Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The ... - Indymedia

The Balance of Criticism 179Revolution. That narrow-minded, reactionary pedant, Taine, imaginedthat he was making a most profound discovery when he establishedthe fact that a few years after the execution of Louis XVI, the Frenchpeople were poorer and more unhappy than under the old regime. Butthe whole point of the matter is that such events as the great FrenchRevolution cannot be viewed on the scale of ‘a few years.’ Without thegreat revolution, the entire new France would never have been possible,and Taine himself would still have been a clerk in the service of somecontractor of the old regime instead of being able the blacken the revolutionthat opened a new career to him.Trotsky then applied this perspective to the Russian Revolution:A still greater historical perspective is necessary to view the October revolution.Only hopeless dullards can quote as evidence against it the factthat in twelve years it has not yet created general peace and prosperity. Ifone adopts the scale of the German Reformation and the French Revolution. . . one must express amazement at the fact that a backward andisolated Russia twelve years after the revolution has been able to insurefor the masses of the people a standard of living that is not lower thatthat existing on the eve of the war. That alone is a miracle of its kind. Butof course the significance of the October revolution does not lie in that.The revolution is an experiment in a new social regime, an experimentthat will undergo many changes and will probably be remade anew fromits very foundations. It will assume an entirely different character on thebasis of the newest technical achievements. But after a few decades andcenturies, the new social order will look back on the October revolutionas the bourgeois order does on the German Reformation or the FrenchRevolution. This is so clear, so incontestably clear, that even the professorsof history will understand it, though only after many years.Finally, Trotsky extended this reflection to the significance of his own life:And what of your personal fate? I hear a question, in which curiosity ismixed with irony . . . Since my exile, I have more than once read musingsin the newspapers on the subject of the ‘tragedy’ that has befallen me. Iknow no personal tragedy. I know the change of two chapters of the revolution.One American paper which published an article of mine accompaniedit with a profound note to the effect that in spite of the blows theauthor has suffered, he had, as evidenced by his article, preserved his clarity