Free Another view of Stalin by Ludo Martens

adopted a cynical, pragmatic attitude towards Marxism,  which he reduced to ready-made formulas. Writing about One step forward, two steps back, Trotsky  wrote:
     
    `One cannot show more cynicism for the ideological heritage of the proletariat as does Comrade Lenin!  For him, Marxism  is not a scientific method of analysis.'
     
     .
     
    Ibid. , p. 160.
     
     
    In his 1904 work, Trotsky  invented the term `substitutionism' to attack the Leninist  party and its leadership.
     
    `The ``professional revolutionary'' group acted in the place of the proletariat.'
     
     .
     
    Ibid. , p. 103.
     
     
    `The organization substitutes itself for the Party, the Central Committee for the organization and its financing and the dictator for the Central Committee.'
     
     .
     
    Ibid. , p. 128.
     
     
    So, in 1923, often using the same words that he used against Lenin,  Trotsky  attacked the Leninist  concept of party and leadership: `the old generation accustomed itself to think and to decide, as it still does, for the party'. Trotsky  noted `A certain tendency of the apparatus to think and to decide for the whole organization'.
     
     .
     
    Leon Trotsky,  The New Course. The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923--1925) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), pp. 71, 128.
     
     
    In 1904, Trotsky  attacked the Leninist  concept of the Party by affirming that it `separated the conscious activity from the executive activity. (There is) a Center and, underneath, there are only disciplined executives of technical functions.' In his bourgeois individualist worldview, Trotsky  rejected the hierarchy and the different levels of responsibility and discipline. His ideal was `the global political personality, who imposes on all `centers' his will in all possible forms, including boycott'!
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  Nos tвches, pp. 140--141.
     
     
    This is the motto of an individualist, of an anarchist.
     
    Trotsky  again used this criticism against the Party: `the apparatus manifests a growing tendency to counterpose a few thousand comrades, who form the leading cadres, to the rest of the mass, whom they look upon only as an object of action'.
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  The New Course, p. 71.
     
     
    In 1904, Trotsky  accused Lenin  of being a bureaucrat making the Party degenerate into a revolutionary-bourgeois organization. Lenin  was blinded by `the bureaucratic logic of such and such ``organizational plan'' ', but `the fiasco of organizational fetichism' was certain. `The head of the reactionary wing of our Party, comrade Lenin,  gives social-democracy a definition that is a theoretical attack against the class nature of our Party.' Lenin  `formulated a tendency for the Party, the revolutionary-bourgeois tendency'.
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  Nos tвches, pp. 192, 195, 204.
     
     
    In 1923, Trotsky  wrote the same thing against Stalin, but using a more moderate tone: `bureaucratization threatens to ... provoke a more or less opportunistic degeneration of the Old Guard'.
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  The New Course, p. 72.
     
     
    In 1904, the bureaucrat Lenin  was accused of `terrorizing' the Party:
     
    `The task of Iskra (Lenin's  newspaper) was to theoretically terrorize the intelligentsia. For social-democrats educated in this school, orthodoxy is something close to the absolute `Truth' that inspired the Jacobins (French revolutionary democrats). Orthodox Truth foresees everything. Those who contest are excluded; those who doubt are on the verge of being excluded.'
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  Nos tвches, p. 190.
     
     
    In 1923, Trotsky  called for `replacing the mummified bureaucrats' so that `from now on nobody will dare terrorize the party'.
     
     .
     
    Trotsky,  The New Course, pp. 126--127.
     
     
    To conclude, this 1923 text shows that Trotsky  was also unscrupulously ambitious. In 1923, to seize power in the Bolshevik Party, Trotsky  wanted to `liquidate' the old Bolshevik guard, who knew only too well his