*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-"The Intelligentsia And Socialism"

Click on the headline to link to the Workers Vanguard website for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

I have spilled a great deal of ink in this space arguing for the young, including young intellectuals, to emulate John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, and come over and join us in the fight for our communist future. The international workers movement, and particularly its revolutionary wing, is in constant need of writers, thinkers, and speakers to preach “the good news.” This task continues today although over the years the number of hardened intellectuals has dwindled on our side of the struggle.

As Trotsky points out, in the normal course of events, intellectuals, young idealistic ones and old long-in-the-tooth entombed ones alike, are trained to run the apparatuses of the bourgeois state and the lure of socialism, even if short-lived, is usually just a way station to that end. Generations of young intellectuals, and wanna-be intellectuals, have previously given the best two years or so of their lives to the fresh ideas swirling around the socialism milieu before becoming ensnared in the groves of academia. But every once in a while... A John Reed. A Leon Trotsky. A Lenin. And that is what we fight for on the campuses. .

Note: Although the polemic presented in this linked article by Leon Trotsky is closely reasoned it is hardly the best example of his literary flair. Maybe it was the subject matter, maybe it was the opponent he was arguing against (Max Adler) but this one is not guaranteed to set any youth’s heart a-flutter. Or any old man’s either.