Two of Leon Trotsky’s best-known quotes are his statement that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (made famous, especially among libertarians, in part because it was quoted by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom), and the very next sentence in the same paragraph: “The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” My GMU colleague Bryan Caplan helpfully provides the context of these quotes, from Trotsky’s 1936 book, The Revolution Betrayed:
During these years [since Stalin took power in the USSR] hundreds of Oppositionists, both Russian and foreign, have been shot, or have died of hunger strikes, or have resorted to suicide. Within the last twelve years, the authorities have scores of times announced to the world the final rooting out of the opposition. But during the “purgations” in the last month of 1935 and the first half of 1936, hundreds of thousands of members of the [Communist] party were again expelled, among them several tens of thousands of “Trotskyists.” The most active were immediately arrested and thrown into prisons and concentration camps. As to the rest, Stalin, through Pravda, openly advised the local organs not to give them work. In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
Bryan points out that this context doesn’t reflect well on a man who is still admired by many leftists and even a few ex-leftist conservatives:
Worth noticing: While Trotsky meant what libertarians think he meant, the man’s sheer evil still shines through. He doesn’t mind if the socialist state starves human beings. He was delighted to wield this power when ran the Red Army. No, Trotsky is outraged because the Soviet Union is turning its totalitarian might upon fellow Communists. Was there ever a better time to snark that “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword”?
As I explained in this series of posts, Trotsky was a brutal mass murderer who objected to political repression only when it targeted his fellow communists. He also opposed Stalin in part because he thought Stalin wasn’t repressive enough. Any residual admiration for Trotsky is sorely misplaced.
Nonetheless, the translation of The Revolution Betrayed quoted by Bryan seems to be less damning than the wording quoted by Hayek. In Hayek’s version, Trotsky is quoted as writing that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (emphasis added). Since Trotsky of course favored an economic system where the state is the sole employer, this version of the quote implies that he also favored the inevitable “slow starvation” of oppositionists. By contrast, the translation linked by Bryan states that “Where the sole employer is the State, this [referring to Stalin’s policy of denying employment to oppositionists] means death by slow starvation.” The translation quoted by Bryan doesn’t seem to say that opposition means death by starvation in any society where the state is the sole employer, but only if that state is governed by Stalin’s policy of denying work to “oppositionists.” And, as we can see later in the same chapter, Trotsky did not propose to abolish the government’s monopoly over employment, but merely to replace the Stalinist “bureaucratic” class with a different set of economic central planners. The latter might potentially have a more liberal policy on employing oppositionists. Which version is correct? The only way to tell is to check the original Russian text of The Revolution Betrayed. If anyone can find it online, please let me know and I would be happy to do the checking myself.
Even the more charitable version of this passage still doesn’t paint Trotsky in a flattering light. After all, as Bryan notes, the only “oppositionists” whose right to dissent Trotsky wanted to protect were communists who disagreed with Stalin’s party line. Towards the end of the same chapter of The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky calls for “a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning with the party of Bolsheviks.” Non-Soviet (i.e. — non-communist) parties need not apply. He had no objection to the “slow starvation” (or even outright execution) of non-communist oppositionists, including even non-communist socialists. Indeed, when he was still in power, Trotsky often ordered such starvation and execution of political opponents himself.
UPDATE: I have found the Russian text of The Revolution Betrayed online here. In my judgment as a native speaker of the language, the Russian version is closer to the translation cited by Bryan than the one used by Hayek. Here is the original Russian text of the relevant sentence:
В стране, где единственным работодателем является государство, эта мера означает медленную голодную
смерть. Старый принцип: кто не работает, тот не ест, заменен новым: кто не повинуется, тот не ест.
Here’s my own translation:
In a country where the state is the sole employer, this policy [referring to Stalin’s policy] means a slow death by starvation [for oppositionists]. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
The key Russian phrase “эта мера” literally means “this measure.”
UPDATE #2: Some commenters on this and previous posts about Trotsky ask whether anyone really admires Trotsky anymore. In reality, quite a few modern leftists still do. Christopher Hitchens (see here and here) is one example. As Clive James points out, Trotksy “lived on for decades as the unassailable hero of aesthetically minded progressives who wished to persuade themselves that there could be a vegetarian version of communism.”
Mark Field says:
Can you provide a little more context? From what you’ve given, it sounds to me like Trotsky was criticizing Stalin on humanitarian grounds (hypocritically, no doubt, but a far cry from justifying the policy).
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November 5, 2009, 11:43 pmIlya Somin says:
Can you provide a little more context? From what you’ve given, it sounds to me like Trotsky was criticizing Stalin on humanitarian grounds (hypocritically, no doubt, but a far cry from justifying the policy).
I agree that he was criticizing Stalin (though not on purely humanitarian grounds — he was opposed only to the repression of his fellow communists, not repression that targeted other groups). The question is whether he was criticizing Stalin on the grounds that having the state as the sole employer necessarily leads to the “slow starvation” of oppositionists, or whether he was doing so on the narrower basis that this only happens when people like Stalin are in charge.
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November 6, 2009, 12:02 amFub says:
I’m certainly not a scholar of Russian or Soviet history. I found the bolded phrase interesting because it refers to an “old principle”. The obvious question is “old principle from what tradition or source?”
There are at least two religious sources for such a principle, from two very different religious traditions: Christianity and Zen Buddhism.
From Christianity:
From Zen Buddhism:
In 17th C. Jamestown, Capt. John Smith established a “no work, no food” policy, no doubt reflecting the Christian principle.
So, the “old principle” to which Trotsky referred is not a principle that originated with Russian communism or with Marx or Trotsky.
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November 6, 2009, 12:11 amDavid Bernstein says:
Coincidentally, a novelist was on NPR today talking about how much she grew to like and admire Trotsky, a character in her recent book, as she wrote about him. Made me ill.
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November 6, 2009, 12:12 amChad says:
@ Fub
‘Old’ here is in the sense of commonly known or widely recognized, not ‘ancient’.
Russian language is full of proverbs and maxims, and ‘Who does not work, does not eat’ phrase was very often heard in the Soviet Union.
This post has some background.
I doubt Trotsky knew or cared about 8th Century Chinese monastic traditions.
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November 6, 2009, 12:30 amrpt says:
“Your right to eat [or have health care] ends at my wallet” sounds like a current libertarian slogan. A variation on the R health care policy of “If you [get sick] die quickly.”
Is there someone currently promoting Trotsky that prompts this post?
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November 6, 2009, 1:01 amgeokstr says:
Ah, yes, paraphrase one of the slimier of your own congressmen slandering the R’s, and now it is already enshrined in the leftwing dogma as “R health care policy”. I’m certain we’ll be hearing variations on this for the next several decades as established fact, and proved by “quotes” in Wikipedia attributed to Limbaugh and Palin.
So typical.
I think this falls under a corollary of Rule 5 in the book of Ends Justify Anything Whatsoever.
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November 6, 2009, 1:11 amSammy Finkelman says:
It is easier now after all these years, for some people not to understand what Trotsky really was in spite of having a lot of information. something gets lost.
But anyway that’s not the point of this post. The point is that Trotsky is not speaking in general of what happens when the state is the some employer, but of what COULD happen when te state is the sole employer, what he says is the meaning of what stalin did.
the only problem is — this is not really what happened. Trotsky is just being rhetorical, and he may be omitting things. It sounds logical, but it is wrong — but Trotsky isn’t exactly interested in the truth, just in making points.
I don’t think you could find a single take of where that happened. People were arrested as shot , yes, starved to death in labor camps, and yes, but not exactly this.
Stalin had another policy or law — the idea that anyone who did not have a job was a “parasite.”
And people could be arrested and sentenced to long jail terms for that.
This was a very famous rule as a philosophical idea circulated in other countries because it was spread by various Communist parties. I think maybe this parasite rule predated Stalin. In fact maybe it was paired with he who does not work does not eat. The whole idea being portrayed as not giving someone welfare. (being Socialist, the Bolsheviks could have such draconiaan policies without losing their beneficence) Someone should check into this.
Outside the Soviet Union it didn’t carry the implications of arrest very much.
You may also remember that a few Soviet “dissidents”, as they were called, encountered this form of trouble much later in the 1960s and 1970s and further. This was actually a revival of an old Stalinist practice. In many cases their problems in gettin jobs led to menial jobs or posisbly by that time they couldn’t be charged with being a parasite unless a job was availble. The parasite rule actually was used most often by Stalin to force people in virtually slave labor. It was one thing used to keep people on collective farms.
And it also a way to charge people with something if they were really criminals but the local authorities couldn’t pin anything on them (they could of course make up things but that was for people who were not by and large political targets. Making up things was basically the preserve of the secret police)
Why was it made against the law for someone to be a “parasite?”
Because in fact people as a rule would NOT starve to death as a result of not haing a job. People could be supported by family and friends (although much harder if they were deemed “enemies of the state”
Consider another point here: Why was it necessary for Stalin to put into the newspapers “advice” that people should not be hired? Why not just issue secret orders? (Trotsky doesn’t ask this question because his objective is to make the Communist regime look less bad than it was — he is focusing only on harm to people 90% loyal to the regime, or who were loyal until recently. He wants to make it look like political activists are the only real victims. He is not interested in publicizing how bad it was from the beginning.)
But if you understand (and have no interest in hiding) how bad and how totalitarian the Communist regime was this should be a big question.
There was not the kind of freedom in the Soviet Union that such an announcement would be necessary and not such an policy of admission of what they did that it should be willing.
The answer is that while the state was the sole employer (or close to to it) hiring is not centralized and there are a tremendous number of people who can make hiring decisions.
Since no official prohibition was made to hire certain people and a work prohibition was not put into their by then mandatory workbook (there was a book everyone was required to carry that kept a record of all jobs they had held since 1930 or whatever — and people in collective farms didn’t get these books and so couldn’t leave) but since the government wasn’t quite willing at that stage to take away their books — they needed publicity to LIMIT the kinds of jobs someone could have because otherwise someone could claim later they had no idea this person was an “enemy of the state”
For the sake of some people who were important but whom Stalin at that point was afraid to arrest some people might take a few risks. These newspaper announcements were designed to limit that possibility.
The picture is not at all like Trotsky has it. He has a more benign less severe, less totalitarian dictatorship — and then he has this measure being stronger than it was. Trotsky is being profoundly inaccurate. The state being the sole employer wouldn’t cause anyone to starve because the state was — normally — not a monolithic employer, and these announcements are not there because of transparency, of which there was none, but because secret unpublished measures failed to accomplish their purpose — which was not to get anyone to starve but to have a low income and difficult life. And Stalin *could* have devised a method which would prevent a specific person from getting ANY job, but that particular kind of hostile measure was never done. It was either something less bad, or worse.
You wanted worse — they could be arrested. (Trotsky is kind of hiding the power of arbitrary arrest which existed — does he acknowledge it anywhere?)
It is in many ways this idea is just simply inaccurate in principle. People could be supported by others. People could steal (of course the anti-parasite law limited this somewhat. People could also devise various methods of self employment. Although some kinds of self employment, like say, mohel, were not allowed and the authorities would let people know if they had a job which didn’t count.
These announcements were designed to keep some people out of reasonably well paying or important jobs (which were scarcer than what would be needed to avoid starvation) These announcements (I presume this is accurate) were probably rare and aimed at only fairly famous people.
Whom some people in fairly well entrenched positions could go to great and very devious lengths to help because they knew the danger Stalin posed to everyone so they wanted the “opposition” to succeed. These announcements wouldn’t have been placed until more secret methods failed, because as I said, without any public instructions, people could claim ignorance.
There *was* quite a lot of starvation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, but it happened to farmers and people in rural areas and not in the cities (internal passports kept people from moving to the cities)
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November 6, 2009, 1:21 amSammy Finkelman says:
In brief: The point that Trotsky was making (which is maybe different than what Hayek thought he was saying) is false. And what would be true is something that Trotsky doesn’t say.
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November 6, 2009, 1:24 amCornellian says:
Since Trotsky of course favored an economic system where the state is the sole employer, this version of the quote implies that he also favored the inevitable “slow starvation” of oppositionists.
I don’t see how that follows. One could easily read the quote as simply criticizing Stalin for starving people opposed to him. Just because he accepts a system in which the State is the sole employer, doesn’t mean he supports the idea that starvation should be the consequence of opposition.
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November 6, 2009, 1:30 amDuffy Pratt says:
I hear Jean Paul Marat was a pretty bad guy too.
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November 6, 2009, 1:30 amArrowSmith says:
Nice slur on libertarians right there. However, that doesn’t stop the libertarians from winning elective office all over the country. Your brand of slander is dying.
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November 6, 2009, 1:36 amArrowSmith says:
Stalin believed in starving people who wouldn’t work. Ergo, Stalin was a libertarian!
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November 6, 2009, 1:38 amSammy Finkelman says:
Lenin made the statement “who does not work, he shall not eat” on May 22, 1918 in a letter addressed to Petrograd workers.
He said this “truth” was the basis of socialism, the source of its strength and the guarantee of its final victory.
See the first Google result (a book excerpt) for “anti-parasite lenin”
People with money and criminals were linked by Lenin as both examples of “parasites”
In 1936, the Soviet Constitution said everyone was guaranteed a job. In practice what this meant is a person could be forced to work. In a job he didn’t like. On days he disn’t want to. Combined with the anti-parasite law, this meant work was an obligation, not a right.
Khrushchev revived an “anti-parasite” crusade (for reasons the book does not make clear — it does not make clear or guess what he might really have been aiming at) in 1961.
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November 6, 2009, 1:53 amSteve says:
However, that doesn’t stop the libertarians from winning elective office all over the country.
I, too, have noticed the inexorable wave.
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November 6, 2009, 2:15 amrpt says:
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November 6, 2009, 2:25 amCornellian says:
However, that doesn’t stop the libertarians from winning elective office all over the country.
Well possibly Ron Paul, depending on what you consider libertarian. That’s pretty much it.
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November 6, 2009, 2:28 amFub says:
Well, yeah. He likely didn’t care about 1st Century Christian traditions either. I’m just saying that the “old principle” he mentioned was older and more widespread than Marxism or socialism, whether he knew it or not.
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November 6, 2009, 2:48 amSteve says:
Ilya, no matter how many times you try to assign Christopher Hitchens to the left, we will not take him!
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November 6, 2009, 5:02 amSteve2 says:
I think that got more fully elucidated in the Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought branch of communism. Check out the 1983 constitution of the People’s Republic of China, as amended in 1993:
Article 42. Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right as well as the duty to work. Using various channels, the state creates conditions for employment, strengthens labour protection, improves working conditions and, on the basis of expanded production, increases remuneration for work and social benefits. Work is the glorious duty of every able-bodied citizen. All working people in State-owned enterprises and in urban and rural economic collectives should perform their tasks with an attitude consonant with their status as masters of the country. The State promotes socialist labor emulation, and commends and rewards model and advanced workers. The State encourages citizens to take part in voluntary labor.
The crummy job you were assigned to isn’t your obligation, it’s your glorious duty!.
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November 6, 2009, 7:32 amT. Gracchus says:
There is an interesting review of new biographies of Trotsky (one by Robert Service) in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6883576.ece) which addresses admiration of Trotsky.
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November 6, 2009, 7:38 amDYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » The Evil of Leon Trotsky Revisited says:
[...] Read it. Two of Leon Trotsky’s best-known quotes are his statement that “Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation” (made famous, especially among libertarians, in part because it was quoted by Hayek in The Road to Serfdom), and the very next sentence in the same paragraph: “The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” [...]
Widmerpool says:
I entirely agree with Steve’s statement:
Ilya, no matter how many times you try to assign Christopher Hitchens to the left, we will not take him!
The musings of the left today consist of an ill-sorted congeries of hopelessly inconsistent views much like old-line Anglican theology. And to reject one of its views–Bill Clinton was great–is to cast oneself into outer darkness. Therefore, the atheist, Mother Teresa-hating, war-criminal-Kissinger reviling, socialist, pro-choice, pro-drug but Clinton-hating Christopher Hitchens, by that definition, is clearly not of the left.
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November 6, 2009, 8:58 amMark Field says:
No, you have it backwards. Libertarians believe in starving people who won’t work, ergo they are Stalinists.
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November 6, 2009, 9:48 amShelbyC says:
It’s not the libertarian doing the starving. Hell, if somebody can afford to eat without working, more power to him, I say.
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November 6, 2009, 9:53 amgeokstr says:
Amazing, isn’t is, Shelby? The left soon will be calling Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et al, reactionary rightwingers. Commies, even ones who proudly proclaim it, have morphed into the more acceptable “Marxists”, i.e., Van Jones, Robert McChesney, et al. Soon they will be called “idealists” again, and all will be right, er, left, with the world.
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November 6, 2009, 10:07 ambyomtov says:
That Trotsky refers to “oppositionists” does not necessarily mean that these are the only people he is concerned about. It could also, quite easily, mean that they are the one mostly affected by the policy, or that he considers himself to be speaking for that specific group.
Consider a Congressman objecting to some policy. “In my District thousands of people have lost their jobs as a result of ....” Does that mean he is oblivious to negative efects on non-constituents?
Now, I’m not and never was one of that presumed fierce band of Trotsky admirers who skulk secretly about. But I think that, taken in isolation, the passage can reasonably be interpreted simply as criticism of Stalin, with emphasis on Stalin’s effect on Trotsky’s allies.
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November 6, 2009, 10:29 amMark Field says:
Hey, it worked for Jonah Goldberg. Well, sort of, anyway.
Pontius Pilate was a libertarian? Cool.
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November 6, 2009, 10:36 amShelbyC says:
How ’bout ya knock off the anti-semetic comments, eh?
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November 6, 2009, 10:52 ambyomtov says:
It’s not the libertarian doing the starving. Hell, if somebody can afford to eat without working, more power to him, I say.
In libertarian-land there are no recessions, depressions, financial crises, company bankruptcies, etc.
“There’s lakes of stew
And whiskey too.
You can paddle all around ‘em
In a big canoe.”
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November 6, 2009, 11:15 amFloridan says:
Trotsky is going to have a following no matter how hard Somin and others try to bring his unsavory thoughts and behavior to light.
After all, there is still, in 2009, a Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, FL.
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November 6, 2009, 11:19 amSteve says:
Therefore, the atheist, Mother Teresa-hating, war-criminal-Kissinger reviling, socialist, pro-choice, pro-drug but Clinton-hating Christopher Hitchens, by that definition, is clearly not of the left.
You could identify just as many things about Hitchens that link him to the right wing, if you really cared to. We could go back and forth all day with the adjective game but it seems like a real waste of a day.
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November 6, 2009, 11:36 amray_g says:
“Libertarians believe in starving people who won’t work...”
Won’t work or can’t work. Big difference there. There is nothing in libertarianism that disallows private charity. So if someone can’t work, I might voluntarily help them. But if someone won’t work, and demands or wants to send armed thugs from the government to get stuff from me, then yes, he/she can starve.
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November 6, 2009, 11:37 amYankev says:
That’s actually the policy of British socialised medicine, which has been advocated by at least one of Obama’s advisors and falsely attributed to Republicans.
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November 6, 2009, 11:42 amShelbyC says:
Of course there are. Hell, we’re in middle of a huge financial crisis right now. And we have plenty of non-economic problems too, like the obesity epidemic. I wonder what crises are like under systems that control the economic system in order to make sure everyone is fed?
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November 6, 2009, 11:55 amrpt says:
And the Republican plan is? Commentors here say: “Your right to health care ends at my wallet” (but not vice versa). R leaders Boehner, Bachmann and Back say no health care programs (except their own care, Medicare, Tri-care, etc). Why not embrace the Libertarian-Darwinism of this philosophy; if you don’t have the money (for whatever reason) to pay for your medical expenses, then die?
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November 6, 2009, 12:01 pmSeamus says:
Barbara Kingsolver?
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November 6, 2009, 12:05 pmSeamus says:
Obviously not, but in this case, we have evidence from other sources that Trotsky didn’t give a rodent’s hindquarters about non-Communist opponents of the regime.
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November 6, 2009, 12:08 pmMartinned says:
On a related note:
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November 6, 2009, 12:09 pmCJColucci says:
Is there someone currently promoting Trotsky that prompts this post?
An excellent question. I suppose among nearly 300 million Americans, there’s bound to be somebody, but I’d be surprised if you can find significant numbers or many people of influence. Does anyone know whether Trotsky has more fans than Lyndon LaRouche?
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November 6, 2009, 12:12 pmStating the obvious says:
That’s actually the policy of British socialised medicine, which has been advocated by at least one of Obama’s advisors and falsely attributed to Republicans.
If this is true, could you please explain why life expectancy in the U.K. is almost a year longer than it is in the U.S.?
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November 6, 2009, 12:26 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
Excellent cite to Clive James. His Cultural Amnesia is a wonderful series of mini biographies of artists, intellectuals & notables of the 20th century, and he calls alot of people to account for their dalliance with fascism and communism. He’s an excellent wordsmith, which always helps.
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November 6, 2009, 12:57 pmbyomtov says:
ShelbyC,
Sorry I wasn’t clear. What I meant to imply was that obviously there are times in capitalist economies when some people find it impossible to get work. Under (admittedly extreme) libertarian views those people would be allowed to starve.
You don’t need to have central control of the economy to have systems in place that try to make sure that doesn’t happen. But those who oppose any sort of government social insurance programs presumably believe that such systems are immoral, and should not exist.
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November 6, 2009, 1:00 pmJason in TX07 says:
Both Hitchens and Service have been mentioned above. They were interviewed together by Peter Robinson a few months back for his “Uncommon Knowledge” series. Well worth watching.
Part one (of five, ~35 mins total)
http://tinyurl.com/otkhzh
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November 6, 2009, 1:22 pmbgates says:
byomtov, you don’t need to have any sort of government social insurance programs to keep people from starving, either. What’s wrong with voluntary charity?
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November 6, 2009, 1:33 pmbgates says:
And the Republican plan is?
Buy a subscription to Google and look them up yourself.
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November 6, 2009, 1:35 pmRandy says:
“If this is true, could you please explain why life expectancy in the U.K. is almost a year longer than it is in the U.S.?”
The Brits found out, years ago, that taking an hour or so everyday for afternoon tea, and eating those little finger sandwiches, are the secret to a long and healthy lifestyle.
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November 6, 2009, 1:39 pmDoc Merlin says:
Because its not libertarian. It would be unlibertarian to try to stop people from giving charity to whoever they want to.
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November 6, 2009, 2:08 pmFub says:
I’m also sure Trotsky didn’t know or care about them. I was just pointing out that the proverb or maxim was much older than the Soviet Union or Marxist theories; and secondarily wondering whether Trotsky and other communists perceived it more as a communist principle, or a Russian principle, or something more ancient and universally accepted.
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November 6, 2009, 2:27 pmPatrick S. O'Donnell says:
No self-persuasion was or is necessary, as there is a sufficient historical record of, and hence more than a little evidence that, historical incarnations of “vegetarian version[s] of communism” have existed, do exist (e.g., in monasteries, ashrams, Catholic Worker houses, and so forth and so on), and no doubt will exist in the future. In an article in which he highlights the feasibility of the Owenite and other communal schemes, Engels writes: “For communism, social existence and activity based on community of goods is not only possible but has actually been realised in many communities in America and in one place in England with the greatest success.”
A basic introductory reading list:
*Case, John and Rosemary C.R. Taylor. Co-ops, Communes and Collectives: Experiments in Social Change in the 1960s and 1970s. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).
*Dolgoff, Sam, ed. The Anarchist Collectives: Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939. (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974).
*Erasmus, Charles J. In Search of the Common Good: Utopian Experiments Past and Future. (New York: The Free Press, 1977).
*Hine, Robert V. California’s Utopian Colonies. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983 ed.).
*Melville, Keith. Communes in the Counter Culture: Origins, Theories, Styles of Life. (New York: Morrow Quill, 1972).
*Morrison, Roy. We Build the Road as We Travel. (Philadelphis, PA: New Society Publishers, 1991).
*Nordhoff, Charles. The Communistic Societies of the United States. (New York: Schocken Books, 1965 [1875]).
*Pitzer, Donald E., ed. America’s Communal Utopias. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
As to the role and significance of utopian thought and imagination to this enterprise, see here: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/07/utopian-thought-imagination-part-1.html and
here: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2009/01/utopian-thought-imagination-part-2.html
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November 6, 2009, 2:36 pmbyomtov says:
What’s wrong with voluntary charity?
Nothing “wrong” with it. But I’m not willing to say that people should starve if private charity proves inadequate.
Try health care for another example. I’ve seen lots of comments here that deny that there can be any right to health care. OK. That means you only get health care if you can pay for it (through insurance or directly) or as charity. Otherwise no appendectomy for you, because after all, anything else involves “coercion.” Can’t have that, say the libertarians. So letting people die in the name of ideology is in fact something some libertarians are willing to do.
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November 6, 2009, 2:51 pmArrowSmith says:
Except your ideology involves taking a bigger % of someone’s paycheck to fund someone elses’ “right to health care”. You should at least admit that you are a thief.
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November 6, 2009, 3:21 pmHoward Dickman says:
At the Soviet Union’s Third Congress of Trade Unions, April 1920, Leon Trotsky delivered a speech in the course of which he defended “labor armies” – conscript labor – by dismissing the difference between freedom and force altogether:
“We know that every labor is socially compulsory labor. Man must work in order not to die. . . . the type of labor that is socially regulated on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole country, compulsory for every worker . . . is the basis of socialism . . . is the indispensable, basic method for the organization of our labor forces.” (This passage is quoted in translation by Isaac Deutscher, “Russia,” in Walter Galenson, ed., “Comparative Labor Movements (Prentice Hall, 1952), pp. 505, 504.) It is also cited in my book, “Industrial Democracy in America,” Open Court, 1987, p. 378 note 45.
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November 6, 2009, 3:33 pmbyomtov says:
You should at least admit that you are a thief.
If that’s the best you can do you’ve proven my point.
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November 6, 2009, 3:47 pmShelbyC says:
If there’s a right to health care, it doesn’t end at national borders, correct? So anybody who doesn’t support financing health care for everybody in the world supports letting people die in the name of ideology, by that logic.
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November 6, 2009, 4:27 pmdeathsinger says:
The SEP is a huge fan of Trotsky. They are calling the new book about Trotsky the Big Lie.
They ran a candidate for Mayor of Detroit. Then wrote an article about how few people actually voted for Bing (like 12% of the eligible voters). I was hoping they would reply to my response that in the middle of the biggest crisis in Detroit history that they collected significantly less that 1% of the eligible voters. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Chuck Daly would have outpolled their candidate if someone had started a write in ballot.
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November 6, 2009, 4:43 pmRPT says:
Arrow:
Do you really live in a world where there is nothing tax-supported? Do you drive on public roads? Go to or send your kids to school? This health care exceptionalism is consistently lame. You are in favor of “government thievery” for things you like, and raise this objection only for things you don’t like. Where were the principled tea bag persons yesterday when the “government run health care enforcers” swooped down on the person in D.C who had a heart attack? Why didn’t they fight for his “freedom” from the oppression of “government run health care”? Did they pay for the services rendered? Probably not. What would you do?
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November 6, 2009, 5:27 pmRPT says:
My Google is free. I did the search and it came up null. Amazing. Will try it?
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November 6, 2009, 5:32 pmSteve2 says:
The reason to not embrace it publically is cowardice. You tend to get ostracized for supporting such morally correct but unpopular propositions.
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November 6, 2009, 5:51 pmArrowSmith says:
Ok, fine public works help provide infrastructure that enables me to increase my wealth. But how much is enough for the government to take from me and give to others? How much is ever enough for you socialist scumbag thieves?
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November 6, 2009, 6:22 pmArrowSmith says:
Results 1 — 10 of about 906,000 for “republican health care plan”
You fail again.
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November 6, 2009, 6:23 pmbyomtov says:
Seamus,
... we have evidence from other sources that Trotsky didn’t give a rodent’s hindquarters about non-Communist opponents of the regime.
No doubt. That’s why I was careful to talk about what the passage meant “taken in isolation.”
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November 6, 2009, 6:43 pmMark Field says:
I can’t be anti-semetic. Some of my best friends are polysemic.
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November 6, 2009, 8:43 pmShelbyC says:
:-)
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November 6, 2009, 9:21 pmbyomtov says:
Shelby,
If there’s a right to health care, it doesn’t end at national borders, correct? So anybody who doesn’t support financing health care for everybody in the world supports letting people die in the name of ideology, by that logic.
Interesting point. I think some rights do end at national borders. Foreigners have no right to vote in American elections, to take a simple example. So it is certainly possible to declare that Americans have rights, (or should have certain rights) including possibly a right to health care, as a function of being Americans and hence part of our social compact.
That doesn’t help those elsewhere, of course. I’d say whatever one’s views of their rights, there are practical, political, and resource constraints that make it unrealistic to think that we – the US — can extend health care worldwide. This is in contrast to our domestic situation. On a practical level, I do approve in general of efforts, especially public health projects, to improve conditions in poor countries.
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November 7, 2009, 11:36 amMark Field says:
A friend of mine got sick while traveling in England. He had to be hospitalized, but the English system treated him well and without any charge. They apparently do this for anyone, at least those lawfully in the country.
I should add that such a policy only makes sense. If a vistor/immigrant has a communicable disease, it’s in the interests of all of us to treat it.
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November 7, 2009, 2:32 pmSteve2 says:
It’s just as much in the interests of all to immediately deport the contagious visitor/immigrant, or quarantine them until the disease runs its course, or just plain shoot them and incinerate the carcass, or do what South Africa did to a friend of mine once and treat them but then bill them. What’s in the interests of all is to prevent the disease’s spread to others at minimum expense to others. Treatment doesn’t always serve that interest, at least without something done by the recipient to offset that expense to others.
And on the subject of contemporary Trotskyites, I know that author Eric Flint self-identifies as one. He’s also saccharinely idealistic about America, so make of that what you will.
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November 7, 2009, 4:50 pmMark Field says:
And let God sort them out?
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November 7, 2009, 6:00 pmSteynian 396 « Free Canuckistan! says:
[...] THE EVIL of Leon Trotsky Revisited …. [...]
Michael says:
I suppose the logic progression of Trotsky is:
1. Utopia (Actually this is 1b but so framed it allows 1a. Kill everybody who stood in your way or who doesn’t agree with 1, otherwise known as 1b. This is as their disagreement, if nothing else, might take the fun out of 1a).
2. Utopia is beset by entropy.
3. Correct statement 2 with “who does not obey shall not eat.”
4. New old phrase: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
5. Insert ‘fascists’ somwhere to preserve the attractiveness of #1
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November 7, 2009, 8:17 pmArkady says:
Here is the passage in Russian (toward the end of http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl001.htm):
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November 8, 2009, 5:34 pmRemembering Communism « Incessant Dissent says:
[...] Still, there’s a lot of great, compassionate, sensible commemoration out today as well. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin has some great posts, about why the neglecting communist crimes matters, comments on Paul Hollander’s article, and setting the record straight that yes, Trotsky was really evil. [...]