Trotskycons? (Neo-Con Scholar Confesses Neo-Conservatism Was Founded By Trotskyite Communists)

National Review ^ | June 11, 2003 | Steven Schwartz

[ComtedeMaistre]

Trotskycons?

Pasts and present.

By Stephen Schwartz

EXCERPTS

".....This path had been pioneered much earlier by two Trotskyists: James Burnham, who became a founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol, who worked on Encounter magazine. Burnham was joined at NR by Suzanne LaFollette, who, piquantly enough, retained some copyrights to Trotskyist material until her death. But they were not the only people on the right who remained, in some degree, sentimental about their left-wing past. Willmoore Kendall, for example, was, as I recall, a lifelong contributor to relief for Spanish radical leftist refugees living in France. Above all, Burnham and Kristol, in a certain sense, did not renounce their pasts. They acknowledged that they had evolved quite dramatically away from their earlier enthusiasms. But they did not apologize, did not grovel, did not crawl and beg forgiveness for having, at one time, been stirred by the figure of Trotsky......"

"......That is, of course, insufficient for some people. There remain those for whom any taint of leftism is a permanent stain, and who cannot abide an individual who, having in the past been a Trotskyist, does not now caper and grimace in self-loathing over the historical truth, which is that, yes, Trotsky commanded the Red Army, and yes, Trotsky wielded a sword, and yes, Trotsky, a man of moral consistency if nothing else, took responsibility for the crimes of the early Bolshevik regime. But of that, more anon......"

"......Well, I consider Beichman's intent more sinister: to exclude Hitchens and myself from consideration as reliable allies in the struggle against Islamist extremism, because we have yet to apologize for something I, for one, will never consider worthy of apology. There is clearly a group of heresy-hunters among the original neoconservatives who resent having to give way to certain newer faces, with our own history and culture. These older neoconservatives cannot take yes for an answer, and they especially loathe Hitchens. But nobody ever asked Norman Podhoretz to apologize for having once written poetry praising the Soviet army. Nobody ever asked the art critic Meyer Schapiro, who was also a Trotskyist, to flog himself for assisting illegal foreign revolutionaries at a time when it was considered unpatriotic, to say the least. Nobody ever asked Shachtman or Burnham, or, for that matter, Sidney Hook, or Edmund Wilson, or a hundred others, to grovel and beg mercy for inciting war on capitalism in the depths of the Great Depression........"

".....One might also add that nobody ever asked Jay Lovestone and Bertram Wolfe, ex-Communists whose company Beichman doubtless would prefer, to apologize for having defended the Soviet purge trials and the Stalinist state, long after so many of the brave band that carried a banner with the strange device of the Fourth International were murdered for their defiance of Stalinism. And I have yet to read an apology by Beichman for his own involvement with the Communist network......"

"......To my last breath I will defend the Trotsky who alone, and pursued from country to country, and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot little house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling of Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state, as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists, and Stalinists in their second childhood, make of it what they will......."

[ComtedeMaistre]

In a discussion thread I started last week, I tried to show why Ronald Reagan was never a neo-conservative, at any time in his entire political career, begining with when he ran for governor of California in 1966: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/926037/posts

My purpose was to challenge those who claim that, because Reagan shared the same views on foreign policy as neo-cons, he was one of their own. Any Freeper who voted for Reagan in the 1976 Presidential primary against Gerald Ford (as I did), at a time when neo-cons supported Scoop Jackson in the Democrat Primary, can tell you with certainty that Reagan was never a neo-con.

Another point I made in that discussion thread that was hotly disputed, is the fact that Leon Trotsky, the communist founder of the Red Army, is the intellectual godfather of many of the older neo-conservatives. Most younger neo-cons dispute this fact, because they are ignorant of the historical heritage of the neo-conservative movement. In fact, younger neo-cons are not well read, and simply assume neo-con is the ideological middle-ground between a liberal and a conservative. And because they themselves were never communists (unlike the older neo-cons) they deny that neo-conservatism had its origins in Trotskyite communism.

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky. He is one of the few neo-cons around today, who dares to admit that he admires Trotsky.

[dighton]

Trotskycons?

[dennisw]

You make a mountain from a molehill. Lame. Do I rate Trotsky ahead of Lenin, Stalin, Mao? You better believe it.

[Dr. Frank fan]

People who write about this "neo-cons as Trotskyists" meme never seem to actually describe just exactly (a) what the hell is "Trotskyism" (I honestly don't know, it's never come up, and I've never given a damn to be honest, all Reds look the same to me, so sue me.. ;-) which was supposed to have distinguished it from other socialisms/communisms, and (b) which supposedly "Trotskyist" views the "neo-cons" have, in any detail.

The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:

Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)

This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.

[Dr. Frank fan]

People who write about this "neo-cons as Trotskyists" meme never seem to actually describe just exactly (a) what the hell is "Trotskyism" (I honestly don't know, it's never come up, and I've never given a damn to be honest, all Reds look the same to me, so sue me.. ;-) which was supposed to have distinguished it from other socialisms/communisms, and (b) which supposedly "Trotskyist" views the "neo-cons" have, in any detail.

The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:

Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)

This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.

[Restorer]

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky.

Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.

BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.

[Restorer]

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky.

Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.

BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.

[Captain Kirk]

Trotsky was a true believer commie when compared to Lenin. He supported the concept of conscripted industrial armies (which Lenin rejected) and slamed Lenin's more free market New Economic Policy as a "capitalist sell-out." Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.

[dennisw]

I would say you're wrong since Trotsky didn't have it in him to be a stone killer like Lenin and Stalin. A ruthless despot. Yes, he had some theories but he was a wimp compared to them.

[Maximilian]

Trotsky didn't have it in him to be a stone killer like Lenin and Stalin

Read the whole article by Schwartz. He is offered the opportunity -- but declines -- to denounce Trotsky as "the man who "mercilessly wiped out rebellious anti-Bolshevik soldiers and sailors at Kronstadt." In his view, Trotsky couldn't make an omelette (Communist revolution) without breaking a few eggs (slaughter of innocents).

[Maximilian]

Trotsky was a true believer commie when compared to Lenin.

You are correct that Trotsky was possibly the most dangerous of the group, even when compared with world-class murderers like Lenin and Stalin. Trotsky is the one who was determined to spread the revolution all around the world. He wasn't satisfied with merely Russia, he wanted "international socialism" to be truly international.

Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.

Russia had its own Pol Pot, and then some. The danger was that he could have been Pol Pot to the world, not just to Russia.

[dennisw]

Same applies to Stalin/Mao/Lenin/Kaganovich but multiplied by 1000. Trotsky was pussycat compared to them. As Marx said "Quantity changes quality"

[dennisw]

Russia had its own Pol Pot, and then some. The danger was that he could have been Pol Pot to the world, not just to Russia.

That's all speculation since Trotsky didn't make the cut. He wasn't ruthless enough to preserve his Soviet power in Russia and was exiled. He wasn't ruthless enough, cunning enough to remain while Stalin ruled. But many others were. He was too much the "theoretician" (intellectual) and not enough the wielder of ruthless power.

Trotsky was second only to Lenin in the Politburo, and Lenin viewed him as exceptionally able. He backed Lenin's major policy innovations, but had his own plans for industrializing Russia. When a stroke removed Lenin from active politics in May 1922, Trotsky was not in a position to take over. Never particularly adept at party politics, he failed to outmaneuver the troika of Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin that took power. Although he put himself at the head of a loosely knit left opposition, Trotsky's polemic salvos were no match for Stalin's bureaucratic party machine. In 1925 his adversaries removed him from the Commissariat of War; in 1926 they expelled him from the Politburo; and in 1928 Stalin exiled him to Central Asia and in 1929 expelled him from the USSR.
Trotsky spent the rest of his life seeking a safe place to compose his savage critiques of Stalinist Russia. In Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico he produced a flood of publications, including an autobiography, My Life (1930; trans. 1930); an unmatched History of the Russian Revolution (3 vol., 1931-33; trans. 1932-33); an insightful The Revolution Betrayed (1937); and searing articles on the major issues of his day (Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, the Spanish civil war). A Stalinist agent fatally wounded Trotsky on August 20, 1940, in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the following day.

[Maximilian]

I apologize if this article is off-topic compared to my usual Catholic ping list, but this article is so important, and the debate is so interesting, that I hope everyone finds it informative.

The first article described the links between Trotsky's "Fourth International" and the usual gang of neo-conservatives.
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=EC4AD553-8A1D-4324-8D37-A99B2DFF9F85

Then Beichman in National Review Online denounced the article as slander for linking neo-cons to Trotsky.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-beichman060903.asp

Then Schwartz, a leading neo-con, attacks Beichman for being an ex-Stalinist who is attacking the noble Trotsky for his own left-wing idealogical purposes, and defends the original article in the National Post.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-schwartz061103.asp

People would claim this was preposterous if you had written it as fiction.

[Maximilian]

I apologize if this article is off-topic compared to my usual Catholic ping list, but this article is so important, and the debate is so interesting, that I hope everyone finds it informative.

The first article described the links between Trotsky's "Fourth International" and the usual gang of neo-conservatives.
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=EC4AD553-8A1D-4324-8D37-A99B2DFF9F85

Then Beichman in National Review Online denounced the article as slander for linking neo-cons to Trotsky.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-beichman060903.asp

Then Schwartz, a leading neo-con, attacks Beichman for being an ex-Stalinist who is attacking the noble Trotsky for his own left-wing idealogical purposes, and defends the original article in the National Post.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-schwartz061103.asp

People would claim this was preposterous if you had written it as fiction.

[Maximilian]

Sorry about the duplicate post.

[Maximilian]

That's all speculation since Trotsky didn't make the cut.

Just because Trotsky lost the internal struggle with Stalin is no proof that he wouldn't have been just as ruthless or worse if he had gained ultimate power. In the meantime, Schwartz defiantly states that Trotskyites like him do not admire the intellectual Trotsky, but rather "Trotsky, the Father of the Red Army."

[11th Earl of Mar]

KEYWORDS: COMMUNISTS; LEFTISTS; NEOCOMMIES; NEOCONSERVATIVES; TROTSKY; Click to Add Keyword

Add another key word:

JEWS!!!!

[Archimedes2000]

>>>>>>Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky. He is one of the few neo-cons around today, who dares to admit that he admires Trotsky.<<<<

But nothing that Steven Schwartz stated in the article you linked provides any such linkage, nor is there an admission that Schwartz "admires Trotsky." Instead, Schwartz points out that Trotsky was man enough to admit he was wrong, that Trotsky condemned the enabling alliance between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's communism, and that Trotsky was murdered for such opposition.

So what? I state that to the extent that Rudolph Hess opposed Hitler, and tried to make peace with Britain, he is to be admired. Does this make me a "Nazi"?

[Reactionary]

"One thing must be observed here: We are almost alone among younger neoconservatives in boasting such credentials. I recently received a hilarious e-mail from a Trotskyist who asked me if it were true Paul D. Wolfowitz and Richard Perle had been Shachtmanites. That is absurd. By the time they emerged, the Shachtmanites were all quite long in the tooth. Nor did Bill Kristol ever follow in his father's path. Indeed, most of the original Shachtmanites who became neoconservatives have retired from the scene."

There it is. The entire thing is another fabrication on the part of a Leftist writer who's attempting to link a handful of ex-Trotskyites who because neo-conservatives to the neo-conservative movement as a whole.

In other words, it's bit like saying that since David Horowitz is an ex-communist and now a popular right-wing author, the ghost of Stalin haunts the right-wing publishing industry. Patently idiotic, of course, but standard fair for the guilt-by-association crowd.