Quote for the day

A lot of traditional Marxist generalisations about the ruling class and how it rules are true in general without being true in specific, and given such a proviso I’m with Trotsky. The war in Iraq was conducted in order to further other policies. Bush and Blair may well believe that they are doing the right thing independently of whatever domestic policy benefits it produced, but it’s always a lot easier to do what you believe is right when it’s also good for you in some other respect. What needs to be understood better, I think, is that the rule of a class or an oligarchy need not be a matter of evil men plotting to do evil in some dark chamber. It can be undertaken by sincere men operating in full view and still be oppressive, simply because it’s always easier to do the subset of things you think are right and that most benefit you than the subset that most benefits someone else.

The undoubted perennial appeal of Trotskyism is due to the remarkable plasticity of it and its adherents. During founder’s lifetime, at one time or another, Trotsky managed to espouse every mainstream ideology going with the single exception of National Socialism. He toured the ideological waterfront. At some point, he was bound to be politically correct.

At the London conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, Trotsky supported the Menshevik faction and its commitment to reform of Russia by constitutional means. By the Russian Revolution in 1917, he was an illustrious Bolshevik activist in Petrograd, becoming in due course the highly successful Red Army commander during the civil war, after the revolution. Following Lenin’s death in 1924, in the ensuing power struggle with Stalin, Trotsky was an advocate of world socialism and permanent revolution. Consigned to exile in Mexico after 1929, he opposed centralised state planning:

“If a universal mind existed, of the kind that projected itself into the scientific fancy of Laplace – a mind that could register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society, that could measure the dynamics of their motion, that could forecast the results of their inter-reactions – such a mind, of course, could a priori draw up a faultless and exhaustive economic plan, beginning with the number of acres of wheat down to the last button for a vest. The bureaucracy often imagines that just such a mind is at its disposal; that is why it so easily frees itself from the control of the market and of Soviet democracy.” – from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1932/1932-sovecon.htm

Von Mises and Milton Friedman in concert couldn’t have put it better.

I’m not overly familiar with any of this, so I’m curious – is Trotsky claiming that the ideology of the leadership class is structured in a specific way that yields a classable set of means and ends? So solutions to policy questions, foreign or domestic, are similarly structured and yield analogous results?

And is the question of whether this can reasonably be applied to Bush contingent on the scalability of the argument? Bush and Kerry are both from the leadership class; to the extent that we distinguish between them, we claim that the distinction reflects a structural distinction that yields different policy solutions. Is that right?

Just trying to understand what’s going on here.

“Connections between Trotskyism and neoconservatives” and “foreign policy is a continuation of domestic policy” are two completely unrelated concepts.

Similarity between Trotskyism and Neoconism is this dogma of a small morally superior vanguard force (be it proletarian party or Pentagon) that should lead (by force if necessary) dimwitted and reluctant world’s masses to their bright and happy future (be it communist paradise or democratic free market paradise).

“Foreign policy is a continuation of domestic policy” seems like a trivial observation.

The claim that Trotsky was a “flip flopper” seems a bit misguided to me. Trotsky was never a Menshevik, except in the sense that he voted with the minority on the famous issue of definition of party member at the 1903 Congress. Until 1917, he was a “conciliator” seeking unity of the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks while staying outside either faction. Anyway, it is anachronistic to think of the Mensheviks as social democrats (or, for that matter, the Bolsheviks as post-1917 Communists.)

For alternative and independent perspectives on the fractious politics of the Mensheviks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensheviks
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/Glossary/Menshev.html

The point seems to be that foreign policy is a function of domestic class relations, not of international anarchy as per realism.

Gramsci: “Do international relations precede or follow (logically) fundamental social relations? There can be no doubt that they follow.”

Nope. Trotsky didn’t say that the ruling class wasn’t a bunch of incompetent inbreeds. The Confederate leadreship still pursued the same goals abroad as at home. Their intent at all times and places was to sustain the south’s three tier caste system. Keep the large plantation owners and pseudo-nobility on top, black folk in chains on the planatation, and the buckrah too happy at not being black to realise that their fellow whites were screwing them over. Not being any good at it is whole different matter.

That was way too easy. You have to understand, the idea that if something happens it must be rational is an element of rational choice theory, not socialism.

The important point is that state policy is driven by the desires of the people in charge, rather than by abstract principles (e.g. “military humanism”). It is, admittedly, obvious when you think about it, but understandably the elites bullshit as much as possible to conceal the facts, because you and I might well not want to send our boys off to war so that some domestic corporation can make a higher profit — and yet the leadership may need that corporation’s contributions for their next election.

Of course this doesn’t automatically apply always — say, when countries are attacked — but then, in crisis, there’s always a possibility that governments might choose altruism.

mfb: Often, desires of the people in charge reflect abstract principles. George W. Bush is a good example of this. He sees the world and shapes his policies, both domestic and foreign, from a Christian perspective. Example: his stances on the U.N. Population Fund and stem cell research. The Middle East is a battleground between forces of good and evil. Homosexuality is a sin.