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generator: pandoc

title: 'What Do The Trotskyists Say?'

viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'

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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.