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Trotsky was, of course, elated to hear the news, and at once cabled
Dewey: "Warmest greetings to the Chairman whose firmness, vigilance,
and high moral authority assured the success of the investigation. Long
life, Dr. Dewey!" Trotsky's journal,
The New International,
and his
numerous media outlets used the verdict to castigate Stalin and his poli–
CIes anew.
But Stalin was not finished. Trotsky's son Sedov died in France under
suspicious circumstances in February
1938.
Hearing the news, Dewey
cabled Leon and Natalia his "deepest sympathy in your terrible bereave–
ment." Trotsky cabled back "the warmest wishes for your health and
the sincerest admiration for your great personality." At this point, Trot–
sky himself had but two years
to
live. In
1940
a flunky for the Soviet
Secret Service worked his way into Trotsky's trust and then drove an ice
axe into his brain.
Before his death, Trotsky made a mistake with Dewey. Convinced
that he had made Dewey a convert
to
his ideas, or at least a sympathizer
with them, he invited Dewey to comment in
The New International
on
a lead article which he himself had just written.
It
was titled "Their
Morals and Ours," and appeared in June
1938 .
But he was wrong about Dewey. The "Not Guilty" judgment which
Dewey rendered was based on Dewey's concept of justice, not on his
political or ideological persuasions. At the end of the hearings, Dewey
had confided
to
James
T.
Farrell: "Trotsky's the most brilliant man I've
ever heard talk.. .but he needs a guardian." A brilliant rhetorician, he
lacked the guardianship of values . So, when Trotsky asked Dewey
to
judge him on philosophic grounds, Dewey was unsparing in his criti–
cism of Trotsky's improper conflation of means and ends, contained in
Trotsky's central claim: "A means can be justified only by its ends."
This was a favorite Deweyean theme. He began his essay"Means and
Ends" by noting that "the relation of means and ends has long been an
outstanding issue in morals." Dewey'S position was almost directly
opposite Trotsky's on this issue . Of course, means and ends are intri–
cately intertwined . In "The Future of Liberalism" Dewey wrote: "The
kind of means used, determines the kind of consequences actually
reached-the ends in the only sense in which 'ends' do not signify
abstractions." But how to adjust the balance of operations between
means and ends was the question. In Trotsky's essay Dewey had a con–
crete case-the kind he liked . By placing emphasis on the means of
revolution, Trotsky, not so differently from Stalin, Dewey argued,
would achieve the end of a Revolution embodying the means used to
achieve it-terror, coercion, control. The means would become the end.
