Click on title to link to Leon Trotsky's Internet Archives copy of "Their Morals and Ours". A must read for every radical in order to understand the revolutionary "code" we stand by, although much distorted by almost a century of Stalinist and Social-Democratic distortion.
BOOK, REVIEW
THEIR MORALS AND OURS, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1969
One of the most tragic results of the Stalinization of a significant part of the international workers movement in the 20th century was the steep decline in the norms of revolutionary morality. In fact a persuasive argument can be made that the Stalinist lies, distortions and destruction of revolutionary cadre, as well as untold innocents, dragged the workers movement to a moral level below even the abysmal bourgeois hypocrisy of modern day liberalism and social democracy. But, although one would be hard pressed to refute that idea that is an argument for another day. Here, Leon Trotsky, as he had done in the political struggles to defend the ideas of the socialist revolution raised his lonely voice to defend revolutionary morality against the onslaught of Stalinist falsifiers, liberal cynics, social democratic hypocrites and some of his faint-hearted intellectual former ‘supporters’ who were beginning their rapid retreat from revolutionary politics in the run-up to World War II.
Trotsky’s argument is fairly simple and straightforward. Not only do the ruling classes own the means of production and control the educational, cultural and state apparatuses but impose their concept of morality on their society. Thus it follows, in order to break the stranglehold of the ruling classes, it is necessary for revolutionaries to develop their own moral sense- outside and in counter position- to the ruling classes. That truth may not be the most profound idea that Trotsky ever uttered but in light of the rise of fascism, the Stalinist Moscow Purge trials and the Stalinist role in the destruction of the Spanish Revolution in the 1930's that formed the backdrop for his analysis it needed saying-and needs repeating today. No militant can hope to change society for the better if he or she does not make a clean break from bourgeois norms of morality, period.
Politics and morality obviously are not counterpoised but flow from the nature of the task. If the politics are not revolutionary then it is hard to see how the moral compass that leads to a revolutionary life can be. Again, Stalinism in its political guise as a form of international class collaborationism blurred the lines between what to a revolutionary is the norm and an ‘amoral’ or ‘anti-moral’ world-weary bureaucratic response. And that tension has not stopped with the defeat of Stalinism. Because leftists did not defeat Stalinism politically but rather it collapsed from its own internal moral decay and ineptitude that line has never been straightened out. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than today when revolutionaries use the bourgeois institutions against others in the labor movement, including other revolutionaries, to further their aims. Yes, of course we use these alien institutions when we fight the oppressors-that is part of our arsenal. No, we do not ask (really beg) the class enemy to adjudicate disputes within the labor movement. Learn to fight the political struggle for socialism the proper way. To get the necessary foundation for that way read this little book.
BOOK, REVIEW
THEIR MORALS AND OURS, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1969
One of the most tragic results of the Stalinization of a significant part of the international workers movement in the 20th century was the steep decline in the norms of revolutionary morality. In fact a persuasive argument can be made that the Stalinist lies, distortions and destruction of revolutionary cadre, as well as untold innocents, dragged the workers movement to a moral level below even the abysmal bourgeois hypocrisy of modern day liberalism and social democracy. But, although one would be hard pressed to refute that idea that is an argument for another day. Here, Leon Trotsky, as he had done in the political struggles to defend the ideas of the socialist revolution raised his lonely voice to defend revolutionary morality against the onslaught of Stalinist falsifiers, liberal cynics, social democratic hypocrites and some of his faint-hearted intellectual former ‘supporters’ who were beginning their rapid retreat from revolutionary politics in the run-up to World War II.
Trotsky’s argument is fairly simple and straightforward. Not only do the ruling classes own the means of production and control the educational, cultural and state apparatuses but impose their concept of morality on their society. Thus it follows, in order to break the stranglehold of the ruling classes, it is necessary for revolutionaries to develop their own moral sense- outside and in counter position- to the ruling classes. That truth may not be the most profound idea that Trotsky ever uttered but in light of the rise of fascism, the Stalinist Moscow Purge trials and the Stalinist role in the destruction of the Spanish Revolution in the 1930's that formed the backdrop for his analysis it needed saying-and needs repeating today. No militant can hope to change society for the better if he or she does not make a clean break from bourgeois norms of morality, period.
Politics and morality obviously are not counterpoised but flow from the nature of the task. If the politics are not revolutionary then it is hard to see how the moral compass that leads to a revolutionary life can be. Again, Stalinism in its political guise as a form of international class collaborationism blurred the lines between what to a revolutionary is the norm and an ‘amoral’ or ‘anti-moral’ world-weary bureaucratic response. And that tension has not stopped with the defeat of Stalinism. Because leftists did not defeat Stalinism politically but rather it collapsed from its own internal moral decay and ineptitude that line has never been straightened out. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than today when revolutionaries use the bourgeois institutions against others in the labor movement, including other revolutionaries, to further their aims. Yes, of course we use these alien institutions when we fight the oppressors-that is part of our arsenal. No, we do not ask (really beg) the class enemy to adjudicate disputes within the labor movement. Learn to fight the political struggle for socialism the proper way. To get the necessary foundation for that way read this little book.
