“In their persecution of revolutionists, the Thermidorians [those who react against the excesses a revolution, in this case, the Russian revolution] pour out all their hatred upon those who remind them of the past, and make them dread the future. The prisons, the remote corners of Siberia and Central Asia, the fast multiplying concentration camps, contain the flower of the Bolshevik Party, the most sturdy and true. Even in the solitary confinement prisons of Siberia the Oppositionists [that is, Trotskyists and others opposed to Stalin] are still persecuted with searches, postal blockades and hunger. In exile wives are forcibly separated from their husbands, with one sole purpose: to break their resistance and extract a recantation. But even those who recant are not saved. At the first suspicion or hint from some informer against them, they are subjected to redoubled punishment. Help given to exiles even by their relatives is prosecuted as a crime. Mutual aid is punished as a conspiracy.
… During these years [i.e., the years of the Great Purge 1934-1938] hundreds of Oppositionists, both Russian and foreign, have been shot, or have died of hunger strikes, or have resorted to suicide. Within the last twelve years, the authorities have scores of times announced to the world the final rooting out of the opposition. But during the “purgations” in the last month of 1935 and the first half of 1936, hundreds of thousands of members of the party were again expelled, among them several tens of thousands of “Trotskyists.” The most active were immediately arrested and thrown into prisons and concentration camps.
As to the rest, Stalin, through Pravda, openly advised the local organs not to give them work. In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. Exactly how many Bolsheviks have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since 1923, when the era of Bonapartism opened, we shall find out when we go through the archives of Stalin’s political police. How many of them remain in the underground will become known when the shipwreck of the bureaucracy begins.”
Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 11: Whither the Soviet Union (1936).
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch11.htm
Leon Trotsky (née Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879-1940), Bolshevik revolutionary, Marxist theorist and a close friend of Lenin, was a key figure in the Russian revolution and the early years of what became the Soviet Union, holding many important posts in the new socialist state including commander of the Red Army and People's Commissar of War. He was also among the first members of the Politburo. An opponent of Stalin, he was exiled from the Soviet Union but remained a major Marxist thinker until his death in 1940 in Mexico at the hands of an NKVD agent, who buried an ice axe into his skull. In his death throes Trotsky’s last words were “I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before." The world did not lament the passing of this evil man.
Neither Trotsky and Trostskyism are important today except to a few “Trots” and as a reminder of the fanaticism to which the “ideals” of socialism can be pursued by those committed to the complete destruction of the liberal Capitalist order. What is interesting about these particular passages is that when conducted by socialists the fight over the political order is one where no quarter is given, not even to fellow socialists. When one political faction gains complete control over the economy it always uses that control to destroy everyone who opposes it, both its avowed enemies and its former allies. In the case of the Russian revolution it would not have mattered if the Trotskyites has won over those allied with Stalin. For whoever loses, in socialism the treatment is the same: Banishment from participation in the economy and loss of all benefits it can provide.
This is why granting the government influence over a large and important part of the economy such as health care is so unwise. While not direct socialism, it is a step toward it because it weakens consumers in their relationship with producers. Power is disbursed in the private markets of the Capitalist order and because it is spread over many firms private power is challengeable by conducting business with a different supplier. Once vested with the authority of the state, however, those with political power inevitably become more determined and more difficult to deal with because they face no competition. Moreover, because the stakes in keeping power are so high for them, they will fight to keep their monopoly position, even within the group sharing that power, and the difficulties of creating countervailing power to dislodge them multiply.
The U.S. is blessed with a history very different from that of Russia. Let us pray that its history of decentralized economic institutions and coordination through markets can prevail over the growing tendency toward centralization of economic power at all levels of government we have seen in recent years. Russian history shows that this latter tendency is even more prone to disputes and disagreements than the competitive pressures of free markets.
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