AN INTERVIEW WITH IGNAZ/0 SILONE
27
the very opposite of those I have just described. They are, first of
all and ·above all, opposed to fascism and reaction in their own
country. They feel themselves bound in sympathy, first and fore·
most, with the working class and peasantry of their own country,
and, through them, with the workers of every country in the world.
They submit to no discipline beyond what every honest conscience
and sincere thought provides of itself. And so they will tell the
truth to every one, at all times, to enemies and to friends,
~ven
when the friends do not want to hear disagreeable truths.
Have you read Trotsky's pamphlet,
Their Morals and Ours?
What do you think of
it?
.
The pamphlet has only recently been translated into French
by
Victor Serge. I have read it, along with a number of critical
articles·it provoked. The criticisms as well as the pamphlet left me
with a painful impression, because of a fundamental evasion. In
spite of the limiting title of the pamphlet-a title which might sug–
gest that the author wanted to confine himself to a justification of
bolshevist political morality-Trotsky gives the impression, in
certain passages of his essay, where he wishes to theorize, that he
does not know or does not recognize the difference between ethical
standards and moral sentiments on the one hand, and actual morals
on the other-though these two concepts are well-differentiated
both theoretically and in practice. Trotsky's critics, those I have
had a chance to read, add to the confusion. They put a pin through
this or that episode in the history of bolshevism and declare: You
see! Two thousand years after Christ, and what sort of ethical
principles these Asiatics bring us to! But just as there is a differ–
ence between Christian morals and the ethical principles of Chris–
tianity, there is a similar difference between all morals and all
codes of ethics.
I should be hard put to it if I had to list the ethical principles
laid down by Lenin. Perhaps he formulated them in some work I
don't know about. But, quite apart from any intellectual formula–
tion, it is beyond question that the heroic life of Lenin and his
limitless devotion to the cause of socialism were guided by an
inward moral intuition into life and society which, as he matured,
he buttressed with the concepts of Marxist socialism. In a general
