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generator: pandoc
title: 'What Do The Trotskyists Say?'
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2020-05-06T20:50:05Z
\~The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism -- that of
Feuerbach included -- is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is
conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as
sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in
contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed
abstractly by idealism -- which, of course, does not know real, sensuous
activity as such.
\~Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845.
PART 1
1. To say is to do.
2. The Trotskyists say a great many things, and they confuse people.
They are most likely the most impenetrable of the socialists in
terms of their creed and tradition.
3. Here I talk not about orthodox Trotskyists, which are quite
transparent to approach and comprehend when they speak.
4. Here I talk about the unorthodox Trotskyists, those that formed the
former ISO, what in Australia is known as Socialist Alternative, and
what in Britain was known as the Socialist Worker's Party.
5. The Trotskyists believe everyone had failed, but they have failed
the best. They believe they are holding a candle in a storm,
carrying a strict and Catholic tradition of what they, ironically,
call orthodox Marxism, as opposed to classical, or analytic, or
structuralist, or Luxemburgist, or 'dogmatic', or
Marxism-Leninism.\*
6. The Trotskyists believe we are all operating in the dead of night of
the revolution. That, like the apostles of Jesus, they have received
the tongues of fire of the holy spirit, but cannot leave their
cloister, because the storm they are weathering will not lift.
7. For them, it is not yet the day time. They must preserve their
tradition with great rigor, and construct endless propadeutics for
their members. Of all the traditions I have passed through, and,
this one for me was quite long, but not the longest, it is the most
theory-laden, and places probably as its single highest task the
endless activity of reading and comprehending theoretical
constructions.
\*An interesting new invention is Wittgensteinian Leninism. Potentially
a close cousin of Gramscian Marxism.
PART 2
8. I see things a little differently. Today, it is the day time.
9. I am not shielding a candle in torrential rain, I am basking in the
sun, openly.
10. Nothing has yet failed. There is some historical maturity to
communism, but we are now leaving its adolescence, as far as I am
concerned, and are entering early adulthood.
11. Do not concern yourself with protecting anything. Especially
beliefs. Especially communism as a science. Communism will always
be. It will never be replaced by anything else. These are the
anxieties of the Trotskyists. They say to themselves -- how must we
be relevant?
12. Such anxieties are fed and fed, and grow and grow inside the
mentalities and bodily affordances of the Trotskyists to nature,
life, and the universe.
13. Such is the great ... 'squashing' power of the Trotskyists; how they
are able to coopt and destroy movements. Their anxieties are
psychotic, they create fictions of personal demons in their
interpersonal relationships, and consider all creativity and free
association to be 'prefigurative' politics.
14. What have the Trotskyists created lately? The Trotskyists care not
for creating. They are for preserving. They are holding on to their
happiness so tightly they have smothered it and killed it.
15. I prefer my way. My way is to assert that the experience of the
world, phenomenologically, is involuntary. Happiness arrives, and if
it is to persist, it cannot be controlled or confected.
16. Perhaps this is a clumsy image of demonstrating my proof, and the
only way to adduce a proof is to demonstrate it; but, be like the
living olive tree, always producing fruit. Do not be like the
Trotskyists who produced the jar of preserved fruit of their tree,
and are under the illusion that all there is left is their jar of
olives.
17. The olive tree is basking in the open sunlight of communism. It is,
in a way, perpetually reproducing the garden of Eden for us, and for
itself. It will never exhaust its bounty. It will erode any
concrete. It is looked upon by all with favour.
18. It competes with nothing, it senses no obstacles. It has no inside
or outside, it is flourishing endlessly and eternally.
19. Dare to struggle, dare to win. If you do not fight, you lose.