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

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THE PROPHET ARMED
men of the intelligentsia into reliable leaders of an immature
and timid labour movement. But Lenin was merely trying to
force the pace of history: for to be in possession of a proletarian
doctrine, such as ~arxism, 'was no substitute for a politically
developed proletariat' . 1 Lenin distrusted the masses and adopted
a haughty attitude towards their untutored activities, arguing
that the workers by themselves could not rise from trade unionism
to revolutionary socialism, and that socialist ideology was
brought into the Labour movement 'from outside', by the
revolutionary intelligentsia. This, Trotsky wrote, was the theory
of an 'orthodox theocracy'; and Lenin's scheme of organization
was fit for a party which would 'substitute itself for the working
classes', act as proxy in their name and on their behalf, regardless
of what the workers felt and thought.
To this 'substitutism' (zamestitelstvo), as Trotsky called it, to
this conception of a party acting as a locum tenens for the proletariat,
he opposed Axelrod's plan for a 'broadly based party',
modelled on European social democratic partics. 2 'Lenin's
methods lead to this: the party organization [the caucus) at
first substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the Central
Committee substitutes itself for the organization; and finally a
single "dictator" substitutes himself for the Central Committee
....' 3 'The party must seek the guarantee of its stability
in its own base, in an active and self-reliant proletariat, and not
in its top caucus, which the revolution ... may suddenly sweep
away with its wing ... .' After an ironical travesty of Lenin's
'hideous, dissolute, and demagogical' style, 4 and after some
ridicule directed at Lenin's attempt to impose discipline on the
party, Trotsky asked: 'Is it so difficult to sec that any serious
group ... when it is confronted by the dilemma whether it
should, from a sense of discipline, silently efface itself, or,
_regardless of discipline, struggle for survival-will undoubtedly
choose the latter course ... and say: perish that "discipline",
which suppresses the vital interests of the movcmen t.' History will
not say that discipline should have prevailed even if the world
had to prrish; it will eventually vindicate those who had 'the
fuller and the deeper understanding of the tasks of revolution' .s
The most curious part of the pamphlet is its last chapter on
1
N. Trotsky, }'{.;;hi Po:iticheskye Zadachi, p. 23.
3 Ibid., p. 54.
4
Ibid., p. 75.
• Ibid., p. 50.
5 Ibid., p. 72.