Nietzsche on Trotskyism

Friedrich Nietzsche - Wikipedia
Friedrich Nietzsche

When I first joined in the organisation, I was not a Trotskyist. I was a libertarian socialist inspired by Nietzsche as much as Marx. Over the next several months, I would be brainwashed into ditching Nietzsche as ‘reactionary’ and embracing Trotskyism as gospel. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Ted Grant and Alan Woods held all the answers to the world’s problems. But the truth is there was still the old me that was suppressed by the cult. It coexisted uneasily with my new, ‘cult self’. Deep down, my Nietzschean individualism was still there. I needed to rediscover it. The trigger was when I began having major doubts about the Trotskyist narrative in the lead-up to my leaving the organisation. I decided to take the path of defiance and individualism instead of blind obedience to authority. My inner Nietzsche kicked in. Upon leaving, I returned to the great thinker I had once admired. Among the many books I read that summer were Human All-Too Human, which I re-read avidly. Up until now I had only read the original version available on the Internet, which did not have the extra text added by Nietzsche later on in 1879 and 1880. I now boast possession of the Cambridge edition which has the complete text, including his Assorted Maxims and Opinions and The Wanderer and his Shadow. In the text, Nietzsche has all sorts of sparkling observations about socialism and parties, based on his own study of socialist thought and his interactions with socialist politics as a citizen of the German Empire. Pretty much all of them apply to the IMT and other Trotskyist sects. All are taken from the 1996 Cambridge edition.

Take, for example, aphorism 454:

…the revolutionary from impersonal interests can regard the defenders of the existing system as personally interested and thus feel superior to them.

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Lenin is a very good example of this. Few could accuse Lenin of having launched the Bolshevik Revolution for selfish, personal interests. No, Lenin genuinely believed that he was doing good for the human race. The same can be said of Stalin. Whatever Trotsky claimed, Stalin was not simply a cynical, self-interested bureaucrat. Undoubtedly, he loved power and he loved being deferred to by the grateful masses, but he genuinely believed in Marxism and that he was the best person to lead the working-class to the socialist utopia. As General Secretary of the Communist Party, he would work long hours in his office, trawling through paperwork and looking over reports from his vast domains, ensuring that the new society was being built as he intended. He did not live a particularly luxurious life, and compared to other heads of state he was a model of austerity. Indeed, in many ways it was an utterly unenviable position to be in. One could even say the same of the leading members of the IMT. It is not material self-interest which drives them. It is an impersonal desire to sacrifice their lives to accelerating the dialectic of history. It just so happens that this involves giving them total power over society and allowing them free rein to implement their social engineering project, which will have predictable results. It is a paradox of Marxism that Marxists put material self-interest at the heart of their understanding of society, yet the most passionate Marxists have had next to no material interest in promoting Marxism whatsoever. On the contrary, they lose more than they gain. Conversely, the workers, who you might expect to support Marxism in large numbers (and whom Marxist theory sees as the instrument of social transformation because of their material self-interest in opposing capitalism), have generally shunned it in favour of social democracy, liberalism and nationalism.

In aphorism 463, Nietzsche ruminates on the destructive passions unleashed by revolutions:

…The experiences of history have taught us, unfortunately, that every such revolution brings about the resurrection of the most savage energies in the shape of the long-buried dreadfulness and excesses of the most distant ages: that a revolution can thus be a source of energy in a mankind grown feeble but never a regulator, architect, artist, perfector of human nature.

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How is this not a perfect example of what has actually happened in revolutions? Far from bringing liberation or emancipation, the famous revolutions of human history – the French, the Russian, the Iranian, the Chinese – have brought about a recrudescence of the very worst aspects of human nature. Far from creating a new man, they have simply given expression to the subterranean cruelty, sadism, bigotry and tribalism that is usually kept in check in a civilised society. Revolutions unleash an orgy of murderous vengeance, bloody atrocities, destructive civil wars and the complete collapse of everything that society holds dear. What we saw in these revolutions was not a bold leap into the future but a reversion back to the worst, most primitive instincts of the species.

In aphorism 469, Nietzsche laments that educated men have put themselves at the disposal of charlatans:

Scholars as politicians. – Scholars who become politicians are usually allotted the comic role of being the good conscience of a party’s policy.

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I must have felt like this during my time in the IMT. My instincts as an intellectual clashed with my desire to be a good party man. Eventually I could not resolve the cognitive dissonance and left. Intellectuals who blindly defended Communism in the 1930s fit into this mould.

In aphorism 472, Nietzsche considers how the advance of democracy has steadily eroded the power of the state, with a warning to those who would seek to accelerate the process:

…To work for the dissemination and realization of this notion is another thing, to be sure: one has to have a very presumptuous idea of one’s own intelligence and scarcely half an understanding of history set one’s hand to the plough already – while no one can yet show what seedcorn is afterwards to be scattered on the riven soil. Let us therefore put our trust in ‘the prudence and self-interest of men’ to preserve the existence of the state for some time yet and to repulse the destructive experiments of the precipitate and the over-zealous!

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Let this be a warning to Trotskyists and other would-be revolutionaries who assume that they can anticipate, predict and control the results of the revolution that they are working towards. So many times in history, a revolution has unleashed powerful social forces that are difficult for any one party or movement to put under control. Usually the faction that emerges victorious is that which is willing to be more ruthless than anyone else – the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Islamists in Iran, the Montagnards in France. The result is a massive expansion of state power, fratricidal purges of ‘old Bolsheviks’ and fellow revolutionaries, the militarisation and regimentation of the entire population, the destruction of civil society and the economy and the self-immolation of a once prosperous land, which gives way to brutal dictatorship. Marxist ignoramuses would have us believe that revolutions are inherently good, and result in bad outcomes only because of bad leadership or unfortunate circumstances. The truth is that revolutions are inherently destructive, often counterproductive and that they should only be seen as a last resort. It is very easy to destroy a society, but not so easy to rebuild it.

In aphorism 473, Nietzsche shows scepticism about the means employed by socialism:

Socialism with regard to its means. – Socialism is the fanciful younger brother of the almost expired despotism whose heir it wants to be; its endeavours are thus in the profoundest sense reactionary. For it desires an abundance of state power such as only despotism has ever had; indeed it outbids all the despotisms of the past inasmuch as it expressly aspires to annihilation of the individual, who appears to it like an unauthorized luxury of nature destined to be improved into a useful organ of the community…because…it works for the abolition of all existing states – socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and in driving the word ‘justice’ into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason (after this said reason has already greatly suffered from exposure to their half-education) and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play. – Socialism can serve to teach, in a truly brutal and impressive fashion, what danger there lies in all accumulations of state power, and to that extent implant mistrust of the state itself. When its harsh voice takes up the watchword ‘as much state as possible’ it thereby at first sounds noisier than ever: but soon the opposite cry comes through with all the greater force: ‘as little state as possible.’

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How true these words are. Wherever Marxists have seized power, the result has been despotism, tyranny, beggary and misery. The result has not been the withering away of the state, but the expansion of the state. Apologists for Lenin and Trotsky would have us believe that the degeneration of the revolution was entirely due to ‘objective conditions’ that could not be foreseen, yet Nietzsche was predicting this in 1878. Maybe if the Bolsheviks had heeded Nietzsche’s prescient observations of forty years before, they would not have brought about the cataclysm that ensued.

Nietzsche, like myself, knew the pain of realising that something you have long believed in is false. That must have inspired aphorism 489, in which he states the following:

Not too deep. – People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it for ever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.

Most people who join cults end up leaving after a short period of time. I ended up dropping out of the IMT after just two and a half years. The more I realised what the organisation was actually like, the less I wanted to be part of it. If these organisations were not so secretive, and were open about what membership actually involves, it is unlikely many would want to get involved with them.

In aphorism 511, Nietzsche expresses the psychological truism that once you have become a committed to a cause, it is difficult to abandon it:

Those faithful to their convictions. – He who has much to do preserves his general opinions and points of view almost unaltered. Likewise anyone who works in the service of an idea: he will cease to examine even the idea itself, for he has no time for that; indeed it is against his interests to regard it as so much as discussable.

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This is very true of people in Trotskyist cults. We were kept so busy with overwork – recruiting, political education and attending demonstrations and Labour Party events – that we did not have the time to sit down and think. This endless activism and the obsessive sense of urgency we created in our ranks acted against critical thinking. Those who asked difficult questions and tried to raise differences were shut down with the accusation that they were disruptive and were ‘wasting the time of the organisation’.

Elsewhere, Nietzsche observes that once we have publicly declared our allegiance to an idea, we bring our private views into conformity with our public ones:

Hint for party leaders. – If you can bring people to declare themselves in favour of something publicly you have usually also brought them to declare themselves in favour of it inwardly; they want to be regarded as consistent.

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This was certainly true of me. As I sought to turn myself into a revolutionary and conform to the ideal of a cadre, it was a daily battle to suppress my authentic feelings and opinions and submit them to the test of the group. I found that I was almost voluntarily changing my opinions to fit in with the group instead of thinking for myself.

My favourite of all Nietzsche’s aphorisms on the question of parties and party-mindedness has to be aphorism 579:

Not suited to be a party man. – He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.

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It was inevitable that I would leave the IMT, for I committed the sin of thinking too much for myself and daring to question the party line, and this was heresy. It was made clear to me that I would have to choose – scepticism, critical thinking and individualism on the one hand, or loyalty to the herd on the other. It was make or break. I chose. I chose Nietzsche over Trotsky and Marx, I chose loyalty to myself and to my conscience than loyalty to a false cause. I walked out of the darkness of cultism into the light of reason and truth-seeking. I would not have it any other way. I do not regret having made this decisive choice. At no point since my departure have I looked back and had second thoughts. I was relieved to be out of that hell. This meant throwing all of my fake cult ‘friendships’ away, but it was worth it. I was better off without. Their smiles, their congratulations and their insincere flattery were like so many chains around my body, like so many vipers’ tongues flickering with ill intent. It was a life-changing, emotional and praiseworthy decision. Which makes aphorism 605 very relevant to me:

What is dangerous in independent opinions – Occasional indulgence in independent opinions is stimulating, like a kind of itch; if we proceed further in them we begin to scratch the spot; until in the end we produce an open wound, that is to say until our independent opinions begin to disturb and harass us in our situation in life and our human relationships.

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Breaking with the herd led to condemnation from those who had once been my comrades and peers. They expressed their bitterness and contempt towards me on social media. But I remained defiant, for I was determined not to be cowed by the herd:

619 In the fire of contempt. – It is a new step towards independence when first we venture to express views regarded as disgraceful in him who harbours them; even our friends and acquaintances then begin to worry. The gifted nature must pass through this fire too; after it has done so it will belong much more to itself.

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And here I am now, having braved the fire of contempt from my former comrades, having survived slander and insult, having fled from that assembly of evil, from the confederation of cultism, from that league of lunacy, to felicity and freedom. When I am called ‘renegade’ and ‘class traitor’, I reply with aphorism 629:

Why do we admire him who is faithful to his convictions and despise him who changes them? I am afraid the answer must be: because everyone assumes that such a change can be motivated only by considerations of vulgar advantage or personal fear. That is to say, we believe at bottom that no one would change his convictions so long as they are advantageous to him, or at least so long as they do not do him any harm. If this is so, however, it is an ill witness as to the intellectual significance of all convictions. Let us for once examine how convictions originate. and let us see whether they are not greatly overestimated: what will emerge too is that a change in convictions has also invariably been assessed by a false criterion and that we have hitherto been accustomed to suffer too much when such a change has occurred.

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I have moments when I bitterly regret having joined. But if there is anything I have learned from Nietzsche, it is amor fati, love of fate, an embracing of all that happens to us, good and bad. I try and think of positives I have gained from my experience. I would prefer to have gained them in a less painful manner, but there is nevertheless great truth to what Nietzsche says in aphorism 204 of Assorted Opinions and Maxims:

Going among fanatics. The thoughtful man who is sure of his reason can profit by going among fantasists for a decade and, within this torrid zone, surrendering himself to a modest degree of folly. By doing so he has gone a good stretch of the way towards that cosmopolitanism of the spirit which can say without presumption: ‘nothing of the spirit is any longer alien to me’.

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Among Nietzsche’s many nuggets of wisdom in his Assorted Opinions is his comment on the parochialism of the party man:

301 The party man. – The genuine party man no longer learns, he only experiences things and judges them: whereas Solon, who was never a party man but pursued his aims beside and above the parties or in opposition to them, is significantly the father of that simple saying in which there lies enclosed the health and inexhaustibility of Athens. ‘I grow old and still I go on learning.’

In the cult, we assumed we had the truth, the ‘correct ideas’, the final solution to all problems, the answer to every question. Thus, there was no room to actually learn anything new. Instead, we would simply judge and categorise based on what we had gleaned from Trotsky or Lenin. Words like ‘defencist’, ‘reformist’, ‘Stalinist’, ‘petty-bourgeois’ were bandied around without a care in the world as to their accuracy. They allowed us to claim that our ideas were some sort of ‘science’. Moreover, as I learned before I left, the organisation did not tolerate any form of lukewarmness. If you were not in our organisation, you belonged to the enemy:

305 Party tactics. – When a party notices that a member has changed from being an unconditional adherent to a conditional one, it is so little capable of enduring this that it tries, through incitements and insults of all kinds, to bring him to the point of outright defection and turn him into an opponent: for it has the suspicion that the intention of seeing in their faith something of relative value that admits of a For and Against, a weighing and distinguishing, is more dangerous to it than a wholesale opposition.

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This is practically what happened to me. Because I went from being an unconditional supporter of Trotskyism to questioning certain aspects of Trotskyism, it was decided that I was a malign element, and that it would be better to drive me out than have me in the organisation with views that were ideologically suspect. I was made to choose – a wholesale acceptance of the precepts of Trotskyist doctrine, or liberalism. I decided that the price for staying in was too high to pay and that it would be better to leave. Inevitably I drifted back to liberalism, preferring doubt and uncertainty to blind faith.

Aphorism 306 expresses well our grievance politics – our claims of persecution by the Labour Party bureaucracy, by liberals at university, etc:

Strengthening a party. – If you want to strengthen the inner constitution of a party, you should give it the opportunity of being treated with obvious injustice; it will thereby accumulate a capital of good conscience that it perhaps previously lacked.

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Aphorism 308 reminds me of my own experience writing articles for the IMT and reading articles by other young members of the organisation:

Party writers. – The drumbeat from which young writers in the service of a party derive such satisfaction sounds to him who does not belong to the party like the rattling of chains and inspires pity rather than admiration.

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Our attitude towards other far-left organisations is also encapsulated by much of what Nietzsche says:

314 Party custom. – Every party tries to represent everything significant that has evolved outside itself as being insignificant; if it fails in this endeavour, however, its animosity towards it is the more virulent the more excellent it is.

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I would say to my ex-comrades – there is so much that is rich and insightful in Nietzsche’s work, much more than the nonsense in Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Read him, and be enlightened.