Springtime for
Trotsky
by Daniel
McCarthy
In most circles the word "fascist" is a generic pejorative,
an epithet that conveys a moral judgment rather than a description.
We Americans have perhaps become so accustomed to this use of the
word that we don't even think about it. We should, because "fascist"
in this sense was specifically coined by the Communist revolutionary
Leon Trotsky to identify all of his rivals, even Stalin, with Hitler
and Mussolini – and with "the right." Its use reveals the undying
influence of Trotsky.
By calling Stalin a fascist, Trotsky and his followers could
claim that "real" socialism is not a murderous ideology. They could
further claim that all true threats to human dignity and freedom
really come from the right. Although Trotsky himself had a rather
fateful encounter with an icepick in 1940, Trotkyists today continue
his fight on behalf of international social democracy. These days
however Trotskyists prefer to call themselves
"neoconservatives."
Over the past two months the word "Islamofascism" has gained
currency. The
term has appeared in National Review Online, The Weekly
Standard, and at Andrew
Sullivan's website, among other places. To a vigilant eye the
word "Islamofascism" looks suspiciously like a classic Trotskyist
coinage. You don't have to be a fan of either fascism or Islamic
terrorism to wonder if there's more than meets the eye to this
word.
"Islamofascist" was coined or at least popularized by Stephen
Schwartz in his recent Spectator article "Ground
Zero and the Saudi Connection." Note that within the article
Schwartz singles out Stalin and Bolshevism for criticism, rather
than Communism in general.
Schwartz, who now
writes from National Review Online, is a hardly abashed
Trotskyist. Here's how a one-time fellow
traveler of Schwartz's describes him:
Schwartz's parents had been members of the pro-Moscow
Communist Party U.S.A. In reaction against the Stalinist milieu he'd
grown up in, he'd become a Trotskyist in his teens and eventually
gravitated towards the left communism of the FOR [Fomento Obrero
Revolucionario]. Schwartz and I agreed that all forms of Leninism
were counter-revolutionary. This didn't stop Schwartz from intensely
identifying with Leon Trotsky and blaming anything that peeved him,
from bad weather to poor table service, on the machinations of
"Stalinists".
By attaching himself to the FOR, Schwartz could gain
notice among Trotskyists as the author of the most extreme left
English language publication close to the Trotskyist spectrum, and
guarantee himself a place in the future as a wax mannequin in the
ludicrous icepickhead pantheon that was so dear to his
heart.
And here is
Schwartz in his own words, referring to information he gleaned from
reseraching the Venona transcripts:
Dismissing questions about the guilt of Alger Hiss,
Lauchlin Currie, and Harry Dexter White, Schwartz writes: "I am much
less interested in the fates of these three bourgeois careerists
than I am in those of such dissident revolutionists as Ignacy
Porecki-Reiss, Andreu Nin and Leon Trotsky." "I have never
understood the moral compass of certain U.S. intellectuals who
consider the sufferings of White and Hiss, or of the heirs of
Currie, to be more compellingly tragic than the assassination of
Reiss, the death by torture of Nin or the smashing of Trotsky's
brain by an ice ax" by Soviet agents, writes
Schwartz.
For Schwartz, Stalinist assassinations are something of an
obsession. He
wrote a piece for the Weekly Standard earlier this year
hypothesizing that Stalin murdered Frankfurt School theorist Walter
Benjamin. From this article and his quote above it's hard not to
conclude that Schwartz feels a great deal of continuing sympathy for
Trotsky and the Trotskyists, and not just for the grisly ways they
met their deaths. Was Trotsky's assassination really "tragic," as
Schwartz says?
The Trotskyist pedigree of neoconservatism is no secret; the
original neocon, Irving Kristol, acknowledges it with relish: "I
regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a
single bitter memory." Nor is there any doubt about the influence –
one might almost say hegemony – of "former Communists" on the
post-war conservative movement. Just read
the words of one neocon, Seymour Martin Lipset:
From the anti-Stalinists who became conservatives –
including James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Irving Kristol –
the Right gained a political education and, in some cases, an
injection of passion. The ex-radicals brought with them the
knowledge that ideological movements must have journals and
magazines to articulate their perspectives. In 1955, for example,
William F. Buckley, Jr., launched National Review at the urging of
Willi Schlamm, a former German Communist. In its early years,
National Review was largely written and edited by the Buckley family
and a handful of former Communists, Trotskyists, and socialists,
such as Burnham and Chambers. It played a major role in creating the
Goldwaterite and Reaganite New Right and in stimulating an
anti-Soviet foreign policy.
Worthy of note is that while ex-Stalinists tended to denounce
their Communist roots vehemently, neoconservatives like Kristol and
Schwartz remain at least wistfully fond of Trotsky. It's also worth
noting that the neoconservative preoccupation with exporting social
democracy abroad through war and mercantilism reflects the original
split between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky
argued that there could not be "socialism in one country" but rather
that the revolution had to be truly international. And so the
neoconservatives push for "human rights" and social democratic
governments to be imposed on Serbia, for example, by force of
arms.
And so fifty-six years after the death of Hitler we're still
fighting a war against "fascism" in one form or another. We're still
fighting to make the world safe for (social) democracy. Somewhere in
the bowels of hell Leon Trotsky must be smiling.
Postscript: I'm indebted to Paul Gottfried, whose lectures at
the Mises Institute's History of Liberty conference inspired and
informed much of this article.
November 6, 2001
Daniel McCarthy
[send him mail] is a
graduate student in classics at Washington University in St.
Louis.
Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com
Daniel McCarthy
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