*From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- Practical Problems In Building A Socialist Society

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his 1923 article, "The Struggle For Cultured Speech".


BOOK REVIEW

PROBLEMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE, LEON TROTSKY, MONAD PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973


Sometimes those of us embattled socialists still trying to propagandize for the socialist worldview get so totally caught up in that fight that we at times neglect the goals of our efforts. No so Leon Trotsky who, despite being in a continual fight inside the Russian Communist Party in the 1920’s to save and extend the Russian Revolution, from time to time wrote essays and gave speeches on behalf of those goals. The book under review contains a wide-ranging selection of some of the everyday issues and examples of the aspirational messages given by him at the time. Although some of those issues are particular to the Russian situation, such as illiteracy and wide spread alcohol abuse, due to the underdevelopment of Russian society at that time (and unfortunately now as well) some of the aspirational essays should be taken to heart by socialists working today.

Generally, when educated people speak of culture they are referring to “high culture”, the arts and the like. Trotsky was not unaware of that distinction and wrote many enduring essays elsewhere on the subjects of literature and the arts. Here Trotsky looks at the deeper meaning of culture for the mass of society. That is those characteristics and manners of behavior that would lead to a more educated workforce, a more enlightened population and that would give the fight for a socialist society a gigantic push forward. Thus, he wrote about the problems of endemic alcoholism, illiteracy, swearing, the fight against religious superstition, the fight for cleanliness and promptness and the like. Except in a mocking manner most cultural writers do not take such issues seriously other than to distance themselves from the habits of the underclasses. Yet here was a big-time intellectual, revolutionary leader, and in this reviewer’s opinion an exemplar of communist man, harping on the necessity of acquiring just such virtues.

Part of the compilation in this book is also taken up with Trotsky’s daydreaming in print about how a future socialist and then communist classless society might look. He did not neglect the importance of using the preexisting industrial apparatus left from capitalism as the starting point for his analysis. He also presents many interesting predictions about the use of technology, including nuclear technology, and mass communications to make the transition easier. However, Trotsky’s dreams certainly do not include a theory of “barrack communism”, that is, the equality of all citizens based on scarcity or return to a more primitive form of society. On the contrary, Trotsky’s communist future is explicitly based on abundance so that the question of daily survival is taken off the agenda for the mass of humankind. Then society will, as a matter of course, develop many great political thinkers, literary writers and other types of geniuses and put the geniuses of past societies in the shade. Yes, I can get behind goals like that. Yes, those are what the goals of socialism are all about.