The Cultural Front:
Leon Trotsky
T
James T. Farrell
I
HE LIFE OF LEON TROTSKY
is one of the great tragic dramas of modern
history. Pitting his brain and will against the despotic rulers of a great
empire, fully conscious of the power, the resources, the cunning and
cruelty of his enemy, Trotsky had one weapon at his command-his ideas.
His courage never faltered; his will never broke. His children were mur·
dered or driven to suicide; his friends, his co-workers and secretaries were
killed. His entire generation was annihilated. He lived the life of a pris·
oner, continually exposed to the blow of an assassin. He was fatalistic
enough to know that he would probably not live to see his ideas triumph.
Nevertheless, he accepted without a moment's hesitation all the risk.
involved in the propagation of his doctrines. Finally, unable to refute his
ideas, they drove a pickaxe into his brain.
During the last forty years Leon Trotsky's life was consecrated to one
end-the socialist revolution. It was with the greatest of contempt that
he looked upon the men in power who had traded their historic roles for
portfolios. And how did their conduct compare with his when they too lost
power and were forced into exile? Nomadic statesmen, they traveled from
capital to capital begging favors from bourgeois public opinion,
in·
triguing, maneuvering, manipulating, with the hope that perhaps the Quai
d'Orsay, Downing Street, or the White House might restore their port·
folios. But Trotsky was big enough to stand alone, always rising to the
level of his historic position. In exile he produced book after book,
a
brilliant series of works unmatched in our time that, even more than the
example of his life, remain the legacy of future generations. And you can·
not drive a pickaxe into ideas.
I admired Trotsky as an historical figure, and Trotsky the man
inspired me with affection. Even his critics have recognized Trotsky's
brilliance as a writer; but his work is more than brilliant-it is fertile,
suggestive, illuminating. Compared to its method, acuteness and high
seriousness, the productions of our American political scientists and jour·
nalists seem morally flabby, spineless, full of facile improvisations. No
political writer alive today can rival his record of almost clairvoyant pre·
dictions of later events.
Most of Trotsky's critics have presented him as a modern
Machiavell~
hungry for personal power, who even in exile was desperately seeking to
recapture it. This conception of Trotsky as a power-hungry Machiavellian
falsifies his life. Trotsky, the materialist, took ideas with the greatest
seriousness. He defended Marxism dogmatically. He defended dialec·
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