The Prose and Poetry of the Left

"The principle, the end justifies the means, naturally raise the question “and what justifies the end?” In practical life as in the historical movement the end and the means constantly change places. A machine under construction is an “end” of production only that upon entering the factory it may become the “means” Democracy in certain periods is the end of the class struggle only that later it may be transformed into its “means.” - Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours (1938)

"It is possible to build gigantic factories according to a ready-made Western pattern by bureaucratic command – although, to be sure, at triple the normal cost. But the farther you go, the more the economy runs into the problem of quality, which slips out of the hands of a bureaucracy like a shadow. The Soviet products are as though branded with the gray label of indifference. Under a nationalized economy, quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery." - Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed (1936)

“An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements—the animals that we call men—will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear. And yet armies are not built on fear. The Tsar's army fell to pieces not because of any lack of reprisals. In his attempt to save it by restoring the death-penalty, Kerensky only finished it. Upon the ashes of the great war, the Bolsheviks created a new army. These facts demand no explanation for any one who has even the slightest knowledge of the language of history. The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement.” ― Leon Trotsky

“To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.” ― Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky

"Ultimatism is an attempt to rape the working class after failing to convince it." - Trotsky, Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)

“Lincoln's significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means, once they were found to be necessary, in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation.” ― Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours: The Class Foundations of Moral Practice

"The workers state has rejected church ceremony, and informed its citizens that they have the right to be born, to marry, and to die without the mysterious gestures and exhortations of persons clad in cassocks, gowns, and other ecclesiastical vestments. But custom finds it harder to discard ceremony than the state." - Trotsky, The Family and Ceremony (1923)

“The material premise of communism should be so high a development of the economic powers of man that productive labor, having ceased to be a burden, will not require any goad, and the distribution of life's goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand—as it does not now in any well-off family or "decent" boardinghouse—any control except that of education, habit and social opinion. Speaking frankly, I think it would be pretty dull-witted to consider such a really modest perspective "utopian".” ― Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed

“A historic exposition has a right to demand that its objectivity be recognised if, resting upon accurately established facts, it reproduces their inner connection on the basis of the real development of social relations. The inner causal order of the process thus coming to life becomes itself the best proof of the objectivity of the exposition.” ― Leon Trotsky

“It was necessary that throughout this mass should be scattered workers who had thought over the experience of 1905, criticised the constitutional illusions of the liberals and Mensheviks, assimilated the perspectives of the revolution, meditated hundreds of times about the question of the army, watched attentively what was going on in its midst-workers capable of making revolutionary inferences from what they observed and communicating them to others.” ― Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution

"The Jesuits represented a militant organization, strictly centralized, aggressive, and dangerous not only to enemies but also to allies. In his psychology and method of action the Jesuit of the heroic period distinguished himself from an average priest as the warrior of a church from its shopkeeper. We have no reason to idealize either one or the other. But it is altogether unworthy to look upon a fanatic warrior with the eyes of an obtuse and slothful shopkeeper. ... Opportunists are peaceful shopkeepers in socialist ideas while Bolsheviks are its inveterate warriors." - Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours (1938)

"The goal to be attained by the overthrow of the bureaucracy is the reestablishment of the rule of the Soviets, expelling from them the present bureaucracy. It is the task of the regenerated Soviets to collaborate with the world revolution and the building of a socialist society. The overthrow of the bureaucracy therefore presupposes the preservation of state property and of planned economy." - Trotsky, The USSR and War (1939)

"No one yet has learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study." - Trotsky

"If the leaders seek only to preserve themselves, that is what they become; preserves, dried preserves." - Trotsky, Some Questions on American Problems (1940)

"As a general rule, the party does not make a decision on every isolated strike. It helps le trade union to decide the question of knowing if the strike is opportune, by means of its political and economic information and by its advice. It serves the strike with its agitation, etc. First place in the strike belongs, of course to the trade union." - Trotsky, Communism and Syndicalism (1931)

"Just as France stepped over the Reformation, so Russia stepped over the formal democracy. The Russian revolutionary party, which was to place its stamp upon a whole epoch, sought an expression for the tasks of the revolution neither in the Bible nor in that secularised Christianity called “pure” democracy, but in the material relations of the social classes.” ― Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution - Vol I

"The Fascists find their human material mainly in the petty bourgeoisie. The latter has been entirely ruined by big capital. There is no way out for it in the present social order, but it knows of no other." - Trotsky, Whither France? (1934)