386
IRVING HOWE
crude
III
method and purpose. Yet for a Marxist theoretician
who
..0
fiercely and effectively criticized every move of the Stalinist re–
gime and who so contemptuously swept aside all of its pretexts for
the suppression of freedom, there should have been a stronger impetus
to turn back to the early years of Bolshevism and submit them to
the kind of objective critical study that historical distance alone makes
possible.
It
is very hard to imagine that Trotsky's influence in the future
will be of the kind he anticipated: a renewal of orthodox Marxism
in theory and proletarian revolution in practise, along the lines that
have come to be known as "Trotskyism." We are living in times
that disintegrate all fixed ideologies, and the idea of socialism, if it
is to survive as more than an historical memory or a label incongru–
ously attached to authoritarian states, will surely go through a good
many transmutations and critical revisions in the coming years. But
the writings of this extraordinary man are likely to survive, and the
example of his energy and heroism likely to grip the imagination of
generations to come. In the Eastern European countries heretics
turn instinctively to his forbidden books. In the West political think–
ers must confront his formidable presence, parrying his sharp
polemics and learning from his significant mistakes. Trotsky em–
bodied the modern historical crisis with an intensity of conscious–
ness and a gift for dramatic response which few of his contemporaries
could equal: he tried, on his own terms, to be equal to his time.
In his power and his fall, Leon Trotsky is one of the titans of our
century.
