built not on evasions but on critical clarity."

 ~The Lessons of October (1924)

"The progressive stage of rationalism is repeated in every great emancipatory movement. But rationalism (abstract propagandism) becomes a reactionary factor the moment it is directed against the dialectic." 

~Sectarianism, Centrism and the Fourth International (1935) 

"The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave."

~What Next for the German Revolution? (1932)

"The Jesuits represented a militant organization, strictly centralized, aggressive, and dangerous not only to enemies but also to allies. In his psychology and method of action the Jesuit of the heroic period distinguished himself from an average priest as the warrior of a church from its shopkeeper. We have no reason to idealize either one or the other. But it is altogether unworthy to look upon a fanatic warrior with the eyes of an obtuse and slothful shopkeeper. ... Opportunists are peaceful shopkeepers in socialist ideas while Bolsheviks are its inveterate warriors."

~Their Morals and Ours (1938)

"The petty-bourgeois moralist is the younger brother of the bourgeois pacifist who want to ‘humanize’ warfare by prohibiting the use of poison gases, the bombardment of unfortified cities, etc. Politically, such programs serve only to deflect the thoughts of the people from revolution as the only method of putting an end to war."

~Moralists and Sycophants Against Marxism (1939)

"On the 3rd of April Lenin arrived in Petrograd from abroad. Only from that moment does the Bolshevik Party begin to speak out loud, and, what is more important, with its own voice."

~History of the Russian Revolution, Chapter 15 (1930)

"A revolutionary conception without a revolutionary will is like a watch with a broken spring."

~History of the Russian Revolution, Chapter 15 (1930)

"But the events have proved that without a party capable of directing the proletarian revolution, the revolution itself is rendered impossible."

~The Lessons of October (1924)

"The most mature revolutionary situation without a revolutionary party of due stature and without correct leadership is the same as a knife without a blade."

~Where is Britain Going? (1926)

"The struggle for power must begin with the fundamental idea that if opposition to further aggravation of the situation of the masses under capitalism is still possible, no real improvement of their situation is conceivable without a revolutionary invasion of the right of capitalist property."

~Whither France? (1934)

"War has in fact often expedited revolution. But precisely for this reason it has often led to abortive results. War sharpens social contradictions and mass discontent. But that is insufficient for the triumph of the proletarian revolution. Without a revolutionary party rooted in the masses, the revolutionary situation leads to the most cruel defeats."

~Case of Leon Trotsky (1937)

"The centrists employ lies to cloak their vacillations, their uncertainty, their capitulation and their adventures. They do not trust themselves and therefore do not trust their readers. They are of the opinion that the worker can be led only if he is blindfolded and pulled by the hand. Such is the spirit of the official press of the Comintern nowadays. It has no faith in the workers. It exercises guardianship over them, as if they were little children. When they ask awkward questions, it sternly shakes its finger at them. Precisely this engenders apathy in the ranks of the party and the growing vacuum around it.

The mass of workers does not at all consist of infants. It consists of people with the harsh experience of life. It does not tolerate nursemaids, whose strictness is as a rule directly proportional to their stupidity. The worker seeks not commands but assistance in political orientation. For this it is first of all necessary to tell him what is. Not to distort, not to tendentiously select, not to embellish, not to sugarcoat, but honestly say what is. The politics of Communism stands only to gain from a truthful clarification of reality. Untruth is needed for salvaging false reputations, but not for the education of the masses. The workers need the truth as an instrument of revolutionary action."

~An Open Letter to "La Verité" (1929)

On the Fourth International

"The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.

The Fourth International does not discard the program of the old 'minimal' demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, 'minimal' demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism - and this occurs at each step-the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old 'minimal program' is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution."

"All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership." 

~Transitional Program (1938)

Marxism

"Marxism sets out from the development of technique as the fundamental spring of progress, and constructs the communist program upon the dynamic of the productive forces."

The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"The first chapter of the Manifesto opens with the following words: 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.' This postulate, the most important conclusion drawn from the materialist interpretation of history, immediately became an issue in the class struggle."

~90 Years of "The Communist Manifesto" (1937)

"Marxism is above all a method of analysis—not analysis of texts, but analysis of social relations."

~ Results and Prospects (1906) 

"Marxism considers itself the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process."

 ~ My Life (1930)

Petty Bourgeoisie

"Basing themselves on the example of 'industrial revolution' in England, the authors of the Manifesto pictured far too unilaterally the process of liquidation of the intermediate classes, as a wholesale proletarianization of crafts, petty trades, and peasantry. In point of fact, the elemental forces of competition have far from completed this simultaneously progressive and barbarous work. Capitalism has ruined the petty bourgeoisie at a much faster rate than it has proletarianized it. Furthermore, the bourgeois state has long directed its conscious policy toward the artificial maintenance of petty-bourgeois strata. At the opposite pole, the growth of technology and the rationalization of largescale industry engenders chronic unemployment and obstructs the proletarianization of the petty bourgeoisie. Concurrently, the development of capitalism has accelerated in the extreme the growth of legions of technicians, administrators, commercial employees, in short, the so-called 'new middle class.' In consequence, the intermediate classes, to whose disappearance the Manifesto so categorically refers, comprise even in a country as highly industrialized as Germany about half of the population. However, the artificial preservation of antiquated petty-bourgeois strata in no way mitigates the social contradictions, but, on the contrary, invests them with a special malignancy, and together with the permanent army of the unemployed constitutes the most malevolent expression of the decay of capitalism."

~Ninety Years of the Communist Manifesto

"But a worker who has gone through the school of the class struggle gains from his own experience an inclination toward dialectical thinking. Even if unaware of this term, he readily accepts the method itself and its conclusions. With a petty bourgeois it is worse. There are of course petty-bourgeois elements organically linked with the workers, who go over to the proletarian point of view without an internal revolution. But these constitute an insignificant minority. The matter is quite different with the academically trained petty bourgeoisie. Their theoretical prejudices have already been given finished form at the school bench. Inasmuch as they succeeded in gaining a great deal of knowledge both useful and useless without the aid of the dialectic, they believe that they can continue excellently through life without it. In reality they dispense with the dialectic only to the extent they fail to check, to polish, and to sharpen theoretically their tools of thought, and to the extent that they fail to break practically from the narrow circle of their daily relationships. When thrown against great events they are easily lost and relapse again into petty-bourgeois ways of thinking."

~A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party (1939)

"Too many students. Not enough workers. The students are too preoccupied with themselves, and not enough with the movement."

~Trotsky (1934)

"The intelligentsia are an entire class – Adler calls them an inter-class group, but essentially there is no difference – existing within the framework of bourgeois society."

"A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles – and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become."

~The Intelligentsia and Socialism (1910)

"The propagandists and journalists of the Fourth International must begin a new chapter in their own consciousness. It is necessary to re-arm. It is necessary to make an about-face on one’s own axis: to turn one’s back to the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and to face toward the workers."

~From a Scratch – To the Danger of Gangrene (1940)

The Youth

"Every revolutionary party finds its chief support in the younger generation of the rising class. Political decay expresses itself in a loss of ability to attract the youth under one’s banner. The parties of bourgeois democracy, in withdrawing one after another from the scene, are compelled to turn over the young either to revolution or fascism. Bolshevism when underground was always a party of young workers. The Mensheviks relied upon the more respectable skilled upper stratum of the working class, always prided themselves on it, and looked down upon the Bolsheviks. Subsequent events harshly showed them their mistake. At the decisive moment the youth carried with them the more mature stratum and even the old folks." 

~The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"The Fourth International pays particular attention to the young generation of the proletariat. All of its policies strive to inspire the youth with belief in its own strength and in the future. Only the fresh enthusiasm and aggressive spirit of the youth can guarantee the preliminary successes in the struggle; only these successes can return the best elements of the older generation to the road of revolution. Thus it was thus it will be. 

Opportunist organizations by their very nature concentrate their chief attention on the top layers of the working class and therefore ignore both the youth and the women workers. The decay of capitalism, however, deals its heaviest blows to the woman as a wage earner and as a housewife. The sections of the Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited layers of the working class..."

~Transitional Program (1938)

"Down with the bureaucracy and careerism! Open the road to the youth! Turn to the woman worker!

~Transitional Program (1938) 

"It seems to me that the youth is guided a bit too firmly; that they do not feel their independence and their right not only to obey, but also to make their own errors and stupidities, not leaving this prerogative to us older ones." 

 ~For an Independent Youth Movement (1938)

"It is my opinion that in the various directing bodies of the youth, national as well as local, there should not be more than one-third party members. These comrades should impose party decisions not by arithmetical predominance, but by discussion and conviction. We will never have a good youth movement if we deprive it of the possibility of independent development." 

 ~For an Independent Youth Movement (1938)

 Internationalism

"Bolshevism saw its historic mission in the abolition of national borders in the name of the Soviet United States of Europe and of the world." 

~The Kremlin in World Politics (July 1939)

"Neither in India, nor in England is it possible to build an independent socialist society. Both of them will have to enter as parts into a higher whole. Upon this and only upon this rests the unshakable foundation of Marxist internationalism."

~Two Conceptions Of Socialism (March 1930) 

"Linking up countries and continents that stand on different levels of development into a system of mutual dependence and antagonism, leveling out the various stages of their development and at the same time immediately enhancing the differences between them, and ruthlessly counterposing one country to another, world economy has become a mighty reality which holds sway over the economic life of individual countries and continents. This basic fact alone invests the idea of a world communist party with a supreme reality."

 ~The Third International After Lenin (1928)

"But decadent fascist nationalism, preparing volcanic explosions and grandiose clashes in the world arena, bears nothing except ruin. All our experiences on this score during the last 25 or 30 years will seem only an idyllic overture compared to the music of hell that is impending. And this time it is not a temporary economic decline which is involved but complete economic devastation and the destruction of an entire culture in the event that toiling and thinking humanity proves [in]capable of grasping in time the reins of its own productive forces and of organizing those forces correctly on a European and a world scale." 

~Nationalism and Economic Life (1934)

"...[Y]ou cannot possibly hold the view that the revolutionary principles which are good for the whole world are no good for [a particular country], or vice versa."

 ~An Open Letter [to the Italian Left Communists] (1930)

On the United Front and Fascism

"The social democracy asserts that Fascism is the product of communism. This is correct in so far as there would have been no necessity at all in Fascism without the sharpening of the class struggle, without the revolutionary proletariat, without the crisis of capitalist society. The flunkeyish theory of Wels-Hilferding-Otto Bauer has no other meaning. Yes, Fascism is a reaction of bourgeois society to the threat of proletarian revolution."

~Bonapartism in Germany (1932) 

"The situation is revolutionary, as revolutionary as it can be, granted the non-revolutionary policies of the working-class parties. More exactly, the situation is pre-revolutionary. In order to bring the situation to its full maturity, there must be an immediate, vigorous, unremitting mobilization of the masses, under the slogan of the conquest of power in the name of socialism. This is the only way through which the pre-revolutionary situation will be changed into a revolutionary situation."

~Whither France? (1934)

"Both theoretical analysis as well as the rich historical experience of the last quarter of a century have demonstrated with equal force that fascism is each time the final link of a specific political cycle composed of the following: the gravest crisis of capitalist society; the growth of the radicalization of the working class; the growth of sympathy toward the working class, and a yearning for change on the part of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie; the extreme confusion of the big bourgeoisie; its cowardly and treacherous maneuvers aimed at avoiding the revolutionary climax; the exhaustion of the proletariat; growing confusion and indifference; the aggravation of the social crisis; the despair of the petty bourgeoisie, its yearning for change; the collective neurosis of the petty bourgeoisie, its readiness to believe in miracles, its readiness for violent measures; the growth of hostility towards the proletariat, which has deceived its expectations. These are the premises for a swift formation of a fascist party and its victory."

 ~Bonapartism, Fascism and War (1940)

"But, woe, if the revolutionary party does not measure up to the height of the situation! The daily struggle of the proletariat sharpens the instability of bourgeois society. The strikes and the political disturbances aggravated the economic situation of the country. The petty bourgeoisie could reconcile itself temporarily to the growing privations, if it arrived by experience at the conviction that the proletariat is in a position to lead it onto a new road. But if the revolutionary party, in spite of a class struggle becoming incessantly more accentuated, proves time and again to be incapable of uniting the working class about it, if it vacillates, becomes confused, contradicts itself, then the petty bourgeoisie loses patience and begins to look upon the revolutionary workers as those responsible for its own misery. All the bourgeois parties, including the social democracy, turn its thoughts in this very direction. When the social crisis takes on an intolerable acuteness, a particular party appears on the scene with the direct aim of agitating the petty bourgeoisie to a white heat and of directing its hatred and its despair against the proletariat."

~Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (1932) 

"To say to the Social Democratic workers: “Cast your leaders aside and join our ‘non-party’ united front” means to add just one more hollow phrase to a thousand others. We must understand how to tear the workers away from their leaders in reality. But reality today is the struggle against fascism. ... The overwhelming majority of the Social Democratic workers will fight against the fascists, but – for the present at least – only together with their organizations. This stage cannot be skipped."

~For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism (1931)

"When a state turns fascist, it doesn’t only mean that the forms and methods of government are changed in accordance with the patterns set by Mussolini – the changes in this sphere ultimately play a minor role – but it means, primarily and above all, that the workers’ organizations are annihilated; that the proletariat is reduced to an amorphous state; and that a system of administration is created which penetrates deeply into the masses and which serves to frustrate the independent crystallization of the proletariat. Therein precisely is the gist of fascism."

~What Next for the German Revolution? (1932)

"The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is, the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex and a contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at different times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions, or utilizes those already existing, in order to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it remains split politically. The problem of the united front – which arises during certain periods most sharply originates therein. The historical interests of the proletariat find their expression in the Communist Party – when its policies are correct. The task of the Communist Party consists in winning over the majority of the proletariat; and only thus is the socialist revolution made possible. The Communist Party cannot fulfill its mission except by preserving, completely and unconditionally, its political and organizational independence apart from all other parties and organizations within and without the working class."

~Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)

"Ultimatism is an attempt to rape the working class after failing to convince it."

~Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)*

"The stubborn, doltish, and insensate rejection by the Communist Party of the policies of the united front provides the Social Democracy, under the present conditions, with its most important political weapon."

~Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)*

"All talk to the effect that we should accept a united front with the masses but not with the leaders is sheer scholasticism. This is like saying that we agree to conduct strikes against the capitalists but refuse to enter into negotiations with them. It is impossible to lead strike struggles without entering at a certain moment into negotiations with the capitalists or their plenipotentiaries. It is just as impossible to summon the organized masses to a united struggle without entering into negotiations with those whom a particular section of the mass has made its plenipotentiaries."

~First Five Years of the Communist International (1924)

"The Fascists find their human material mainly in the petty bourgeoisie. The latter has been entirely ruined by big capital. There is no way out for it in the present social order, but it knows of no other."

~Whither France? (1934)

On the Chinese Revolution

"It is one thing when a Communist party, firmly resting on the flower of the urban proletariat, strives through the workers to lead a peasant war. It is an altogether different thing when a few thousand or even tens of thousands of revolutionists, who are truly Communists or only take the name, assume the leadership of a peasant war without having serious support from the proletariat. This is precisely the situation in China."

~Problems of the Chinese Revolution (1932) 

"It would further be profound naivete to believe that an abyss lies between the so-called comprador bourgeoisie, that is, the economic and political agency of foreign capital in China, and the so-called national bourgeoisie. No, these two sections stand incomparably closer to each other than the bourgeoisie and the masses of workers and peasants"

"It is a gross mistake to think that imperialism mechanically welds together all the classes of China from without."

~The Chinese Revolution and the Theses of Comrade Stalin (1927)

On Art and Literature

"Art must make its own way and by its own means. The Marxian methods are not the same as the artistic. The party leads the proletariat but not the historic processes of history."

~Communist Policy Toward Art (1923)

"Such terms as 'proletarian literature' and 'proletarian culture' are dangerous, because they erroneously compress the Culture of the future into the narrow limits of the present day. They falsify perspectives, they violate proportions, they distort standards and they cultivate the arrogance of small circles which is most dangerous."

~Literature and Revolution (1924)

"The ancient philosopher said that strife is the father of all things. No new values can be created where a free conflict of ideas is impossible. To be sure, a revolutionary dictatorship means by its very essence strict limitations of freedom. But for that very reason epochs of revolution have never been directly favorable to cultural creation: they have only cleared the arena for it. The dictatorship of the proletariat opens a wider scope to human genius the more it ceases to be a dictatorship. The socialist culture will flourish only in proportion to the dying away of the state."

~Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"Generally speaking, art is an expression of man’s need for an harmonious and complete life, that is to say, his need for those major benefits of which a society of classes has deprived him. That is why a protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work. Every new tendency in art has begun with rebellion."

~Art and Politics in Our Epoch (1938)

Problems of Everyday Life

"In addition to such social contrasts—obtuse bestiality and the highest revolutionary idealism—we often witness psychological contrasts in the same mind. A man is a sound communist devoted to the cause, but women are for him just “females,” not to be taken seriously in any way. Or it happens that an otherwise reliable communist, when discussing nationalistic matters, starts talking hopelessly reactionary stuff. To account for that we must remember that different parts of the human consciousness do not change and develop simultaneously and on parallellines. There is a certain economy in the process. Human psychology is very conservative by nature, and the change due to the demands and the push of life affects in the first place those parts of the mind which are directly concerned in the case."

 ~The Struggle for Cultured Speech (1923)

"Our Soviet bureaucratic machine is unique, complex, containing as it does the traditions of different epochs together with the germs of future relationships. With us, civility, as a general rule, does not exist. But of rudeness, inherited from the past, we have as much as you please." 

~Civility and Politeness as a Necessary Lubricant in Daily Relations (1923)

"There are two big facts which have set a new stamp on working class life. The one is the advent of the eight-hour working day; the other, the prohibition of the sale of vodka."

~Vodka, the Church and the Cinema (1923)

"The workers’ state must become wealthier in order that it may be possible seriously to tackle the public education of children and the releasing of the family from the burden of the kitchen and the laundry. Socialization of family housekeeping and public education of children are unthinkable without a marked improvement in our economics as a whole. We need more socialist economic forms. Only under such conditions can we free the family from the functions and cares that now oppress and disintegrate it. Washing must be done by a public laundry, catering by a public restaurant, sewing by a public workshop. Children must be educated by good public teachers who have a real vocation for the work. Then the bond between husband and wife would be freed from everything external and accidental, and the one would cease to absorb the life of the other. Genuine equality would at last be established."

~Vodka, the Church and the Cinema (1923)

"A certain advance towards the new family is possible even now. It is true that the state cannot as yet undertake either the education of children or the establishment of public kitchens that would be an improvement on the family kitchen, or the establishment of public laundries where the clothes would not be torn or stolen. But this does not mean that the more enterprising and progressive families cannot group themselves even now into collective house keeping units. Experiments of this kind must, of course, be made carefully."

~Vodka, the Church and the Cinema (1923)

"The proletariat has made a big stride, but more in politics than in life and morals. Life is conservative. In its primitive aspect, of course, Rasteryaev Street [referring to a book by Uspensky] no longer exists. The brutal treatment accorded to apprentices, the servility practiced before employers, the vicious drunkenness, and the street hooliganism have vanished. But in the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, in the domestic life of the family, fenced off from the whole world, Rasteryaevism is still firmly implanted. We need years and decades of economic growth and culture to banish Rasteryaevism from its last refuge – individual and family life – recreating it from top to bottom in the spirit of collectivism."

~Habit and Custom (1923)

"Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people."

~The Struggle for Cultured Speech (1923)

"The husband, torn away from his usual surroundings by mobilization, changed into a revolutionary citizen at the civic front. A momentous change. His outlook is wider, his spiritual aspirations higher and of a more complicated order. He is a different man. And then he returns to find everything there practically unchanged. The old harmony and understanding with the people at home in family relationship is gone. No new understanding arises. The mutual wondering changes into mutual discontent, then into ill will. The family is broken up."

~From the Old Family to the New (1923)

"The workers state has rejected church ceremony, and informed its citizens that they have the right to be born, to marry, and to die without the mysterious gestures and exhortations of persons clad in cassocks, gowns, and other ecclesiastical vestments. But custom finds it harder to discard ceremony than the state."

~The Family and Ceremony (1923)

"The dictatorship will have to become softer and milder as the economic welfare of the country is raised. The present method of commanding human beings will give way to one of disposing over things. The road leads not to the robot but to man of a higher order."

~Family Relations Under the Soviets (1932)*

"These gentlemen have, it seems, completely forgotten that socialism was to remove the cause which impels woman to abortion, and not force her into the “joys of motherhood.” with the help of a foul police interference in what is to every woman the most intimate sphere of life."

~Thermidor in the Family—from Revolution Betrayed (1936)

"The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity houses, creches, kindergartens, school and hospitals, sanatoria, athletic organisations, film theatres, etc.

The complete absorption of the housekeeping functions of the family by institutions of the socialist society, uniting all generations in solidarity and mutual aid, was to bring women, and thereby to the loving couple, a real liberation from the thousand-year-old fetters."

~Trotsky, Thermidor in the Family—from Revolution Betrayed (1936)