TROTSKY IS DEAD
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But it is significant of the superiority, both intellectual and
moral, of Marxist revolutionary culture over bourgeois culture that
the resemblance is only-a resemblance. While Trotsky all his life
worked for his principles, with intellectual consistency and a
superb disregard for the effects on his career, Churchill's political
career has been opportunistic to the point of cynicism. There is a
good deal of the adventurer about Churchill, something slick and
cheap and vulgar in a grandiose way, like Cecil Rhodes. There is
a vast difference in quality, also, between their histories.
Churchill's style is the rhetoric of a politician gifted with an
exceptional ear for language and a fine sense of drama; it is always
a little too grand for its content, a little too strained in its effort to
rise to the great occasions. His rhetoric is the inflated "official"
kind: "the smiling fields of France," "every British heart burned
for Belgium," etc. It is saved only by the vigor and elan of the
narrative and the bold design, which, for all the coarseness of the
detail, does manage to convey the sweep of events. Trotsky's his·
torical writing has all the virtues of Churchill's, and also a solidity,
a restraint and mature power which are quite lacking in the Eng–
lishman's style.
So, too, with their understanding of history. Churchill is
fascinated with the technical apparatus of war, the strategic moves
and
counter-moves; in his pages war becomes a gigantic game. His
historical concepts are based on a Kiplingesque enthusiasm for
"glory," "Old England," and so on. It is clear he has accepted
the social concepts of his class and era without the slightest reflec–
tion. (His lack of consciousness in these matters, indeed, makes it
possible for him to be the free-lance opportunist he is, shifting
without apparent difficulty from the extreme right wing of Tory
imperialism to his present amicable collaboration with the Labor
Party.) Trotsky has all the sensibility of Churchill to the external
drama of great events, but he has also an understanding of the
meaning of these events. He is conscious of what his opponents
think
as well as of what he thinks, and of the general pattern which
overlays both viewpoints. Where Churchill is interested in the
drama of events, Trotsky is more interested in the drama of the
historical forces behind the events. Of Churchill one thinks,
"remarkable that a politician should write so well"; of Trotsky,
"remarkable that an intellectual should be so gifted in politics."
