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isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

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DEFEAT IN VICTORY<br />

in public on <strong>the</strong> relationship between <strong>the</strong> trade unions and <strong>the</strong><br />

state.<br />

Trotsky, unrepentant, sulked. At <strong>the</strong> beginning of December,<br />

at a closed sesSion of <strong>the</strong> Tsektran, he returned to <strong>the</strong> attack on<br />

trade unionists who, as he said, had been good at conducting<br />

strikes in <strong>the</strong> old days but showed little understanding of <strong>the</strong><br />

needs of a Socialist economy. He defended his practice of<br />

overruling <strong>the</strong>m, made light of <strong>the</strong> demand for elections in <strong>the</strong><br />

trade unions, and castigated those who cried out that a new<br />

bureaucracy was reviving Tsarist methods of government.<br />

'Bureaucracy ...',he replied, 'was not a discovery ofTsardom.<br />

It has represented a whole epoch in <strong>the</strong> development of mankind',<br />

an epoch by no means closed. A competent, hierarchically<br />

organized civil service had its merits; and Russia suffered not<br />

from <strong>the</strong> excess but from <strong>the</strong> lack of an efficient bureaucracy.<br />

He made this point repeatedly, arguing that for <strong>the</strong> sake of<br />

efficiency it was necessary to grant certain limited privileges<br />

to <strong>the</strong> bureaucracy. He thus made himself <strong>the</strong> spokesman of <strong>the</strong><br />

managerial groups, and this later enabled Stalin to taunt him<br />

plausibly with being <strong>the</strong> 'patriarch of <strong>the</strong> bureaucrats' . 1 He<br />

was confident, Trotsky said, that he could win popular support<br />

for his policy; but <strong>the</strong> economic and social breakdown left no<br />

time for <strong>the</strong> application of <strong>the</strong> democratic process, which<br />

worked with unbearable slowness, because of <strong>the</strong> low cultural<br />

and political level of <strong>the</strong> Russian masses. 'What you call bossing<br />

and working through nominees is in inverse proportion to <strong>the</strong><br />

enlightenment of <strong>the</strong> masses, to <strong>the</strong>ir cultural standards, political<br />

consciousness, and <strong>the</strong> strength of our administrative<br />

machinery."<br />

Once again <strong>the</strong> Central Committee rebuffed him. Trotsky<br />

fretfully reminded Lenin and <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r members of how often<br />

<strong>the</strong>y had privately urged him, <strong>the</strong> 'trouble-shooter', to act<br />

ruthlessly and disregard considerations of democracy. It was<br />

disloyal of <strong>the</strong>m, he remarked, to pretend in public that <strong>the</strong>y<br />

defended <strong>the</strong> democratic principle against him. 3<br />

The deeper ill which afflicted <strong>the</strong> whole system of government,<br />

and of which this tug-of-war was merely a symptom, lay in <strong>the</strong><br />

1<br />

Stalin, Sochinnrya, vol. vi, p. 29.<br />

• Trotsky, Soclii11et!1

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