Product Description
The propertied classes have always laid the charge of "terrorism" on those leading the struggle against exploitation and oppression. But it has been the terror of the capitalist rulers against which an outraged majority eventually rises. Trotsky explains why the working class is the only social force capable of leading the toiling majority in overthrowing the capitalist exploiters and beginning the construction of a new society and why individual terrorism--whatever its intention--relegates the workers to the role of spectators and opens the workers movement to provocation and victimization.

Also available in: Farsi ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A good case for the left opposition
Title is misleading.Trotsky tries to point out how the state reacts to individual terrorism (political assasinations).His condemnation of terrorism by both the state and those who call themselves from the left is a wonderful reader.

Their hypocrisy on terrorism
Most people are concerned with finding eternal truths. Certainly preservation of the only form of intelligent life we know of is a noble aim, in other words the survival of our species. Yet something horrible happened in human history about six thousand years ago, and we became "a house divided against ourselves." And as long as society remains unjust, rebels who fight for freedom and equality will be defending ourselves against slanders of violence. Real revolutionaries abhor and denounce indiscriminant terrorism, because it is both immoral and counterproductive. September 11, 2001, was a classic case in point. Even though the choice of targets laid bare the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as monuments to ruthless avarice and violence, such acts do nothing whatsoever to unite or mobilize the exploited in their own liberation. But they DO however immediately mobilize the exploiters to deepen oppression and violence: Kabul was bombed that same night, and both Afghanistan and Iraq were devastated by wars, and the White House frantically scours for its next target. Trotsky denounced the grotesque hypocrisy of those who sermonize pacifism to the exploited while managing to not notice that the wealthy employ us to kill each other to protect their ownership of resources and manufacturing. Consider this book as a companion to Trotsky's pamphlet, Marxism and Terrorism, with a cogent explanation on why individual terrorism relegates workers to the role of spectators while opening their movement to provocation and victimization.

Howto fight oppression and dictatorship
This collection of articles by Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky is an important contribution to the discussion on how to fight against an inhumane and brutal ruling order. It discusses the social roots of terrorism, and argues strongly that it is an obstacle to developing the organized leadership necessary for millions of toilers to take destiny in their own hands and transform society for the good of all humanity. Trotsky bases his observations on the long history of terror in Czarist Russia, and counterposes it to the successful mass revolutionary struggle led by the Bolsheviks that did topple the Czarist regime, established a workers and peasants government and overthrow capitalism.

This pamphlet also includes two articles from the 1930s. One explains why Trotsky and other revolutionary opponents of the Stalinist dictatorship that developed in the Soviet Union did not resort to terror. Another discusses Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish youth who assassinated a Nazi official in Paris in 1938.Trotsky identifies with the emotions that led to Grynzspan�s act and calls for workers protests to stop the French government from executing him. But he argues �to all those capable of self-sacrifice in the struggle against despotism and bestiality: Seek another road! Not the lone revolutionary avenger but only a great revolutionary mass movement can free the oppressed.�

Other valuable writings by Trotsky on this question include:�How the Workers in Austria Should Fight Hitler,� �Individual Terror and Mass Terror,� and �A Revolutionary, not a Terrorist� all from Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1935-36. See also, Their Morals and Ours and History of the Russian Revolution, by Trotsky, and The Changing Face of U.S. Politics, by Jack Barnes.

The bankruptcy of terrorism
... This collection of essays by one of the leading revolutionaries of the 20th century provides a much-needed critical perspective on terrorism.Not from a moralizing point of view, but to show that by relying on individual �heroic� acts of violence like assassinations of government leaders, terrorist tactics ignore and devalue the masses of people as the most important agent of their own liberation.Though his examples are drawn from Hapsburg Austria, Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany, when you read his words, you can easily see the relevance to liberation struggles taking place today from Palestine to Ireland to the Philippines.I especially like the way that Trotsky sympathizes with the hatred of the gross injustice that breeds terrorism, but at the same time explains that individual terrorist tactics are doomed to fail.

Terrorist Of The World:Yankee Empire
In this pamphlet Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky explains that the real sources of terror and violence in the world are the superrich and their governments : the market system and the police and military violence that back it up at home and overseas.When we go on strike or demonstrate for our rights,they [ will ] call the working people and youth "terrorists".Sound like the future? We will need to mobilize in our masses and eventually take action to defend ourselves including against fascist terror.Those who engage in frustrated acts of terror on behalf or workers and farmers or the oppressedanywhere( NOT !) only give the capitalists an excuse to use more violence (e.g.WTC bombing->war in Mideast).To end all terror and violence requires a revolution to overthrow the system , he contends.Must reading in these days...
While Amazon may describe this book as not available from time to time, it is always available from the Pathfinder z store listed under new and used at the top of this page.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (9)

There's nothing like being there!
If you're looking for a light read, Trotsky's History of Russian Revolution is not the way to go by any means. But, despite its length, and despite the enormity of its topic, this is an amazingly accessible and engrossing account of one of the modern world's most important political and historical events, written by one of its main players. There are certainly some parts that are more difficult than others, and some where clearly Trotsky assumes an understanding of what happened in Russia during 1917 - an expectation of his readers that would have been utterly reasonable for the audience he was writing for, at the time he was writing, but which at times can be a bit confusing for a Westerner reading it almost 100 years later.But this is only occasionally frustrating and there is, in any event, a very helpful set of appendices and glossaris at the back that help you know who's who and what's what. It is, undoubtedly in my view, well worth the effort that it will take you to get through it. I don't think any other history of the revolution is as detailed, as comprehensive, and as engaging as this. There are times when it really has you on the edge of your seat - and that, no doubt, is largely because it is written by someone who was actually there.

Max Eastman, who was a friend of Trotsky, gives us a translation that feels tremendously fresh and was enthusiastically endorsed by Trotsky himself.

THE ABC'S OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be `objective'. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. Furthermore, in Trotsky's case there is nothing like having a central actor in that drama, who can also write brilliantly and wittily, give his interpretation of the important events and undercurrents swirling around Russia in 1917. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr's History of the Russian Revolution offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920's. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution. For a more journalistic account John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable. Trotsky covers some of this material as well. However, if additionally, you want to get a feel for the molecular process of the Russian Revolution in its ebbs and flows down at the base in the masses where the revolution was made Trotsky's is the book for you.

The life of Leon Trotsky is intimately intertwined with the rise and decline of the Russian Revolution in the first part of the 20th century. As a young man, like an extraordinary number of talented Russian youth, he entered the revolutionary struggle against Czarism in the late 1890's. Shortly thereafter he embraced what became a lifelong devotion to a Marxist political perspective. However, except for the period of the 1905 Revolution when Trotsky was chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and later in 1912 when he tried to unite all the Russian Social Democratic forces in an ill-fated unity conference, which goes down in history as the `August Bloc', he was essentially a free lancer in the international socialist movement. At that time Trotsky saw the Bolsheviks as "sectarians" as it was not clear to him at that time that for socialist revolution to be successful the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement had to be organizationally split. With the coming of World War I Trotsky drew closer to Bolshevik positions but did not actually join the party until the summer of 1917 when he entered the Central Committee after the fusion of his organization, the Inter-District Organization, and the Bolsheviks. This act represented an important and decisive switch in his understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary workers party to lead the revolution.

As Trotsky himself noted, although he was a late comer to the concept of a Bolshevik Party that delay only instilled in him a greater understanding of the need for a vanguard revolutionary workers party to lead the revolutionary struggles. This understanding underscored his political analysis throughout the rest of his career as a Soviet official and as the leader of the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution. After his defeat at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen Trotsky wrote these three volumes in exile in Turkey from 1930 to 1932. At that time Trotsky was not only trying to draw the lessons of the Revolution from an historian's perspective but to teach new cadre the necessary lessons of that struggle as he tried first reform the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International and then later, after that position became politically untenable , to form a new, revolutionary Fourth International. Trotsky was still fighting from this perspective in defense of the gains of the Russian Revolution when a Stalinist agent cut him down. Thus, without doubt, beyond a keen historian's eye for detail and antidote, Trotsky's political insights developed over long experience give his volumes an invaluable added dimension not found in other sources on the Russian Revolution.

As a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power the so-called Russian Question was the central question for world politics throughout most of the 20th century. That central question ended practically with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. However, there are still lessons, not all negative, to be learned from the experience of the Russian Revolution. Today, an understanding of this experience is the task for the natural audience for this book, the young alienated radicals of Western society.

The central preoccupation of Trotsky's volumes reviewed here and of his later political career concerns the problem of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement and its national components. That problem can be stated as the gap between the already existing objective conditions necessary for beginning socialist construction based on the current level of capitalist development and the immaturity or lack of revolutionary leadership to overthrow the old order. From the European Revolutions of 1848 on, not excepting the heroic Paris Commune, until his time the only successful working class revolution had been in led by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Why? Anarchists may look back to the Paris Commune or forward to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for solace but the plain fact is that absent a revolutionary party those struggles were defeated without establishing the prerequisites for socialism. History has indicated that a revolutionary party that has assimilated the lessons of the past and is rooted in the working class allied with and leading the plebian masses in its wake is the only way to bring the socialist program to fruition. That hard truth shines through Trotsky's three volumes. Unfortunately, this is still the central problem confronting the international labor movement today. Read this book many times.

One of the best books ever written about revolution
In spite of its length, I've read this book several times. It isn't just a widely acclaimed historic and literary masterpiece, written by a leading participant in the events he describes. It isn't just vividly written and thoroughly researched.

More importantly, it's one of the best books ever written about revolution, as relevant today as ever.

The most important conclusion that emerges is the crucial role of a revolutionary party with an overwhelmingly working class membership, leadership and political orientation: a party that has trained itself in the many years of partial struggles that precede a revolutionary crisis; studied together the lessons of past revolutionary struggles throughout the world; and done everything possible to educate broader layers of workers in those lessons.

(The point is illustrated both positively and negatively. More than once, Lenin had to turn to the Bolshevik's working class rank and file against wavering intellectuals in the party leadership.)

Please don't be put off by the first chapter, the driest and most difficult in the book. The basic idea is that capitalism arrived late in Russia, imported from abroad in the form of huge factories, which laid the basis for the rapid development of a strong, militant labor movement. As a result, the emerging capitalist class was reluctant to mobilize the masses against the feudal nobles and landlords that stood in their way, for fear that the aroused workers might turn on the capitalists themselves.

Under the impact of war and economic crisis, the resulting mixture of different forms of class oppression exploded in a combined revolt of workers, farmers, and oppressed nationalities, destroying both feudalism and capitalism by the time it was through.

Several postcripts:

(1) If you're wondering what went wrong in the Soviet Union after such a promising start, I recommend "The Revolution Betrayed" by Trotsky; also "Lenin's Final Fight" by Lenin.

(2) I disagree with Trotsky's assessment of the pre-1917 differences between himself and Lenin concerning the role of working farmers, the relationship between democratic (anti-feudal) revolution and socialist revolution, and Lenin's formula, "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry". I think Trotsky's discussion of this is confusing. I recommend "Their Trotsky and Ours" by Jack Barnes. There is also a good debate in "Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution" by Doug Jenness, Ernest Mandel, and V.I. Lenin.

(3) Another reviewer pointed out that this book is available online. However, the printed version has glossaries of people, places, organizations and unfamiliar terms; a more complete chronology; and a thorough index. I relied very heavily on all of these, so much so that I used color-coded post-its to turn to them easily. Also, parts of the online version are full of obvious typos; books from Pathfinder Press are proofread very thoroughly.

(4) Finally, I recommend the ads in the back of the book. Pathfinder Press is defined by a political goal, not commercial success. It aims to provide a platform for revolutionary leaders speaking in their own words. If you like one book, you will probably like others.

How to overthrow the profit system
This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read.It tells the amazing story of the Russian revolution of 1917, from the overthrow of the Czar to the Bolshevik Revolution of October.What makes it an incredible read is that the author, Leon Trotsky, was at the middle of it all, as one of the central planners of the insurrection that took power. Trotsky was a great revolutionary and great writer. But one thing I especially like about the book is that Trotsky uses excerpts from many other accounts, including those who hated him with a passion, to tell the story accurately.It is an inspiring story, especially for new generations of young people, workers and farmers who need to learn about an example showing that the dog-eat-dog system of capitalism we live in can be overthrown.For the definitive account of how this great revolution was later derailed, see Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed.

Facinating!
This book provides a very unique perspective into the Russian Revolution. Written by Leon Trotsky himself, it is an excellent way to get first hand information on the events of the revolution. Furthermore, it is very interesting to read how a leader of the revolution viewed the event after several years. Trotsky is an excellent writer, and his book is very detailed. My one warning is that if you don't know much about the Russian Revolution to begin with you may get somewhat confused because of the great amount of detail in this book.

Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is written in the third person - just as a historian would write it - not in a first person narrative. After reading the book for a while, I sometimes even forget that it was written by Trotsky. Then, when some bizarre interpretation appears, I think - "What is this? Who wrote this book?" only to realize that, obviously, the book is written by Trotsky and would naturally be biased!

Even if you don't read the entire book, just reading some of the passages can give you a very facinating perspective into the revolution. After all, Trotsky was one of the most important leaders during the revolution. It is not often that a revolutionary leader has time to record the events he lived through. Luckily for us, Trotsky did write an account of the Russian Revolution, an event that has clearly had immense influence on world history! So, I would totally recommend this book - read it, and see what Trotsky himself has to say! ... Read more

Product Description
A highly original and controversial examination of events in Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1927 in which Professor Day challenges both the standard Trotskyite and Stalinist interpretations of the period. At the same time he rejects the traditional emphasis on Trotsky's concept of Permanent Revolution and argues that a Marxist theorist is essential. Professor Day concentrates upon the economic implications of revolutionary Russia's isolation from Europe. How to build socialism - in a backward, war-ravaged society, without aid from the West: this problem lay behind many of the most important political conflicts of Soviet Russia's formative years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Against cliché.
This monograph offers much that is more than questionable, but since Trotsky as a political figure is generally dealt with by means of ideological cliché ("failed Stalin", "militarizer", and so on) one has to acknowledge that Day has instead dealt with him as a real political leader concerned with concrete issues, and not as a bogey. ... Read more

Product Description
Writing in the heat of struggle against the rise of fascism in Germany, France, and Spain in the 1930s, communist leader Leon Trotsky examines the class origins and character of fascist movements. Building on foundations laid by the Communist International in Lenin's time, Trotsky advances a working-class strategy to combat and defeat this malignant danger. (pamphlet)

Also available in: French ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Look Elsewhere, Comrades.
Not a book but a pamphlet;

Not a an argument but excerpts;

Not worth your time but for the introduction to the man's thoughts.


While snipping out some interesting parts of Trotsky's writings, I would not recommend this specific work unless it was passed on to you.I plan on finding his _Struggle Against Fascism in Germany_ or a more complete edition of works to supplement this reading.

A brief account of what fascism is, where it comes from, and what to do about it
A brief collection of some of Trotsky's important letters and articles regarding fascism, this pamphlet offers a brief introduction to the nature of fascism, the conditions that give rise to it, and the strategy of resisting it through a "united front." Based on his observations of the growth of National Socialism (i.e. fascism) in Italy, Germany, Spain, and France, Trotsky concludes that fascism is a mass movement based primarily in petite bourgeoisie and backed by the big capitalist powers. Trotsky identifies a twofold set of conditions that allowed fascism to take hold in Europe: 1) the disorientation and desperation (primarily among the petite bourgeoisie) brought on by the abrupt end of capitalism's growth phase and 2) the absence or failure of a genuinely revolutionary workers' party that offers both the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie the hope of escape from the grasp of the bourgeoisie. Accordingly, Trotsky assigns a fair proportion of the blame for the rise of fascism in Europe to the leaders of the Communist parties, the Comintern, and the leaders of the social democratic parties who betrayed the workers' revolutions in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Trotsky links fascism to the reactionary backlash that followed these aborted revolutions, and counterpoises against the notion of the Communist Party as a form of revolutionary hope the notion of fascism, as a mass movement, as a form of revolutionary despair.

In light of the social foundation upon which fascism rests, Trotsky emphasizes the need for a united front led by a revolutionary proletarian party (as the vanguard of the proletarian class) against fascism. In order for the proletariat to inspire confidence among the petite bourgeoisie, however, the revolutionary movement must first possess confidence in itself. This means that the party must be lead by genuine revolutionaries from the working class who possess the commitment and the strategic capacity to build on and encourage the workers' revolutionary initiative. Trotsky also points up the need for solidarity and for the workers to defend themselves against violence from the fascist. Given the level of violence that workers face, he proposes the development of workers' militias and then systematically dismantles the most common oppositions offered to such a proposal. The final sections of the pamphlet discuss the situation in the United States at the time, and Trotsky warns that the same conditions that gave rise to fascism in Europe have already appeared in nascent form in the US. While his prediction of the length of time that the "war economy" could be used to forestall the radicalization of the working classes proved overly optimistic (Trotsky predicted that this delay could not be of "long duration," whereas the capitalist powers in the US have managed to maintain the military economy since the build-up to World War 2), the severe crisis which capitalism has recently entered into, coupled with the rise of the "Tea Party Patriots," the mainstream media's glorification of "Minutemen" vigilante mobs along the US-Mexican border, the vitriolic backlash against even the slightest measures to alleviate the poverty of the working class, the growth of Christian fundamentalism and the demonization of Muslims, and the absence of an independent workers' party, let alone a revolutionary party, all combine to create conditions similar to those described by Trotsky as the grounds from which a fascist movement grows. As Trotsky observes, the most effective way to counter these trends is to build the revolutionary party.

As Promised
Product was in excellent condition and received well within the time limits, would definitely but from this vendor again.

Fascism: yesterday and today
Is fascism some type of irrational mass hysteria?Leon Trotsky argues no.The rise to power of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco was a result of the regular workings of the capitalist system and the failure of the workers and farmers of their countries to wage an effective fight to replace it.Trotsky, a leader of the Russian revolution who was exiled, and later murdered by Joseph Stalin, denounces the failure of both the class-collaborationist Social Democracy and the sectarian and corrupt Communist Party to rise to the task.
Trotsky de-mystifies the hold that fascist ideology gained over masses of desperate middle-class elements in these countries, and the decisive support given to these movements by the biggest capitalists of their time.And he demonstrates how fascism can be fought by an effective revolutionary leadership, and how the continuing rule of capital will inevitably create similar fascist menaces as long as it exists.

Written for the battleground
Trotsky collected the materials in this pamphlet and had them published under this title in the 1930s when the struggle with Fascism was raging around the world. There is a great modern introduction, and footnotes to make the current reader familiar.This was not written for academics, historians, or critics, but as a tool for workers to fight Fascism in the streets, in the plants, and in battle. This tool we need now. Too many people are disoriented by the idea that Fascism is some strange product of history. Trotsky shows what is becoming all too obvious in so many countries today, that Fascism is a permanent threat as long as capitalists and workers struggle.

While Amazon may say this book is not available from time to time, it is always available from Pathfinder's Amazon z-shop which you can reach by clicking on new and used at the time of this web page. ... Read more

Product Description
Autobiographical account by a leader of the October 1917 Russian revolution, the Soviet Red Army, and the battle initiated by Lenin against the Stalinist bureaucracy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Leaves you wihing you were there!
My Life is a fascinating book. I was most attracted to the style in which Trotsky took responsibity for his mistakes. He didn't try to blame others for what happened at Kronstadt. My Life is a wonderful show of a great and bizarre life. Since the McCarthy era, it has become fashionable to slander revolutionaries or look for "Physcological" motives. My Life is written from a bias, but it certainly has none of taint of an author who tries to discredit someone smarter than them. My Life also show Trotsky as a complete person- bound by unbreakable ties to an idea. My Life is written as many different things- half autobiography and half history of the revolution. The only thing I found bad about My Life is how absorbed it is in its time. My Life is entertaining and readable, and includes some rather funny incidents- like Trotsky naming his socks after Soviet leaders. The only fault is that My Life requires a basic understanding of events to be fully understood. For instance, if you haven't the foggiest what permenant revolution is, you may need to find out. My Life is idea-based, and challenges readers to discover those ideas- and then to do something about them. Buy the book-it is worth a $1,000

The Making of a Revolutionary
Today we expect ourpolitical memoir writers to take part in a game of show and tell about the most intimate details of their private personal lives on their road to celebrity. Refreshingly, you will find no such tantalizing details in Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's memoir written in 1930 just after Stalin had exiled him to Turkey. Instead you will find a thoughtful political self-examination by a man trying to draw the lessons of his fall from power in order to set his future political agenda. This task is in accord with his stated conception of his role as an individual agent at service in the historical struggle toward a socialist future. Thus, underlying the selection of events highlighted in the memoir such as the rise of the revolutionary wave in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastation to the socialist program of World War I and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution especially after Lenin's death and the failure of the German Revolution of 1923 is a sense of urgency about the need for continued struggle for a socialist future. It also provides a platform as well for polemics against those foes and former supporters who have either abandoned or betrayed that struggle.

At the beginning of the 21st century when socialist political programs are in decline it is hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the revolutionary political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky notes this element was lacking, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Trotsky using his own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds.As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20thcentury to friend and foe alike.Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes. While one would not want to be on the receiving end of his rapier tongue neither does he generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents.Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.

Politics drives this brilliant autobiography

This is many books in one. A fine autobiography from a literary point of view, a historical document with brilliant insights into the time period and major players, and, most important, a rich and sustained polemic in favor of a life of commitment to revolutionary, working class politics. Trotsky dedicated his later life to keeping alive the continuity of Lenin and the Russian Revolution, and what a fascinating, courageous life it was, full of prison, exile, escape, insurrection, and more exile. Trotsky was an inspiring man of action, one of two or three figures who matter most to the working class. The politics of the working class struggle for total human emancipation is the piston that drives both the man and his autobiography.If not available from Amazon, booksfrompathfinder will have it. Click on "New and Used" near the top of the page.

Life is Beautiful when you fight to change the world!
The phrase "Life is Beautiful" in the Italian film came from Leon Trotkys's last testament. It was written in exile in Mexico.At the time Trotsky's friends, family, and comrades were being harassed, slandered and murdered by Stalin, when he himself faced imminent assasination. He also faced death from the growing illnesses that had slowed him. Yet, in his testament he proclaimed that life is beautiful. Life must be cleansed of the evil and garbage Capitalism and Stalinism have left to this world.

Read this book and you will see how Trotsky's life became valuable for him because he decided to fight oppression, decided to learn about the world to fight, and never stopped fighting. Maybe your life can be beautiful if you read this book, and decide to fight like Trotsky did.

The introduction by the late Joseph Hansen Trotsky's secretary in Mexico is worth the price of the book. Joe explains how the household and work center in Mexico functioned, about how Trotsky valued hard work, but also valued celebrating comrades birthdays, hobbies like raising rabbits, trips to sites of Mexican history. Reading this also tells you how Joe organized the staff at World Outlook/ Intercontinental Press, working with him was one of the great privileges of my life.

In these pages and memoirs of Trotsky by Joe, George Novack, Farrell Dobbs, and other comrades who knew Trotskty, you could find how serious Trotsky enjoyed and embraced life. In Turkey if he wanted to go fishing, he went to sea with Turkish fishers in their trawlers. If he wanted to raise rabbits as a hobby, he soon was taking care of something bordered on a commercial rabbit farm.Both in valuing work--chained to his desk was the term Trotsky passed down--and valuing parties and celebrations of new people coming onto the staff and leaving, Trotsky made his life beautiful.

Read this book, valued as much as a literary work as a political statement, and learn how you can make your life beautiful.

Against mystification.
When I decided to write this review, I had to choose between the various reasons why it's so beautiful and important. But, above all, I think that, in a world where the necessity of Marxist was supposedly to be more deeply felt than ever, what repels most people that would be liable to lend an ear to it is the repelling Stalinist mythology of the revolutionary as the relentless, ruthless, single-minded, google-eyed fanatical. Trotsky, on the contrary begins by assessing that, although his life was out of the ordinary, he neverthless remained a men with a penchant for a well-ordered ordinary life; that he found pleasure in seeing a well-ordered table or a well-kept fence; that he didn't becomne a revolutionary out of a feeling of opression, but because of being faced with a life that, although prosperous, offered him nothing but grey drudgery and no opprtunity for individual achievement; that he, like all revolutionaries, was a man like any other. I think that would be reason enough to commend this modern classic to the reader of today, outside from the wonderful style, the importance of the events narrated and so much else. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

The Making of a Revolutionary
Today we expect political memoir writers to take part in a game of show and tell about the most intimate details of their private personal lives on their road to celebrity. Refreshingly, you will find no such tantalizing details in Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky's memoir written in 1930 just after Stalin had exiled him to Turkey. Instead you will find a thoughtful political self-examination by a man trying to draw the lessons of his fall from power in order to set his future political agenda. This task is in accord with his stated conception of his role as an individual agent at service in the historical struggle toward a socialist future. Thus, underlying the selection of events highlighted in the memoir such as the rise of the revolutionary wave in Russia in 1905 and 1917, the devastation to the socialist program of World War I and the degeneration of the Russian Revolution especially after Lenin's death and the failure of the German Revolution of 1923 is a sense of urgency about the need for continued struggle for a socialist future. It also provides a platform as well for polemics against those foes and former supporters who have either abandoned or betrayed that struggle.

At the beginning of the 21st century when socialist political programs are in decline it is hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky notes this element was lacking, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Trotsky using his own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions.

Many of the events such as the disputes within the Russian revolutionary movement, the attempts by the Western Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks in the Civil War after their seizure of power and the struggle of the various tendencies inside the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International discussed in the book may not be familiar to today's audience. Nevertheless one can still learn something from the strength of Trotsky's commitment to his cause and the fight to preserve his personal and political integrity against overwhelming odds.As the organizer of the October Revolution, creator of the Red Army in the Civil War, orator, writer and fighter Trotsky he was one of the most feared men of the early 20thcentury to friend and foe alike.Nevertheless, I do not believe that he took his personal fall from power as a world historic tragedy. Moreover, he does not gloss over his political mistakes.Nordoes he generally do personal injustice to his various political opponents although I would not want to have been subject to his rapier wit and pen.Politicians, revolutionary or otherwise, in our times should take note.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Must Reading for Artists and Activists
With razor-sharp insight and wit, Trotsky points to the necessity for art to exist free from political and social agendas, as well as from the shackles, the stereotypes, the dark ignorance of reactionary class rule. These are not at all contradictory goals. Trotsky declares boldly in these articles that artistic truth must be based not on any particular literary school or dogma but on "the immutable faith of the artist in his own inner self." In this collection Trotsky debates Stalinists, appreciates Tolstoy, Essenin, Gorky, and Jack London, and slam-dunks Winston Churchill's pretentious writings. Must reading for activists who seek to advance their understanding of the arts as well as for writers and artists seeking to understand how their work relates to society. If not available from Amazon, booksfrompathfinder will have it--click on "new and used" near the top of the page.

Real Marxism and Art
This is a marvelous book which brings out the deep humanistic sensibility that lay at the heart of one of the twentieth century's great socialist revolutionaries.Trotsky's writings show that Marxism is far from being a sterile set of formulas which relegate art, literature, music, love, and our emotional lives to the sidelines, in favor ofeconomics.No, the book shows that Marxist ideas are so powerful because they can illuminate the complex connections between economic structures and the varied human creativity expressed in all forms of art.It also takes a strong stand against censorship and for freedom, not only in capitalist societies, but in post-capitalist ones, such as the Soviet Union, where Stalinists had made a mockery of artistic freedom in the name of socialism.These ideas are illustarted by a fascinating set of writings, including literary reviews, correspondence with artists like Andre Breton and analysis of the challenges facing artists and writers in the Soviet Union.

A real Marxist talks about real culture
Throw out all the misconceptions that you have drawn from Stalinism the worst antiMarxism there is, about Marxists and culture.This is the real deal.This collection gives the real Marxist view of culture, particularly in the major excerpts of Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, a book edited by Lenin. Culture cannot be judged simply as propaganda, but as an organic expression of society, of humans struggling to depict reality. Culture needs freedom. This book contains not only works from the 20s, but works from the 1930s when Trotsky joined with Diego Rivera, the great Mexican muralist, and Andre Breton, the master of surrealism, in a revolutionary defense of modern culture against Stalinist and capitalism. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Over 50 years old and still great!
This book written decades ago is still alive ,fresh, and vibrant. One can't be a serious critic without reading it. It's funny how that 'old time Marxism/ Trotskyism' is still terribly RELEVANT.

The Struggle for Revolutionary Culture
Trotsky once wrote that of the three great tragedies in life- hunger, sex and death- revolutionary Marxism, which was the driving force behind his life and work, mainly concerned itself with the struggle against hunger. That observation contains an essential truth about the central thrust of the Marxist tradition. However, as Trotsky demonstrates here, Marxist methodology cannot and should not be reduced to an analysis of and prescription for that single struggle. Here Trotsky takes on an aspect of the struggle for mass cultural development.

In a healthy post-capitalist society mass cultural development would be greatly expanded and encouraged. If the task of socialism were merely to vastly expand economic equality, in a sense, it would be a relativity simple task for a healthy socialist society in concert with other like-minded societies to provide general economic equality with a little tweaking after vanquishing the capitalism mode of production. What Marxism aims for, and Trotsky defends here, is a prospect that with the end of class society and economic and social injustice the capacity of individual human beings to reach new heights of intellectual and creative development should flourish. That is the thought that underpins Trotsky's work here as he analyzes various trends in Russian literature in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. In short, Marxism is certainly not a method to be followed in order to write great literature but it does allow one to set that literature in its social context and interrelatedness.

You will find no Deconstructionist or other fashionable literary criticism here. Quite the contrary. Here Trotsky uses his finely tuned skill as a Marxist to great effect as he analyzes the various trends of literature as they were affected (or not affected) by the October Revolution and sniffs out what in false in some of the literary trends. Mainly, at the time of writing, the jury was still out about the prospects of many of these trends. He analyzes many of the trends that became important later in the century in world literature, like futurismconstructivism, and others- some of which have disappeared and some of which still survive.

The most important and lasting polemic which Trotsky raised here, however, was the fight against the proponents of `proletarian culture'. The argument put forth by this trend maintained that since the Soviet Union was a workers state those who wrote about working class themes or were workers themselves should, in the interest of cultural development, be given special status and encouragement (read: a monopoly on the literary front).Trotsky makes short shrift of this argument by noting that, in theory at least as its turned out, the proletarian state was only a transitional state and therefore no lasting `proletarian culture' would have time to develop. Although history did not turn out to prove Trotsky correct the polemic is still relevant to any theory of mass cultural development.


One of the results of the publication of this book is that many intellectuals, particularly Western intellectuals, based some of their sympathy for Trotsky, the man and fallen hero on his literary analysis and his ability to write. This was particularly true during the 1930's here in America where those who were anti-Stalinist but were repelled by the vacuity of the Socialist Party were drawn to him. A few, like James T. Farrell (Studs Lonigan trilogy), did this mostly honorably. Most, like Dwight MacDonald and Sidney Hooks, etc. did not and simply used that temporary sympathy as a way station on their way to anti-Communism. Such is the nature of the political struggle.

A note for the politically- inclined who read this book. Trotsky wrote this book in 1923-24 at the time of Lenin's death and later while the struggle for succession by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev was in full swing. While Trotsky did not recognize it until later (nor did others, for that matter) this period represented the close of the rising tide of the revolution. Hereafter, the people who ruled the Soviet Union, the purposes for which they ruled and the manner in which they ruled changed dramatically. In short, Thermidor in the classical French revolutionary expression was victorious. Given his political position why the hell was Trotsky writing a book on literary trends in post-revolutionary society at that time?

One of the most important books of the 20th Century
This is simply one of the most important books of the 20th Century. Trotsky wrote this book at the request of Lenin who edited it. They saw fighting against those who wanted to impose a so-called "proletarian" culture as the official culture of the Soviet Union, as a threat to a real Marxist understanding of culture. Judging culture by its explicit politics, rather than by its expression of human life, Trotsky explains, is as far from Marxism as you can get. Trotsky explains that even some of the most reactionary minded writers have create some of the most stirringly real and vibrant literature, how to road to real socialism will come by giving working people full and free access to the best and the worst of the literature and art that capitalism has produced.No one who reads this book will think that the garbage that passed for cultural theory in the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors or under Mao and his successors has anything to do with socialism or Marxism ... Read more

Product Description
Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher's magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

a sweeping, penetrating masterpiece
This last of 3 volumes in Deutscher's biography caps an astonishing and captivating historiographical achievement. Deutscher weaves together character study, drama, and historical narrative to give an authoritative account of Trotsky's tragic final years, as the great leader waged a rearguard ideological struggle in the face of an avalanche of Stalinist harassment, slander, repression and murder. Simultaneously, Deutscher lays bare the blunders and disasters of the Communist International under Stalin's leadership, making clear how inexorably these failures followed from Stalin's deadened bureaucratic-centralistsocialism.

Deutscher's deft handling of the facts, personalities, ideas, and situations of the time is simply unparallelled, and makes for a tremendously enjoyable and informative read. His account of Trotsky's last hours left me in awed tears.

Essential material for anyone exploring the question of where socialism went wrong in the 20th century.

DEFEATED,BUT UNBOWED
THIS YEAR MARKS THE 66TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF LEON TROTSKY-ONE OF HISTORY'S GREAT REVOLUTIONARIES. IT IS THEREFORE FITTING TO REVIEW THE THREE VOLUME WORK OF HIS DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHER, THE PROPHET ARMED, THE PROPHET UNARMED, THE OUTCAST.

Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography of the great Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky although written over one half century ago remains the standard biography of the man. Although this writer disagrees , as I believe that Trotsky himself would have, about the appropriateness ofthetitle of prophet and its underlying premise that a tragic hero had fallen defeated in a worthy cause, the vast sum of work produced and researched makes up for those basically literary differences. Deutscher, himself, became in the end an adversary of Trotsky's politics around his differing interpretation ofthe historic role ofStalinism and the fate of the Fourth International but he makes those differences clear and in general theydoes not mar the work. I do not believe even with the eventual full opening of all the old Soviet-era files any future biographer will dramatically increase our knowledge about Trotsky and his revolutionary struggles. Moreover, as I have mentioned elsewhere in other reviews while he has not been historically fully vindicated he is in no need of any certificate of revolutionary good conduct.

At the beginning of the 21st century when the validity of socialist political programs as tools for change is in apparent decline or disregarded as utopian it may be hard to imagine the spirit that drove Trotsky to dedicate his whole life to the fight for a socialist society. However, at the beginning of the 20th century he represented only the one of the most consistent and audacious of a revolutionary generation of mainly Eastern Europeans and Russians who set out to change the history of the 20th century. It was as if the best and brightest of that generation were afraid, for better or worse, not to take part in the political struggles that would shape the modern world. As Trotsky noted elsewhere this element was missing, with the exceptions of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and precious few others, in the Western labor movement. Deutscher using Trotsky's own experiences tells the story of the creation of this revolutionary cadre with care and generally proper proportions. Here are some highlights militant leftists should think about.

On the face of it Trotsky's personal profile does not stand out as that of a born revolutionary. Born of a hard working, eventually prosperous Jewish farming family in the Ukraine (of all places) there is something anomalous about his eventual political occupation. Always a vociferous reader, good writer and top student under other circumstances he would have found easy success, as others did, in the bourgeois academy, if not in Russia then in Western Europe. But there is the rub; it was the intolerable and personally repellant political and cultural conditions of Czarist Russia in the late 19th century that eventually drove Trotsky to the revolutionary movement- first as a `ragtag' populist and then to his life long dedication to orthodox Marxism. As noted above, a glance at the biographies of Eastern European revolutionary leaders such as Lenin, Martov, Christian Rakovsky, Bukharin and others shows that Trotsky was hardly alone in his anger at the status quo. And the determination to something about it.

For those who argue, as many did in the New Left in the 1960's, that the most oppressed are the most revolutionary the lives of the Russian and Eastern European revolutionaries provide a cautionary note. The most oppressed, those most in need of the benefits of socialist revolution, are mainly wrapped up in the sheer struggle for survival and do not enter the political arena until late, if at all. Even a quick glance at the biographies of the secondary leadership of various revolutionary movements, actual revolutionary workers who formed the links to the working class , generally show skilled or semi-skilled workers striving to better themselves rather than the most downtrodden lumpenproletarian elements. The sailors of Kronstadt and the Putilov workers in Saint Petersburg come to mind. The point is that `the wild boys and girls' of the street do not lead revolutions; they simply do not have the staying power. On this point, militants can also take Trotsky's biography as a case study of what it takes to stay the course in the difficult struggle to create a new social order. While the Russian revolutionary movement, like the later New Left mentioned above,had more than its share of dropouts, especially after the failure of the 1905 revolution, it is notably how many stayed with the movement under much more difficult circumstances than we ever faced. For better or worst, and I think for the better, that is how revolutions are made.

Once Trotsky made the transition to Marxism he became embroiled in the struggles to create a unity Russian Social Democratic Party, a party of the whole class, or at least a party representing the historic interests of that class. This led him to participate in the famous Bolshevik/Menshevik struggle in 1903 which defined what the party would be, its program, its methods of work and who would qualify for membership. The shorthand for this fight can be stated as the battle between the `hards' (Bolsheviks, who stood for a party of professional revolutionaries) and the `softs' (Mensheviks, who stood for a looser conception of party membership) although those terms do not do full justice to these fights. Strangely, given his later attitudes, Trotsky stood with the `softs', the Mensheviks, in the initial fight in 1903. Although Trotskyalmost immediately afterward broke from that faction I do not believe that his position in the 1903fight contradicted the impulseshe exhibited throughout his career- personally `libertarian', for lack of a better word , and politically hard in the clutch.

Even a cursory glance at most of Trotsky's career indicates that it was not spent in organizational in-fighting, or at least not successfully. Trotsky stands out as the consummate free-lancer. More than one biographer has noted this condition, including his definitive biographer Isaac Deutscher. Let me make a couple of points to take the edge of this characterization though. In that 1903 fight mentioned above Trotsky did fight against Economism (the tendency to only fight over trade union issuesand not fight overtly political struggles against the Czarist regime) and he did fight against Bundism (the tendency for one group, in this case the Jewish workers, to set the political agenda for that particular group).Moreover, he most certainly favored a centralized organization. These were the key issues at that time. Furthermore, the controversial organizational question did not preclude the very strong notion that a `big tent' unitary party was necessary. The `big tent' German Social Democratic model held very strong sway among the Russian revolutionaries for a long time, including Lenin's Bolsheviks. The long and short of it was that Trotsky was not an organization man, per se. He knew how to organize revolutions, armies, Internationals, economies and so on when he needed to but on a day to day basis no. Thus, to compare or contrast him to Lenin and his very different successes is unfair. Both have an honorable place in the revolutionary movement; it is just a different place.

When Trotsky proved himself right.
This is perhaps the most "weak" part of the "Prophet" trilogy, in that Deutscher thought Trotsky's opposition to Stalin was, at the time it happened, useless, as Stalinism was the necessary mechanism of modernization that made a future fully-fledeged socialist society possible. Now, amid the smouldring ruins of Stalinism and with the former Soviet bloc reduced to a sorry parody of compradore capitalism of the Latin American style, one can be certain that, in the long run, Trotsky was right, after all, but then Deutscher puts his case so throughly that one can see precisely in what he was wrong and therefore how Trotsky managed to make so outstanding and unexpected a prevision as the final demise of Stalinism. Only that makes this book a necessary reading.

The Passion of Leon Trotsky
The last ten years of Trotaky's life was one of exile and assassination, an account worthy of the death of Jesus and Socrates.Mme Trotsky even remarked that her husband when mortally wounded look like Jesus taken down from the cross in an El Greco.

It remains to me still incomprehensible that so many Communists and supporters of Communism did not come to Trotsky's defense and aid, allowing that thug Stalin to persecute him, to destroy his followers in morale and in life, and finally to send an assassin to finish him off.Granted that Trotsky's position against Stalin and in favor of the Soviet Union was perhaps too sophisticated for most Communists to rally to, he was after all still the greatest Communist figure after Lenin and perhaps even including Lenin.

Trotsky would of course have been horrified to learn of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but had he led the Soviet Union after Lenin much might have been different and better for all concerned.He certainly was more right than Stalin about Hitler, about China, and about the dangers of extremist collectivization and industrialization, even though collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization were program he had initially advanced against the hesitations of Stalin.

In the end Bolshevism has in Trotsky its hero and prophet which nothing can really take away.

This reprint series, others have correctly noted, is marked by numerous typos and other errors.

Brian Wayne Wells, Esquire, reviews "The Prophet Outcast"
This is the final volume of Isaac Deutscher'sfamous three-volume biography of Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary.Deutscher's biography is the standard biography of Trotsky by which all other biographies of Trosky are measured.

Picking up the life of Trotsky from the time of his first exile from the Soviet Union in 1929, this book carries the story of the later portion of Trotsky's life all the way to his murder in Mexico in 1940.

Deutscher's writing is enticing and holds the interest of the reader.The book is also wonderfully indexed and serves as a guide to the voluminous writing of Leon Trosky during the last phase of his life. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume eleven of fourteen volumes covering the period of Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929 until his assassination at Stalin's orders in 1940. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Crucial Lessons for Fighting Fascism
This volume contains lessons crucial for those committed to the goal of emancipating working people and oppressed nations.

The workers movement of that time was misled by parties - social democratic and fake communist --which preferred imperialist "democracy" over workers revolution. This allowed fascism to triumph and, together with "democratic" imperialism, brought us the second world war which slaughtered tens of millions and included the U.S. - supposedly the most "democratic" imperialists - initiating the threat of human extinction with the nuclear bombing of Japan.

Trotsky explains how Lenin's program could have resulted in workers victories over capitalism all over Europe, as well as the overthrow of the murderous Stalin regime and the regeneration of the Soviet Union on a course of world revolution and workers democracy.

Studying Trotsky's writings today is timely as imperialism is again on the march toward fascism and war.

Crucial Lessons for Fighting Fascism
This volume contains lessons crucial for those committed to the goal of emancipating working people and oppressed nations.

The workers movement of that time was misled by parties - social democratic and fake communist --which preferred imperialist "democracy" over workers revolution. This allowed fascism to triumph and, together with "democratic" imperialism, brought us the second world war which slaughtered tens of millions and included the U.S. - supposedly the most "democratic" imperialists - initiating the threat of human extinction with the nuclear bombing of Japan.

Trotsky explains how Lenin's program could have resulted in workers victories over capitalism all over Europe, as well as the overthrow of the murderous Stalin regime and the regeneration of the Soviet Union on a course of world revolution and workers democracy.

Studying Trotsky's writings today is timely as imperialism is again on the march toward fascism and war.

Everything from Frida Kahlo to fighting fascism
You can see why Trotsky was reknown as a fiery public speaker -- he writes with passion, intelligence and friendly, human humour. These pieces written while living in Mexico, staying with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Correspondence with and about them included here, too. Articles on the eve of World War II, with fascism triumphant in Germany and Italy especially thought-provoking in light of recent developments in France with LePen's electoral showing. He scathingly makes the point in polemic with "our Palestinian friends" (gives you a feel for the international scope of the debate that was raging) that it is meaningless to talk about the fascist danger without addressing the danger of ordinary democratic imperialism. How else, he points out, to join the Indian masses in their quest for independence from the Mother of parliamentary democracy? Unexpectedly fun to browse through and think about.

Revolutionary writings on the eve of World War II
This is a powerful volume of political writings-- 100 articles and letters by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky written between September 1938 and July 1939.The Great Depression; the bitter competition between the American, German, British, French and Japanese empires and the resulting drive towards world war; fascism and how to fightit; colonial exploitation from Latin America to India and China; the reactionary degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the Stalin-Hitler pact--its all here in these writings.

Although exiled from the Soviet Union by Stalin and his henchmen, Trotsky worked tirelessly to rebuild the international working class movement along the lines charted by Marx and Engels and put in practice by Lenin and the early Bolshevik leadership. His writings here aim at arming and preparing militant youth and workers for decisive political struggles at this time of world crisis. They include material on the founding of the Fourth International and the challenges faced by its different national parties, trade union policies and struggles, the debate over individual terrorism, the need for a revolutionary youth organization and much more.

This is part of a 14-volume Writings of Leon Trotsky collection. Read this and you'll want the whole series!

addicting books
The Trotsky Writings books are addicting.The short pithy, wise articles, interviews, polemics, the illuminating and interesting notes, and the drama of Trotsky's struggle in exile are available on a week to week, month to month, year to year basis across from 1929 until 1940.Youend up reading the next article, and the next article, and you have to discipline yourself to put it down if you can. A constant feature is the continued interviews by newspapers, magazines, international press services from the US, Britain, and around the world, because even in exile, even these bourgeois forces knew that Trotsky was one man who could put together the trends in the world.As much as they teach us about history,these books teach us revolutionary answers toquestions we need to answer today: how to go from small revolutionary movements to a revolution like Trotsky and Lenin led in 1917, how to fight the middle class bureaucrats in the former Soviet Union and China, how to win workers, farmers, women and oppressed women. ... Read more

Product Description
This second volume of the trilogy is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin.

Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused as much controversy as the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on revolutionary conscience, yet there was a danger that his name would disappear from history. Originally published in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography was the first major publication to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine. In this definitive biography Trotsky emerges in his real stature, as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.

This second volume of the trilogy, first published in 1959, is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin. From the narrative of Trostsky's uncompromising opposition to Stalin's policies emerge character studies of the important Soviet leaders; a brilliant portrait of Trotsky the man of ideas, the Marxist philosopher and literary critic; and a new assessment of the causes of defeat which led to his expulsion from the party, his exile, and his banishment from Russia.

Customer Reviews (6)

A great begining for me to understand the Russian Revolution
Both whoTrostsky was and the nature of the Russian Revolution are hotly contested subjects. I very much like both Marx and the idea of a workers revolution. It seems to me the Capitalist economic system or any of the economic systems that preceeded it were very unfair and exploitative, and the main stream of world history never knew anything else, at least in the most significant ways. It is as simple that.

Also, what happened in America starting in 1776 was all about a recognition that every one should and must have rights for certain freedoms. These freedoms were addressed institutionally in very insightful ways in legal documents such as the Bill of Rights. However, other very profound human rights were also thouougly buried by the Ameican Revolution. The American revoution had less than nothing to say about any economic human rights. It may have taken firm measures against Monarchy and Aristocracy, but it savagely denied other fundamental human rights. For sure, our forefathers framed the rights of slave holders in our highest legal document, our Constitution, making certain that great numbers of our population would have no rights beyond being slave owners' property. In fact, the Constitution gave more power to slave holding states (the three-fifths provision, that made sure the slave holders wouldhave power greater than their numbers, and would be granted, by state apportionment, for Presidential and Congressional elections would have increased power, including institutional power for the slave states as oppressors, directly over the people they oppressed (Gary Wills wrote an excellent book on the subject, The Negro President is).Also the Revolution did less than nothing to challenge great invisible legal institutions that kept ordinary working classes of people, women, and the native Americans at the very bottom, in many ways just a little above the slaves. To illustrate this great invisable but deep rooted customary law, no womean voted in America until almost 90 years after the Constitution was adopted, but the Constitution had no actual restiction against women voting. Also, there was no federally recognized labor law where workers had even the right to elect their own union representatives until the year Franlin Roosevelt was elected President, and there was no national labor law providing that employers had to recognize these labor unions, their right to collective bargaining, or the right to stike. This was after FDR became President, and well sfter the Russian Revolution. No wonder that so many workers wanted a workers revolution, and no wonder Marx exhorted workers to 'Unite' and 'You have nothing to lose but your chains'

I am not saying that the American Revolution was worthless, as some do. It gave us some starting point to work from, and so many of the words of the Revolution either implied or spoke directly about great universal rights. It gave great number of Americans in the next 200 years good causes to fight for. Not everything was inspired by the American Revolution. Some of it was inspired by Marx and Engles, some of it by their followers, by Anarchists, and also by the Russian Revolutionaries.

Starting after the first third of the 19th Century, other Revolutionaries started writing about planning movements for deeper universal rights, and Marx was of great leaders and the Communist Manifesto and Das Capital among the great documents.If we are to think about Marxism being deeply flawed,as some peple write in these book reviews, the American Revolution was deeply flawed as well. It seems to me that the Communist Revolutionary thinkers were less flawed, or at least flawed in a different way.The Communist flaw was it was such a vast revolution and tyrants or people who were for seizing their own power were able to take it over. There is one other great event, in particular, the ones who were to be the Russian Revolutionaries opposed, World War I. People who believed in the International working class gaining their rights through International solidarity should oppose the wars of Capitalist Counties. They should not allow themselves to be payed against each other. Too many other socialists abandoned this completely.

I am sympathetic to the orignial October 1917 Revolution. It certainly was not perfect, and if you read this book, you will see the circumstances were catastrophic. There was a great war and then a great civil war, and economic conditions became catastrophic. Russia's Industry, for many years was no more than 20% of what it was before war (under the Czar) and none of the Capitalist countries would do anything for Communist Russia, except let the Russians starve. Trotsky, in 1923 or 1924 cleverly initiated the Rappallo Treaty with Germany, that helped Russia make economic gains and Germany to get around the Versailles Treaty and make some military gains. I would guess this is the origin of Stalin's big lie about Trotsky having alliance with the Nazis. It was in fact Trotsky and his following who fought for a popular front against the Nazis in the early 1930's, who alone among Communists fought for an alliance with reform scialist parties to keep keep the Nazis from coming to power.

Deutscher's three part biography of Trotsky tells the story of the Revolution and the Bolshevik leaders, Trotsky especially,very well. It tells the story of the working people's Revolution very well, and it gives an exceptional description of many of the leading actors. It also tells of Trotsky, who becomes the great Communist opponent of the the great tyranny that overtook the revolution. Trotsky is an outstanding leader in so many ways, a great intellectual,possesed of tremendous energy,and a man who respected the arts as a great human accomplishment, that has its own life, that revolutionaries should not command over or suppress. he was also the leader who doesn't have some of the manipulative leadership skills and who loses even though he is deeply respected by so many and therefore feared by others. However he loses without losing his character. At least in Deutscher's telling of the story, he is a heroic figure who understands what is happening, advises his followers not to surrender their their own convictions, never to falsely recant them to gain some sort of reinstatment. He is a prophet, against tryanny and totalitarianism. He is a prophet about former leaders who would later recant so much that they finally would be so reduced to confess to anything they are asked to, leading to their executions as traitors. He is all of this as well as a Communist Revolutionary to the end of his life. In this book and the earlier Deutscher book on Trotsky, we get good pictues of leaders like Lenin, Zinoviev and Bhukarin. These were certainly not perfect men, and the early Russian Revolution was not perfect. It was bloody, but there were also good intentions and strong leadership, but it was clear that Lenin, in many respects authoritarian, was never going to be a totalitarian. He was forever valuing different points of view and looking for leaders who could add to the dialog and could help work problems out. Trotsky, when he got together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, his former accusers, who had wanted to remove him from the Party when Stalin did not yet want to, to form the last major opposition, in 1926, based his oppostion on three major elements. He wanted to open up the country so that ordinary people could have the respect and right to independent input to policy. He wanted the broad Communist party and not the tens or hundreds of leaders at the top to be brought into the decision making process (he did not want the broad population just to be obedient, and certainly not to surrender their own convictions), and he wanted the Communist International to not serve Russia's national purposes but to work internationally,to help build and protect Communist parties around the world, and to have much of the decision making decentralized to serve actual international purposes, especially to keep foreign Communist parties from being sacrificed to treacherous non communist parties, such as what happened in China in 1927.

To give the reader an idea about the larger picure, and about Trotsky, there never can be real Socialism in one backwards country, especially one that is in horrible condition economically. It takes a great and powerful economy for everybody to have enough to have the sort of equality the socialism requires to exist. Otherwise you have all the inequalities that come with an impovershed country.Trotsky was for heavy industrial develpment and the public sector economy and against doing this with great violent purges. Stalin changed course and toward the oppositions ideas on the economy, but not how to do it, in a ruthless violent way. Bukharin got word out to the opposition that Stalin was tyrant who would murder them all, and Trotsky urged his followers to side with Bukharin first for what Bukharin at least for what Bukharin was appealing. By this time it was too late. It was established that Trosky, he would have not been the great murderous tyrant. It does not appear the others who were acting with him would have been either, but it was too late for all of them. What other than this seems to be true. if trotsky and his allies had succeeded, I suspect that theCapitalist rest of the world likely would have hated, feared and demonized him much more that it did the living Stalin because Trotsky was the real revolutionary. By supporting revolutinary activity in the industrialized capitalist countries, while he would have likely been the the precursor to Socialism with a human face, he would have certainly caused a much greater reaction from our part of the World.

I confess that so far have only read The first two of the books by Deutscher and Trotsky's own book, 'the Revolution betrayed', and I have much to read to know as much as I would like to.

One other thing, the binding on the newer paperback Deutscher books is terrible. I am fortunate someone is publishing it,but thepages fall out from the binding as you read them. The only partial protection is to protect pages you have read the by extending heavy outside flaps that can wrap around the sections you have read and can wrap aound the last part of the book, that also begins to fall apart before you read it. One other thing: I also have some doubt of the source of the two books I have read. Trotsky was a very prolific writer who also kept detailed jounals of his life and of party meetings, included executive sessions. There are a number of important events where we only have Trotsky's account. A large part if what happened during the 1905 St.Peterburg revolution (the Prophet Armed), for instance especially of the trial afterward may be from Trotsky alone.Much of the story is crossed sourced, and much is Trotsky's own personal account. Much of the story Duetscher presents is shared and known history. Deutscher is an excellent story teller, and there was no way I could have abandoned these two books in the middle.

a sweeping and penetrating masterpiece
This second of three volumes in Deutscher's biography is an astonishing and captivating achievement. Deutscher weaves together character study, drama, and historical narrative to give an authoritative account of Trotsky's mortal struggles to uphold democracy and internationalism in the Soviet Union against Stalin's bureaucratic and totalitarian machinations.

Deutscher's deft handling of the facts, personalities, ideas, and situations of the time is simply unparallelled, and makes for a tremendously enjoyable and informative read.

Essential material for anyone exploring the question of where socialism went wrong in the 20th century, and the dilemma of authority and freedom in mass movements.

Lacks a presentation worthy of its content
Any reprint of this classic work is better than none. And of course Deutscher grasps the gist of the matter as Trotsky's "middle" period is concerned : the fact that he was unable to lauch a decided bid for power aganst Stalin when he had still a chance to do so, but then managed to recover enough influence - almost solely by means of his intellectual acumen - to wage a brilliant but doomed in advance defensive political campaign in the late 1920s. Be as it is, if marxism is going to recover from the long reactionary eclipse of the last 30 years, it will have to pay attention to musch of what Trotsky said and wrote in the period covered by this work.

Exactly because of that, I've to complain about the quality of this new Verso edition. Typos abound; the cover is good, but the paper used for the regular pages is of low quality - a highly absorbing, and I suppose perhaps of high acidity, variety of paper, something I discovered when my copy was exposed to humidity and became soaked like a sponge. Also, there lacks and introductory essay and a glossary. Frankly, I think Verso should value more having this work in its publishing list.

Armed only with Marxist theology
This is clearly the least successful of the three Trotsky books by Deutscher.Only a theologian could enjoy the ins and outs of Marxist theory as Trotsky sought to understand why he had lost out to Stalin and whether he might regain his position.While Trotsky was indeed unarmed except for theory and theology, Stalin was armed with bureaucratic and state and party power.Stalin knew better than Trotsky how to win a fight but he also knew that Trotsky was a better Marxist and he appropriated Trotsky's program of peasant collectivization and the subjection of the working class to needed primitive socialist accumulation and rapid industrialization.

Trotsky was Right
This is a fascinating book detailing the fall from grace of the Soviet Union's number 2 man in the revolution: Leon Trotsky.After Lenin's death, Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, the ruling triumverate, did all thatthey could to eliminate this popular figure from the political arena. Deutscher does a great job illuminating one of the the major ideologicalconflicts in the Soviet Union during the 1920's: socialism in one country advocated by Stalin and permanent revolution supported by Trotsky.Deutscher's arguments make a strong case for Trotsky's position, sincewithout a communist revolution in a more industrially advanced country,Soviet socialism faced the danger of becoming heavily bureaucratic anddeformed.The other major difference between Stalin and Totsky wasabout the course of inustrialization in the Soviet Union.Trotsky warnedabout the danger of the New Economic Policy (NEP) slowly restoringcapitalism in Russia.In Stalin's battle for power with Trotsky, heoriginally supported the NEP and a slow course of industrialization.Whenhe finally defeated Trotsky (which begins the final book of Deutscher'strilogy) he almost completely stole Trotsky's program of rapidindustrialization for the USSR.The question that the reader is left withis: would idustrialization in the USSR have been more peaceful underTrotsky than Stalin?Would we be talking about millions of dead Sovietcitizens today and would the communist movement around the world still be afactor if Trotsky, not Stalin, would have won the power struggle in the1920's.It's obvious that Deutscher is a big supporter of LeonTrotsky.Its hard not to be: he almost single handedly organized the RedArmy with no military background which repelled foreign intervention duringthe Russian Civil War.He was matched only by Lenin as the supreme Marxistintellectual of the time. A supreme orator, he was the consumaterevolutionary and internationalist.This trilogy is by far the bestTrotsky biography to date.Any one interested in the Russian revolution orthe Communist movement must read these books. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume nine of fourteen volumes covering the period of Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929 until his assassination at Stalin's orders in 1940.

Photos, chronology, notes, other writings of 1932-33, index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED
If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky's writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky's internal political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles insidethe Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution.This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970's and 1980's. (Cannon's writings in support of Trotsky's work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.


After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin's tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can count easily, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of theheroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky's.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920's. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky's unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

Economic depression, war and working-class leadership
This is one of a 14-volume series of writings by Leon Trotsky, who along with V.I. Lenin was a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution. These volumes cover the years 1929-1940, when Trotsky led the political fight world-wide to maintain the continuity of Bolshevik's revolutionary perspective and leadership against the reactionary policies imposed by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. Reading Trotsky carefully, one can learn a lot about history and about today's world, as well as how to apply Marxist methods to orient oneself for working-class political action.

This volume includes more than 100 articles and letters. They cover topics ranging from the economic depression and the rising inter-imperialist tensions leading to World War II, to the Stalinist frame-up trials in the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War, and detailed leadership questions posed in workers movements in different countries at the time. These volumes are lively, pointed and have extensive notes and chronologies to aid the reader today.

I'd also recommend some other titles written by Trotsky at this time, including The History of the Russian Revolution, The Fight Against Fascism in Germany, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, and The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, all available from the same publisher, Pathfinder Press.

the fight vs. fascism and war-- lessons for today
The years 1936-37 were decisive in the struggles of working people to defeat fascism and prevent the holocaust that was called World War II.The Great Depression was devasting the working people round the world. In this book, the co-leader with Lenin of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Leon Trotsky, exposes the Moscow witch hunt trials, through which the bureaucrat-dictator Stalin ( NOTa communist ! ) began the process of the final rubbing out of communist opposition to his regime. The civil war in Spain raged and was in its crucial phase: would the workers and peasants of Spain defeat the fascists through revolutionary means or would the coalition of liberals, "democratic" socialists ( read: pro-capitalist "socialists" ), Stalinists, and sadly, anarchist leaders who sold themselves and their powerful unions to the reform-ist coalition - the Popular Front-open the gates to the fascists, making World War II inevitable ?How could working people help out the fight of the Chinese people against in Japanese invasion of 1937: the opening guns of World War II? How to build a revolutionary leadership, both in the countries mentioned above, around the world, and in the U.S. itself? In this valuable book and two others-"The Spanish Revolution" and "Leon Trotsky on China", also published by Pathfinder Press, the great revolutionist poses these question and attempts to answer them in terms of action. As world capitalism sinks into a new depression, and as world imperialism, Yankee imperialism in the first rank, drives us working people towards fascism and a new world war, those who fight for a new and human world in the streets and on the strike picket lines need this book BAD.

Fighting with reason and hope Day by day
This volume begins with Trotsky's writing on board the ship Ruth the Norwegian government used to deport him to Mexico.His "In Socialist Norway," is a humorous well-written account of how the Social Democrats who ruled Norway in the thirties, buckled under to the pressure of native fascists and Stalin to first restrict Trotsky's right to defend himself against the slanders of the Moscow trials, and then placed him under house arrest until he was invited to Mexico. I found his analysis of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Stalin himself, in his articles written in Mexico explaining the Moscow trials to be interesting studies in how personal character is a factor in revolutionary leadership and retreat from that leadership.Also very interesting is the correspondence and proposals Trotsky wrote around building the commission led by American philosopher John Dewey that investigated the Moscow trials. As always with all of the Trotsky Writings Volumes, there is a week-to-week, sometimes day-by-day, chronicle of world events, and of Trotsky's struggle to build a revolutionary movement.

Important writings for the workers' movement today
This is a fascinating collection, well worth taking time to read and study.It's the first in a 14-volume collection of writings by Leon Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the 1917 Russian Revolution. This one has over 75 articles, letters and interviews written between February and December 1929.

This volume opens just as Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union by the bureaucratic misleaders headed by Joseph Stalin, who were increasingly fearful of any political debate in the country. Trotsky had been leading a political fight to reorient the Soviet Communist Party back to the revolutionary course it had followed in the early years of the revolution, before the death of V.I. Lenin.His writings here take up new developments in the Soviet Union, the challenges facing revolutionists -- especially clarifying their political perspectives and tasks under unexpected and difficult conditions, as well as major developments in world politics. Trotsky's dogged, realistic optimism in the possibility and necessity of working class victories and his determination to do all in his power to advance this struggle is really inspiring! ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (19)

What Stalin did, and how he did it
Reading Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed", I can see where George Orwell got the idea for "1984" from.In Stalin's world, Trotsky says, black is white, war is peace, and if you repeat today what The Great Leader said yesterday, you could be arrested for being a counter-revolutionary -- because His policy may be different today.Trotsky offers both statistics and anecdotal info to show that Russia was going in completely the wrong direction.The Stalinst system, if it can be called a system, is unstable, says Trotsky, and will either undergo yet another revolution to true socialism or backslide into capitalism.Hmm.

Karl Marx had said that government is the tool of the ruling class.So come the revolution, in the first stage of socialism, which we can call communism, the tools of production would be redistributed and economic classes would disappear as everyone becomes all one class.With no classes, there'd be no need for government, which would wither away as the society progressed through the further stages of socialism.

This was... optimistic.Clearly, the Soviet Union not only never got out of the first stage, but Stalin did everything he could to keep in that stage, replacing the old ruling class with a new one, the bureaucracy.Trotsky clearly identifies how all this had been happening. So this is the best book I've seen on how the Soviet Union completely turned its back on the ideals of the Revolution.

But...this was hardly all Stalin's doing.What Trotsky doesn't do -- and neither does Kerensky in "Catastrophe" or probably any politician -- is ever admit he made any mistakes.Trotsky talks about how the revolutionary mindset requires dissent.Dissent within the Party and dissent within the system from other parties.Yet, this is the guy who led the attack on Kronstadt when the mutinous sailors dared to call for "All power to the soviets" instead of all power to the Party. Not to mention the thousands of political dissenters and starving protestors who were arrested, tortured, and executed without trial by Lenin and Trotsky.

So, if you read this, and are inclined to think that Trotsky was a great guy, you also need to read something like Emma Goldman's "Two Years in Russia" or Bertrand Russell's "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism", both written around 1921, long before Stalin took control, to realize that the Bolsheviks were going wrong from the getgo."You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs" said the early Bolsheviks.To which fellow revolutionary Victor Serge responded:"I see the broken eggs, but where's the omelette?"

Good If You Read Its Words...
This book is key to understanding how Leon Trotsky viewed the USSR.

When I first approached it I was a 12 year old teen trying to figure out how I was a "good" communist unlike the "bad" communists in the USSR. Of course, Trotsky didn't think that, and soon I stopped as well.

He opens up with amazing statistical proof of the USSR's economic strength. From there he explains the various changes in Soviet politics. He refutes the position now held by the ISO that the USSR was "State Capitalist", while arguing that a "bureaucratic caste" holds control of a "worker's state."

The book is great, again, if you read what is says, engage with it etc. If you are looking for a book to reinforce anti-Sovietism, don't waste your time with it. Trotsky was an enemy of the bureaucratic leaders of the USSR, but he was NOT an enemy of the USSR. He called for "unconditional defense" of this "Worker's State."

They Call Trotsky a Prophet For a Reason
I purchased this book after it was at the top of a list of recommendations of books about Stalin's USSR. I found it to be quite a fascinating dissection of every aspect of Stalinist USSR culture, government, military, and economics. Mr. Trotsky begins by examining the USSR's vast technological and agricultural progress and growth... compared to the Tsarist years, but still behind Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. Mr. Trotsky states that the USSR has to consider itself economically in a sort of "transition" between capitalism and socialism. Due to the fact that Socialism is a stepping stone to communism, and socialism can only be achieved in an already industrialized country, communists should not look to the USSR as a model for communism. He also examines the roots, causes, and 'zigzags' in leadership and policy that led to the Ukrainian Holodomor. He also states that the USSR has not achieved a 'classless' society or 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as the bureaucrats essentially became the 'bourgeois' class of Soviet society, and Stalin ended the 'democracy' of the Lenin days. He examines the reorganization of the Red Army from a militia, to a more imperialistic structure. Mr. Trotsky also shows the slow breaking down of Soviet rights and emphasis on youth and women. In the end, he considers the war that was looming on the horizon. At the time, Stalin was cooperating with Hitler, and the Red Army was small and only had superior tank design to benefit it. Mr. Trotsky states that the USSR would suffer high casualties and much destruction because of all this... and he was right. He later states that because of mass public disillusionment, and of the failing USSR economy and bloated bureaucracy, that an 'internal' revolution would take place, and the USSR would cease to exist... as is what happened. There is a reason that Stalin had Trotsky taken out with an axe blow to his skull in Mexico City: it is because Stalin knew Trotsky was speaking the truth, and that his very existence and wake up calls to the world would eventually reveal the truth and deformity of, what Trotsky claims at the time, was seen as an efficient and progressive country.

The Revolution Next Time
The great Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky wore many hats in his revolutionary career. Organizer of revolutionary upheavals in 1905 and 1917 and military defender of the Soviet state in the early days. Withering political journalist and literary critic from the beginning of his career as a professional revolutionary. Soviet official in various capacities, depending on which way the political winds were blowing. Polemicist against Social Democratic revisionism and later the Stalinist degeneration of Leninism, the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state. Still later, in exile, he was the seemingly last independent defender of that Soviet state and the traditions of the Bolshevik party as Stalin turned the political landscape into a bloody battlefield in the late 1930's. Of all of these hats probably Trotsky's last struggles; to create a new international revolutionary party (the Fourth International)and trying to oust the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia while at the same time defending the Soviet state, were the most important political battles of his life. That, in essence, is the purpose of his book the Revolution Betrayed under review here.

The question of the fate of the Soviet state at various points in the 20th century may seem a rather academic question at this time, especially since the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's. At a practical level it is hard to fault that argument. But let me make a little point here. Until the Gorbachev-directed political thaw in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980's the possibilities of discussing Trotsky's book about what when wrong "back in the days" was either done clandestinely or not at all. I, however, remember being at a meeting during that period where a Russian émigré spoke about the then current situation in Russia. He mentioned, in passing, that he had recently read Trotsky's Revolution Betrayed and found that the arguments made by him in the mid-1930's about the nature of Soviet society, the state governmental apparatus and the Communist Party sounded like they could have been made in the mid-1980's. This, my friends, is why we still read this little work.

Obviously some of Trotsky's argument is historically obsolete, even assuming conditions of a future socialist revival. The specific problem of Russia as the first workers state having been created in a predominantly agrarian society, then isolated by world imperialism and not augmented by revolutions in the capitalist West that would have given Soviet officials the life line they needed to turn that society around will not be replicated in the 21st century. What is not obsolete in Trotsky's argument, and is germane today in the struggle to turn China around, are the questions of the purposes that a workers state are created for, the nature of economic policy and who will guide it, the role of pro-socialist political parties and how to allocate cultural resources so that the goal- and this is important- of a stateless society gets a fair chance at implementation. Thus Trotsky here, donning the enlightened Soviet official hat that he never really took off even in exile, provides textbook examples of what to do and not to do to push socialism forward even under conditions of isolation.

If I was asked today what part of this document still has relevance I would pick out that chapter that deals with the question of Soviet Thermidor. All great revolutions, and the Russian Revolution was a great revolution, have contained ebbs and flows during the revolutionary period and then after the consolidation of power by the new regime have fallen back, not to the ways of the old regime but back nevertheless. One would have thought in 1921, let's say, that once the question of the existence of the Soviet state was essentially settled then the push toward socialism, even in isolation and given the vast economic dislocations of World War I and the Civil War, would be headed forward. That was not the case and Trotsky does a great service by putting the reasons for that, political as well as personal in perspective, particularly the responses of the Soviet working class to the revolutionary defeats in Europe and Asia in the 1920's. That said, where does this book fit into your list of Trotsky readings. Not first, that place is taken by his three-volume History of the Russian Revolution- the high point. But sometime shortly after that you need to address the issues presented in this book to see what went wrong and why.

Worthwhile for the insights for people with open minds, and revolutionaries too
I decided I wanted to explore Trotsky. I began by reading Isaac Duetscher's Prophet Armed, and then this book. In my distant past I read about the Revolution mainly through the eyes Anarchists (Emma Goldman among them), Rosa Luxembourg, and atMaknho (spelling?), and have alsoread a little Lenin (such as State and Revolution) for a political science college course, a long time ago.My guess and my rough experience is disciplined revolutionary elites must be filled with cadres who are focused and narrow and can bring great danger because they are eager to follow and very often do not reflect. A great movement is apt to commit acts as bad as many of the ones they fight. Revolutions and wars more often than not bring terrible things to and from all sides.

I sympathize with the 1917 Russian Revolution. The orders of the day, from the Czars to the Robber Barons were unjust, not free, not equal. For the majority of people, ordidnary people who worked for a living,racial and ethnic minorities (in particular ways) throughout the world, and women have not enjoyed freedom and democracy. This is more sharpley true if we go back to 1917, and examine the world as it was then. To be sure, freedom and democracy, declared as the foundations of many countries, were never more than formal or were facades, more a decoration than a reality anywhere.So imagine having a revolution for the lower class, the proletariat, and having it be Interantionalist and universal.

That is what happened in Russia, it was the first workers republic that existed for any longer than a few weeks or months. From this book and the earlier book, things did not happen well at all. These Revolutionaries had an opportunity and they took it, and this book tells the story very well of what then happened.I can gather from the whole of it that it was not quite the right place or time for it to be a good revolution. Trotsky's belief is that Socialism requires the abundance of production of the most productive Capitalist country's, so there is enough for the abundance to go around for everyone. It was also true that ounce this abundance and socialism was achieved, 'the State would begin to wilt away'.Classes are empowered by limited resources. People want to be on top where there is great need. When Socialism is achieved, authority, the police and strong armed methods of running things would not be needed because there was no one on top who had to be protected from the people below who had much less than they needed. (Just as Trotksy was proclaiming this wonderful world of human production and abundance, I immediately reflected about the limitations nature puts on us if we are not to destroy our world, but that is not a subject very many were thinking about in 1936. Back to the book Russia was not close in anyway to where such Socialism or the Revolution could succeed, and never by itself. However, it was the right place to have something different that can survive, being so huge and having the physcical attributes that buried Napoleon's army and would bury Hitler's as well. This gets to the core of Trotsky's theory of the Permanent Revolution. If the Revolution to succeed, or one that is worthy, It requires revolutions in at least some of the highest developed abundant Capitalist countries by the working class to achieve socialism, and aid poor Russia in it's development out of the pit and toward socialism.

Getting back to the beginning of the Revolution. Trotsky, the devoted Revolutionary, at this point was willing to commit some brutal acts, but not more brutal than most other welders of power under similar circmstances all over the world. It appears later, still as one of the major leaders, he fought hard and vocally for better things until he was driven out of power and into exile, and continued until he was assasinated 11 years later. I think this was in keeping with whom Trotsky the man was. He was reflective and critical, and he was for a revolution for the sake of all humanity. He was against Totalitarianism and reducing art and literature to be an instrument of Regime. he was insightful enough to recognize how a priveleged bureaucracy where industry was state owned,(but where there was a great lack of abundanceand a great amount for the priveleged to have to protect) became a ruthless ruling class.

One thing I recognized about the Revolution Betrayed is how it can in fact be taken more than one way. I can read between the lines how conservativesupporters of the Capitalist ruling class could and did use Trotksy's very perceptive ideas for their own purposes. However Trotsky was a revolutionary Communist and he wrote in defense of Communists and the Communist revolution, and he was writing in favor ofCommunists such as his friend Lenin.Lenin was a very interesting man, whom I cannot judge because have not read enough of or about him. I do understand, to use an metaphor of this book, that Lenin was not like Stalin, he was not the Bonapartist face of a bureaucratic class sponsored totalitarian dictactorship. Whatever hope there is the honor and future of Communism, maybe springs from this book, which is a defense of the Communist Revolution and a comdemnation of Stalinism Totalitarianism by one of the great Communists. Maybe it stands like Atlas in keeping it from being obliterated.

In closing, I cannot descibe myself as a Trotskist or any other kind of
-IST, I do appreciate the man, but I am not going to make him into an idol to be worshipped. I also realize he was a man of war, he had a tough side.This is a very educating and worthwhile book, and I look forward to reading some more of his books. One negative, I don't know if the translator is to blame, but his style of writing is sometimes a little difficult, and I found myself having to read carefully, sometimes rereading a confusing expressed phrase to understand what he was writing. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume three of fourteen volumes covering the period of Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929 until his assassination at Stalin's orders in 1940.

This book is part of a series, The Writings of Leon Trotsky.

Photos, chronology, notes, other writings of 1930-31, index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

DEFEATED, BUT UNBOWED
If you are interested in the history of the International Left in the first half of the 20th century or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. I have reviewed elsewhere Trotsky's writings published under the title The Left Opposition, 1923-1929 (in three volumes) dealing with Trotsky's internal political struggles for power inside the Russian Communist Party (and by extension, the political struggles insidethe Communist International) in order to save the Russian Revolution.This book is part of a continuing series of volumes in English of his writings from his various points of external exile from 1929 up until his death in 1940. These volumes were published by the organization that James P. Cannon, early American Communist Party and later Trotskyist leader founded, the Socialist Workers Party, during the 1970's and 1980's. (Cannon's writings in support of Trotsky's work are reviewed elsewhere in this space). Look in the archives in this space for other related reviews on and by this important world communist leader.

After the political defeat of the various Trotsky-led Left Oppositions 1923 to 1929 by Stalin and his state and party bureaucracy he nevertheless found it far too dangerous to keep Trotsky in Moscow. He therefore had Trotsky placed in internal exile at Ata Alma in the Soviet Far East in 1928. Even that turned out to be too much for Stalin's tastes and in 1929 he arranged for the external exile of Trotsky to Turkey. Although Stalin probably rued the day that he did it this exile was the first of a number of places which Trotsky found himself in external exile. Other places included, France, Norway and, finally, Mexico where he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent in 1940. As these volumes, and many others from this period attest to, Trotsky continued to write on behalf of a revolutionary perspective. Damn, did he write. Some, including a few of his biographers, have argued that he should have given up the struggle, retired to who knows where, and acted the role of proper bourgeois writer or professor. Please! These volumes scream out against such a fate, despite the long odds against him and his efforts on behalf of international socialist revolution. Remember this is a revolutionary who had been through more exiles and prisons than one can count easily, held various positions of power and authority in the Soviet state and given the vicissitudes of his life could reasonably expect to return to power with a new revolutionary upsurge. Personally, I think Trotsky liked and was driven harder by the long odds.

The political prospects for socialist revolution in the period under discussion are, to say the least, rather bleak, or ultimately turned out that way. The post-World War I revolutionary upsurge has dissipated leaving Soviet Russia isolated. Various other promising revolutionary situations, most notably the aborted German revolution of 1923 that would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution, had come to nought. In the period under discussion there is a real sense of defensiveness about the prospects for revolutionary change. The specter of fascism loomed heavily and we know at what cost to the international working class. The capitulation to fascism by the German Communist and Social Democratic Parties in 1933, the defeat of theheroic Austrian working class in 1934, the defeat in Spain in 1939, and the outlines of the impending Second World War colored all political prospects, not the least Trotsky's.

Organizationally, Trotsky developed two tactical orientations. The first was a continuation of the policy of the Left Opposition during the 1920's. The International Left Opposition as it cohered in 1930 still acted as an external and unjustly expelled faction of the official Communist parties and of the Communist International and oriented itself to winning militants from those organizations. After the debacle in Germany in 1933 a call for new national parties and a new, fourth, international became the organizational focus. Many of the volumes here contain letters, circulars, and manifestos around these orientations. The daunting struggle to create an international cadre and to gain some sort of mass base animate many of the writings collected in this series. Many of these pieces show Trotsky's unbending determination to make a breakthrough. That these effort were, ultimately, militarily defeated during the course of World War Two does not take away from the grandeur of the efforts. Hats off to Leon Trotsky.

THE WRITINGS OF LEON TROTSKY, 1930-31, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
As to the 1930-31 volume this reviewer recommends a careful reading of the following articles: On the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism, (taken from analogies with the French Revolution which nicely draws the distinctions between the overturn of the revolutionary leadership and the balancing act implied in a military dictatorship); Thermidor and Bonapartism (same); Problems of the German Section (on the ever reoccurring problem of German Left Oppositionists taking serious political action toward the rank and file of the German Communist Party before it is too late);New Zigzags and New Dangers (on the notorious `third period' strategy of the Communist International); and, At the Fresh Grave of Kote Tsintsadze, (probably one of the best and most insightful political obituaries of a fellow revolutionary ever written).

Does this sound like today's world ?
In 1930-31 the last Great Depression (as opposed to the one we just
entered) gripped the capitalist world. Fascism was becoming a real and
recognizable threat in Germany. Spain was in the throes of a
pre-Revolutionary situation. In the Soviet Union the Stalinist (not socialist,
not communist) bureaucracy was squandering the prestige of the world's
first workers state (at the bottom of the Depression, the USSR was
virtually free of unemployment) in one disastrous lurch in economic
policy after another - the years of forced "collectivization." Leon Trotsky,
co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution, exiled by Stalin to
Turkey, strove with might and main to build a worldwide revolutionary
leadership of worker cadres organized in revolutionary parties. The record
of his efforts is here in part. The rest of his efforts in 1930-31 are
recorded "... The relevance of this work should be
clear: in a world gripped by the beginning of the Second Great world
Depression marked by the collapse of Stalinism-- the opposite of
communism -- a seemingly unending series of imperialist wars, and the
survival of the beacon of light for the world's toilers that is the Cuban
Revolution-if you are a young rebel of any age who wants to fight for a
truly human world, then this book belongs on your shelf to be STUDIED.

A revolutionary at work
This volume in the series of Trotsky's writings actually doesn't deal with a number of the major developments in 1930 and 1931. Since they are so extensive, his writings on events in Spain and Germany are to be found in separate compilations. This book is one to buy and browse thru' simply because it helps complete the picture of Trotsky's work in that period of history, the incredible scope of his collaboration and attention -- everything from patient letters to Chinese revolutionists encouraging them to abandon flights of scholarly abstraction and get a grip, to good concrete explanations of why workers in the USSR cannot be simply cheerled to socialism. A single scathing page chastises Stalin's apparatus for the imminent death of an old Bochevik leader hemorraging from tuberculosis and denied a transfer to better climes.The lack of respect for a lifelong fighter and cynical disregard for someone who has never bowed his head could only be practised by those who had no interest in fighting themselves. Trotsky makes you think about the big picture even when he writes about smaller things.

Addicting Books the past and our future
The Trotsky Writings books are addicting. The short pithy, wise articles, interviews, polemics, the illuminating and interesting notes, and the drama of Trotsky's struggle in exile are available on a week to week, month to month, year to year basis across from 1929 until 1940. You end up reading the next article, and the next article, and you have to discipline yourself to put it down if you can. A constant feature is the continued interviews by newspapers, magazines, international press services from the US, Britain, and around the world, because even in exile, even these bourgeois forces knew that Trotsky was one man who could put together the trends in the world. As much as they teach us about history,these books teach us revolutionary answers to questions we need to answer today: how to go from small revolutionary movements to a revolution like Trotsky and Lenin led in 1917, how to fight the middle class bureaucrats in the former Soviet Union and China, how to win workers, farmers, women and oppressed women. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Leon Trotsky and the Art of Insurrection 1905-1917
This book turned out to have many useful insights into the way that war compels large numbers of people into entering the political arena once it has become clear that an existing leaderships subordination to inimical minority interestsmanifests itself as an abdication of the fundamental responsibilities of government. It additionally makes lucid the concept that modern warfare technics actually gives an immense advantage to a war strategy of defense over one of aggression .
... Read more

Product Description
Articles and letters on the Chinese revolution of the 1920s, recording the fight to reverse Stalin's disastrous course of subordinating the Communist Party there to an alliance with the capitalist Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang).

Introduction by Peng Shu-tse, notes, glossary, index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A very useful book, particulary for anyone from Asia
If you want to understand the world of today you have to work at understanding how it got to be the way it is.This is one of those books that is critical to doing that, I don't say that lightly.This book is what is known as a primary source.It is the record of one, actually several, of the crucial political battles of the last century, told by some of the leading participants in their own words.It is not a history written decades later by someone to explain what went wrong, but a record of a battle as it progressed.

Reading this book you get a better understanding of the following:How it was that the domestic and foreign policy of the new Soviet Union began to deteriorate from a revolutionary one to one that put the narrow needs of day to day diplomacy and deal making first.How the Chinese Communist Party was formed and how it developed.What type of revolution was it's leadership trying to make?Why were the U.S., England, Japan and France so hostile to it?How and why did the Stalinists and Maoists gain leadership and themselves come into being?And much else.

This book is made up of an impressive number of documants, speeches and reports principally by Trotsky, one of the central leaders of the Russian revolution who would not sell out and died fighting Stalin and the destruction of the revolution.The introduction adds much to the book in bringing things up to date.I think this book is useful for historians, anyone wanting to know more about China and the revolution there, and any revolutionaries of today who want to learn from one of the best.It can be particularly useful to political minded workers and young people from Asia

Sadly, needed to day
What impresses me about this book is Trotsky's impassioned duty and determination to build a world revolution of the oppressed and to clear the way for the working people of China from the waste, confusion, and defeats that Stalinism of the Stalin and Mao varieties have imposed on them.

Thirty years ago many people would have thought reading a book about the liberation of a country from semicolonialism would no longer be necessary as we enter the 21st Century. However, it seems that lead by the USA, the imperialist powers of Western Europe and Japan are in a growing drive to deepen their control over countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Sadly, the lessons in this book drawn from the struggle of peasants and workers in China in the first 40 years of this century, are becoming more and more applicable around the world.

Lessons from great revolutionary experiences
The Chinese Revolution was one of the great developments of the 20th century, and the challenges and lessons it provides remain of great importance today. Imperialism and imperialist war, colonialism, revolutionary Marxism vs. Stalinism and Maoism, concepts of armed struggle, mass struggle, ofconstructing a revolutionary party, the character of a workers and peasants government, of a workers-peasant alliance-- all were tested in the turbulent, living experience of social crisis, repression, war and massive worker and peasant uprisings.

This lengthy collection brings together the writings of Leon Trotsky on China from 1925 to his death in 1940. Trotsky was, along with V. I. Lenin, a central leader of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the early years of the Communist International. After the death of Lenin in 1924, Trotsky led the fight against the degeneration of that revolution and the rise of a conservative, privileged bureaucracy headed by Josef Stalin. Revolutionary policies in China at the time were at the heart of the differences between revolutionaries and Stalinists.Trotsky gives detailed and extensive analysis very useful today, both for the issues covered and as an example of how to use the Marxist method to orient revolutionary fighters in the living world.

The collection includes a substantial introduction by long-time Chinese revolutionary Peng Shu-tse, covering the history of China during these years, which I found useful for putting Trotsky's writings in context.

Also recommended: The Chinese Communist Party in Power, by Peng Shu-tse; The History of the Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky; and Capitalism's World Disorder, by Jack Barnes.

Not a History lesson, Needed Now!
rotsky's Discussion of China is one of the most masterful discussions of the dynamics of revolution in a country underdeveloped and exploited by imperialism that has ever been made. It centers on the Chinese revolutionary events of the mid and late 1920s, though it continues into the 1930s when the Stalin Bukharin leadership in the Communist International forced the Chinese revolutionists to subordinate their struggle to a block with bourgeois militarist Chiang Kai-shek It is not surprising that when it was made, the founding central leaders of the Chinese communist movement were won to Trotsky's Left Opportunism. In letters and articles and political documents for the Russian Communist Party and the Comintern, Trotsky explains how the only road forward for Chinese workers and peasants was asserting their own power and independence and how only the struggle against capitalism could solve the problems facing China.

As such, it provides an adequate background to the middle class and Stalinist nature of the Chinese Communist party that headed the revolution in 1949.As such

It can be read now, as a new generation of fighting workers, peasants, and youth in China looks for real communist alternatives to both capitalism and the pseudo-Communism of China's Stalinist Communist party.


While this book is sometimes not directly available from Amazon, it is always available from BooksfromPathfinder, which you can reach by clicking on New and Used further up this page. ... Read more

Product Description
Analyzes the revolutionary upsurge on the land and in the factories leading to the Spanish civil war and how the Stalinists' course ensured a fascist victory.

Map, chronology, glossary of organizations, parties and periodicals, notes, index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Marxism, Stalinism, Anarchism in life
What an excellent book for delving into why the Spanish Civil War was lost to fascism when so many peasants and workers were willing to fight to the death for freedom.
Leon Trotsky writes the letters and articles printed here under harsh conditions of exile imposed by Stalin. Their counter posed political programs and the politics of anarchism are brought into life-and-death reality in these pages. A lot about the Russian Revolution too as Trotsky makes comparisons with Spain.
Trotsky fights for a political program to lead the working class and peasants to fight for their own cause against the capitalist class.
The outcome of the Spanish Revolution is history, but for those interested in the politics in Latin America and other parts of the world today this book is a great contribution to the debate on how to fight to win.

Understanding the Spanish Revolution
This valuable contribution of the writings of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, is essential for anyone trying to make sense of the forces involved in the Spanish Civil War, the revolution, and the defeats to fascism in the 1930s. The book contains letters of Trotsky to Spanish communists and fighters, analysis and opinion of what it would take for the workers to win, and the critical argument for united front actions with others to defeat fascism. Trotsky's writings in this collection are often day to day, written in a very readable style, and the editors have done a good job of footnoting to clarify points for the reader. One quote is worth noting re:the war in Spain: "In civil war, incomparably more than in ordinary war, politics dominates strategy. Robert Lee, as an army chieftain, was surely more talented than Grant, but the program of the liquidation of slavery assured victory to Grant." The Spanish people were not victorious; the fascists did win. This book helps to understand how, why, and even the what ifs...

Why does the EZLN survive?
This contribution is being written in mid-2003, as the EZLN approaches its tenth anniversary of having taken the public spotlight. Why does the EZLN survive, when other rebel armies here in Mexico fade away? These others, such as the EPR, state they struggle for power, while the EZLN affirms that it doesn�t.

Nowhere is this apparent contradiction resolved more clearly and succinctly than in Trotsky�s The Spanish Civil War: �Audacious social reforms represent the strongest weapon in the civil war and the fundamental condition for the victory over fascism.� This truism is applicable everywhere, even in a country like this one which is not moving toward fascism.

The EZLN has carried out a deep going land reform and established near equality of the sexes in the areas it has liberated. The other rebel armies have not gone nearly as far in implementing social reforms as a critical part of the struggle for power.

A handbook for winning today's struggles
Today working people face every problem Trotsky discusses in this book as economic crisis and wars, right wing and fascist movements, face us more and more. This can be a handbook of how to fight, and how to win.

This is nearly ten years of Trotsky's writings on the Spanish revolution that overthrew the monarchy at the start of the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War that went on from 1936 to 1939.
Trotsky believed the situation in Spain throughout these years was like the situation in Russia in 1917 where the struggle of workers for power on their own, supporting the democratic struggles of peasants for land, and of Spain?s colonies for national independence and Spain?s national and regional minorities for their rights, could have won, defeated fascism, and been a new beacon for world revolution. His discussions here are not academic. They are practical discussions with revolutionists on the front lines in Spain, with fighting workers around the world. Trotsky?s correspondence with Spanish revolutionist Andres Nin here is a primer on the importance of principle in politics and on the importance of building an international and internationalist revolutionary movement.
.

A handbook for winning today's struggles
Today working people face every problem Trotsky discusses in this book as economic crisis and wars, right wing and fascist movements, face us more and more. This can be a handbook of how to fight, and how to win.

This is nearly ten years of Trotsky's writings on the Spanish revolution that overthrew the monarchy at the start of the 1930s and the Spanish Civil War that went on from 1936 to 1939.
Trotsky believed the situation in Spain throughout these years was like the situation in Russia in 1917 where the struggle of workers for power on their own, supporting the democratic struggles of peasants for land, and of Spain?s colonies for national independence and Spain?s national and regional minorities for their rights, could have won, defeated fascism, and been a new beacon for world revolution. His discussions here are not academic. They are practical discussions with revolutionists on the front lines in Spain, with fighting workers around the world. Trotsky?s correspondence with Spanish revolutionist Andres Nin here is a primer on the importance of principle in politics and on the importance of building an international and internationalist revolutionary movement.
. ... Read more

Product Description
"Permanent revolution" calls Leon Trotsky to mind as surely as "relativity" does Albert Einstein. In their originality and scope, these two famous theories have a symmetry.Leon Trotsky was a leading Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was a central leader of the Russian revolution and an influential politician in the early days of the Soviet Union. He was Commissar for Foreign Affairs, founder and commander of the Red Army and Commissar of War.He led the struggle against Stalin'sbureaucratization of the Soviet Union inthe 1920s. Trotsky was expelled from theCommunist Party and deported from theSoviet Union in the Great Purge. As the founder of the Fourth International, he continued in exile to encourage workers and oppressed peoples to unite against capitalism, and for socialist revolution. PRAISE FOR 'THE PERMANENT REVOLUTION'I'm very much of Trotsky's line - the permanent revolution.- Hugo Chavez, President of VenezuelaTrotsky's writings on the permanent revolution are the theoretical mainspring of proletarian revolutionary strategy and are an obligatory study for all who aspire to lead the working-class in the struggle for socialism, whether in the capitalist countries of the West or in the backward colonial countries. - Li Fu-jen, co-founder, Communist League of ChinaThe whole essence of Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution lies in the idea that the colonial bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie of the backward countries are incapable of carrying out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution.- Ted Grant, editor, Militant ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Not a Czar, but a workers' government
"The Permanent Revolution" (first published in 1929) is Trotsky's failed attempt to defend his erroneous theory of permanent revolution. "Results and prospects" is an earlier text by Trotsky expounding the same theory. After the death of Lenin, Trotsky's opponents claimed that the theory of permanent revolution was ultraleft, sectarian, underestimated the peasantry and denied the possibility of building socialism in one country. They also pointed out that Lenin had opposed the theory in favour of "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry".

These criticisms are correct. Trotsky's attempts to cast his theory in a Leninist mould are unconvincing. I don't hear Lenin speak in these pages. The theory reeks of adventurist ultraleftism, especially in its earlier formulation, when Trotsky didn't even believe in a vanguard party.

:-P

OK, seriously. A specific criticism of Trotsky's theory feels moot. Lenin's theory wasn't much better. The Bolshevik revolution established neither "the dictatorship of the proletariat" nor the "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" (although the regime at times came close to both). Rather, it established the rule of a new bureaucracy, based on the centralized state and party apparatus, and later on the nationalized and collectivized economy.

This was probably inevitable. Lenin always believed that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" would be led by the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries. Trotsky came around to this position as well, when he joined the Bolsheviks in 1917. Since the Bolshevik regime was neither a "workers' government" nor a "workers' and farmers' government" sensu stricto, the entire debate between Trotsky, Zinoviev, Radek and Stalin feels somewhat surreal and esoteric. Objectively, this is a debate on what strategy the budding bureaucracy should follow in order to take power.

And precisely for that reason, Trotsky lost the great debate. He rejected both "democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry" and the popular front in the belief that neither can lead to state socialism. At the time, Trotsky's position wasn't "out there". Communist attempts to ally with "bourgeois" forces had failed or ended in disaster in Turkey, Iran, Croatia and (above all) China. Later, the popular fronts failed to usher in state socialism in France and Spain. Thus, it was understandable from a state socialist viewpoint that Trotsky proposed a more radical line than Stalin, Bukharin, Zinoviev and (de facto) even Lenin. However, the post-war world proved that state socialism and its attendant rule of a bureaucracy *can* be set up by middle class guerrillas, peasant armies led by professional revolutionaries, military officers or Stalin's bureaucracy. Even popular fronts can be a "salami tactic" stepping stone to state socialism, provided that the Communists control the security apparatus or the army. Of course, many Trotskyist reject these regimes with the argument that they lack "workers' democracy". But this is moot, since "workers' democracy" withered away already during Lenin's tenure in Russia, a regime the Trotskyists support.

Perhaps the fall of "Stalinist" state socialism and the pro-capitalist drift of remaining bureaucratic systems, not to mention popular fronts, will once again make "permanent revolution" the only option for those who crave state socialist solutions? Perhaps.

And then, perhaps not. Personally, I suspect that state property might become a lever for a kind of "state capitalist" system like the one in China, really a mercantilist alliance between a technocratic bureaucracy and a new capitalist class. A rather unexpected Aufheben of state socialism and classical capitalism! I also suspect that regimes which are essentially fascist might use state property as a lever to establish autarky. Russian red-browns and Muslim fundamentalists are two possible candidates. There simply isn't anything particularly proletarian about nationalized property.

Finally, I would recommend readers that aren't interested in the nooks and crannies of Communist factional struggles to skip "The Permanent Revolution" and only read "Results and Prospects". It's shorter, easier to read and show the radical Marxist positions of Leon Trotsky in all their red splendour.

SpecTACKular!
Trotsky's writings are now well established in our literary cannon; however, "Results and Prospects" and "The Permanent Revolution" are two short works that usually are left out-- to the detriment of our political understanding of the Bolshevik movement, the course of the Russian Revolution, and the ideology that informed (and still might inform) revolutionary socialism.

Results and Prospects was written shortly after the 1905 Russian Revolution, which succeeded (after brutal Czarist repression) in establishing a conciliatory liberal parliamentary government-- the Duma.Trotsky, along with his interlocutors Lenin and Luxemburg, analyzed the revolution in the spirit of Marx in the revolutions of 1848 and 1871 (the Paris Commune), to learn the lessons of the revolution and the potential for further emancipatory change--hence the title, results and prospects.The small book establishes two main points: first, in Russia a liberal revolution must necessarily be followed by proletarian revoltion or else it soon must be followed by a period of reaction; second, a revolution in Russia will fail if it does not ignite a revolution across the (at the time) 'developed' world--Western Europe.These arguments will be developed and practiced in the revolutionary Marxism of Trotsky, Lenin and Luxemburg through the Russian Revolution.Most importantly, they clear up many misconceptions about Trotsky's theory of revolution.

The Permanent Revolution was written much later, following the Bolshevik Revolution, and was addressed specifically to incipient revolutionary struggles in the backwards countries in Asia that were supported early on by the Third International (before being subverted by Stalinism).

At the end of the day, this edition is timely and well put together.The font is a little awkward, unfortunately.The essays by Lowy are informative and interesting.The overall production is rather tacky, much like Verso's Revolution! series that feature the likes of Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Robespierre, Trotsky and Jesus-- the relation between arbitrary at best.The exhortation by Hugo Chavez on the back, supporting the 'permanent revolution,' is comical considering Chavez clearly has not studied socialist theory or cares to realize even an ounce of their ideals.

That Hugo Chavez misrecognizes himself for a Trotsky is an indication that Trotsky should be more widely read and understood by everyone generally interested in Left politics and its history...inother words, the Left's results and prospects for future emancipatory change! ... Read more