Talking of extremism… There’s something I’ve been meaning to post on for some time in the light of the documented connections between Trotskyism and neoconservatives and the continued enthusiasm of some admirers of Trotsky for aspects of recent US foreign policy. Trotsky had a dictum, of which this passage from The Revolution Betrayed is just one example:
Foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of domestic policy, for it is conducted by the same ruling class and pursues the same historic goals.
I don’t think that’s obviously a true generalization, but nor is it a thought devoid of interest. Discuss, with reference to the domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration….
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.
As Scott intimates, the American parapolitical researcher Carl Oglesby independently discovered a similar conclusion, which was the phrase that sprung to my mind when watching the Bush/Saudi part of “Fahrenheit 9/11” that everyone has been so quick to dismiss as loony nutty conspiracy theories:
“What is often referred to as conspiracy theory is simply the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means”.
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.
Today it might be better said that foreign policy is an allegory for domestic policy. Domestic policy is all there really is, but sometimes the endless search for symbols, proxies, and surrogates reaches overseas.
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.
“During founder’s lifetime, at one time or another, Trotsky managed to espouse every mainstream ideology going with the single exception of National Socialism.”
Did Trotsky ever espouse bourgeois parliamentarism?
“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.
“Did Trotsky ever espouse bourgeois parliamentarism?”
The Mensheviks.
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.)
The Mensheviks were not bourgeois parliamentarians committed to ‘reform of Russia by constitutional means’; they were in favour of a revolution against Tsarism in alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie (which Trotsky wasn’t). Nor is it true that Trotsky espoused every mainstream ideology going, except Nazism. He was never, for example, a Stalinist, nor a liberal. His argument that the market remained necessary in the Soviet Union in the 1930s wasn’t an espousal of libertarianism, either, not even on the economic plane. It was purely an argument against what Marxists call ‘economic adventurism’.
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
Isn’t what Trotsky said a tautology? How many governments would intentionally pursue a foreign policy at odds with what they want to accomplish at home?
Of course, modern democracies are set up in order that one person cannot implement whatever they want without regard for the opinions of some others, so often coalitions are constructed which lead to inconsistencies across policy areas as everyone in the coalition wins on at least one matter that is dear to their heart. So we cannot expect foreign policy to be always consistent with domestic policy, but then we cannot expect domestic policy to be always consistent between different domestic policy areas.
But, laying those political difficulties aside, would you ever expect foreign policy to be disconnected from domestic policy, and if so would that be a good thing?
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.”
The quoted speciman of Trotsky is wishful thinking, not an observation.
At every level foreign policy has almost always been different from, and often at odds with, domestic policy. This has been true so often that you might almost write a book about the rare cases when it is not.
Trotsky tries an end-run on the truth by claiming that the goals of an elite must be congruent. With this he can always zig-zag on you by claiming that you just don’t undertand the TRUE goals of the elite because you have been baffled by bullshit.
Case study- at a time when the troops of the Confederacy needed weapons, munitions, and British diplomatic support, the leaders of the Confederacy embargoed the export of cotton, forcing the British to find alternate sources.
Now, that was just too d—n easy!
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.
Dunno . . . Trotsky’s dictum seems like the Clauswitz chestnut that war is politics by other means rotated 180 degrees around the X-axis. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you . . .
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.
I’m not sure that Trotsky’s assertion can be of much value in analyzing contemporary politics. Certainly, Bush’s detractors are likely to disapprove of his foreign policies as well as his domestic ones, and will draw negative links between them, while Bush’s supporters will generally approve of both his foreign and domestic policies and will draw positive connections between them. Ditto as to Clinton and, if he wins, Kerry. Perhaps a better formulation would be “Commentary on foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of commentary on domestic policy, for it is conducted by…”
More generally as to Trotsky’s statement, though: When would one ever expect a nation to pursue foreign policies that run counter to its domestic policies? Certainly, one may disagree as to whether a particular regime’s policies are truly in the national interest or have been corrupted somehow, but why would one ever expect those policies to differ in different arenas?
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.
You expect foreign policies to differ from domestic policies when different elites are in charge of the different efforts. This was, and probably still is, a problem when a ‘progressive monarch’ wants to modernize a nation with a strong landed nobility. It was a problem for the U.S. when manufacturing wanted tariffs and the gold standard and agriculture wanted free trade and free silver.
With apologies to scott martens, I was pointing out that the different elites in the Confederacy had different needs and goals, and this resulted in a fatal lack of coherence in their policy.
And, after all, it’s not like Trotskyism is a success we somehow need to explain.
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