Although not on a scale similar to the Bolshevik
revolution, the premises conveyed by Leon Trotsky have replayed themselves in
American society.
This month marks the 100-year anniversary of Red October, an armed
Bolshevik-led insurrection and catalyst for the larger Russian Revolution of
1917. During the ravages of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, Communist
leader and founder of the Red Army, wrote “Terrorism or Communism,” a book
scathingly critical of Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky. The book is not just a
response to Kautsky’s polemics against the Bolshevik Revolution, but also
further justification for using violence as a means to the Bolsheviks’
revolutionary ends.
In his chapter on terrorism, Trotsky denounces Kautsky’s view that
by eliminating the free press, the Soviet government, “has destroyed the sole
remedy that might militate against corruption… control by means of unlimited
freedom of the press alone could have restrained those bandits and adventurers
who will inevitably cling like leeches to every unlimited, uncontrolled power.”
Considering this seminal work of one of the Soviet Union’s founders, it becomes
clear that this ideology has resurfaced in the United States. Whether those
practicing the premises of “Terrorism or Communism” know they are doing so is a
different question.
‘This Problem Can Only
Be Solved by Blood and Iron’
To Trotsky, “The Press is a weapon not of an abstract society, but
of two irreconcilable, armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press
of the counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its
stores, its communications, and its intelligence system. Are we depriving
ourselves of Cadet and Menshevik criticisms of the corruption of the working
class? In return we are victoriously destroying the very foundations of
capitalist corruption.”
A civil war was being waged to collapse capitalism. Thus, Trotsky
was unconcerned with liberal pillars such as freedom of the press, as this
freedom was insignificant within the larger context of a revolution, one in
which violence was justified in the quest for a dictatorship of the
proletariat. Bloodshed was necessitated on the belief that, “to make the
individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And
this problem can only by solved by blood and iron.”
The rest, is well, history. Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet
Union in 1928 and assassinated in his home in Mexico under the order of Joseph
Stalin in 1940. Initial efforts to silence the press evolved, throughout the
history of the Soviet Union, into an elaborate system of censorship and
propaganda. All speech was loosely interpreted as subversive, and thus the
Gulags swelled with political prisoners, especially during Stalin’s regime.
Corruption became a mainstay of the Soviet political system, and
continues to pervade Russia today. Russia continually scores low on indices of
press freedom, and journalists are silenced or disappear frequently. Vladimir
Putin continues to consolidate power. Thus, when considering this bit of Soviet
history, two elements present themselves in the context of the modern United
States.
The Reasons We Restrict
Our Press
The first is restriction of press freedom as required for a lofty,
collective purpose. Trotsky believed a free press was unnecessary, considering
the violent goals of civil war. What then of a war of a global scale, with
arbitrary definitions and a fuzzy enemy: the global War on Terror?
Media outlets have not been shuttered on a large scale in the
United States. However, government whistle-blowers were prosecuted at an
alarming rate by the Obama administration, with the FBI and other federal law
enforcement agencies actively spying on and subpoenaing journalists. Pressure
placed on journalists in an effort to silence them and discover their sources
was ratcheted up during the Obama administration, setting a precedent for all
future presidential administrations, including our current president, Donald
Trump.
All of these efforts were justified under the premise that press
freedom takes a secondary role to the collective goal of fighting terrorism and
protecting Americans. Thus, the administration implied that these efforts to
silence journalists and their sources was paramount to journalists’ efforts to
uncover corruption and abuse of power taking place in the name of the global
War on Terror.
Perhaps the modern Trotskyist quote could be: “Are we depriving
ourselves of citizens’ criticisms of their government? In return we are
victoriously destroying terrorism!” The size and scope of this government
action is thus daunting considering the justifications, which reverberate
premises used by Trotsky justifying suppressing the free press during the
Bolshevik Revolution.
From Free Press to Free
Speech
And the second premise? Underscoring the revolution was not only
the need to engage in violence to implement the Bolsheviks’ political
objectives, but also the need to secure adherence to this political ideology.
Eliminating the free press, and subsequently free speech of all types, not only
limited societal constraints placed on the Bolshevik revolution, but also
ensured society’s adoption of a single ideology by silencing and ultimately eliminating
all competing ideas. This idea also seems to have come back into play on U.S.
college campuses today.
Student activist groups are continually attempting to prevent and
ultimately eliminate speech from campuses that contradicts their own ideas, as
well as speech that serves as a possible hindrance to activists’ collective
goal of implementing their social justice agenda. Countless cases have occurred
(recall Middlebury College and the University of California, Berkeley), in
which the announcement and arrival of a speaker on campus has provoked not just
protest, but violent protest.
Protest is free speech. Violent protest is an attempt to silence
and obstruct. From this we can see that an attempt to silence is an attempt to
further a cause by placing it within a vacuum devoid of competing ideas.
Academics who support the silencing of other academics with views contrary to
their own place themselves among the censors of the Soviet Union who stamped
out any thought deemed offensive to the Politburo.
Thus, in this way, the premises conveyed by Trotsky’s “Terrorism
or Communism” have replayed themselves to some degree in American society.
Granted, this is not on a scale congruent to the Bolshevik revolution. However,
the justification of silence for a larger, collective goal is unnerving, both
among our government and the growing activist movement in U.S. colleges and
universities.
Any effort to infringe on liberty in the name of a collective goal
must be viewed with suspicion. History teaches us that liberty truly is a
safeguard against violence and a worldview forced upon us.
Tyler Bonin
is an economics and history instructor in North Carolina and a graduate of
Campbell and Duke Universities. He is also a former U.S. Marine and veteran of
the Iraq War. Find him on Twitter @TylerMBonin.
