On Students and Intellectuals

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And so Trotsky arrived. Anyone expecting to be faced with an old, brutal, fearful figure would be disappointed. Quite the opposite. There was something friendly, highly cultivated, pleasant, and likable about him. After greeting each of his visitors, he sat down in the empty armchair and waited for our questions.

Where does the revolutionary outlook of students come from — when in fact they are revolutionary?

At the addition of this last qualification, a very revealing and mischievous smile came over the familiar features of his face.

"There you put your finger on it!"

Do they owe this to their social and economic position, or do we have to turn to psychology, perhaps even to psychoanalysis, to explain it?

Once again a mischievous smile. "First and foremost, you have to understand that students do not constitute a distinct and unified group in society. They fall into various groups, and their political attitude closely corresponds to the one prevailing in these various groups in society. Some students are radical-oriented; but of these, only a very tiny number can be won over to the revolutionary party.

"The fact is that very often radicalism is a sickness of youth among what are actually petty-bourgeois students. There is a French saying: 'Avant trente ans révolutionnaire, après canaille' — Under thirty a revolutionist, thereafter a scoundrel. This expression is not heard only in France. It was also known and used in connection with the Russian students in the prewar period. Between 1907 and 1917 I was living in exile, and I traveled around a lot, giving speeches to the various colonies of Russian students abroad. All these students were revolutionary in those days. During the October Revolution in 1917, 99 percent of them fought on the other side of the barricades.

"You find this radicalism among youth in every country. The young person always feels dissatisfied with the society he lives in — he always thinks he can do things better than his elders did. So the youth always feel they are progressive — but what they understand by progress varies quite a bit. In France, for example, there is both a radical and a royalist opposition. Naturally this radicalism includes a certain number of healthy oppositionist forces, but for the most part it amounts to what can only be called careerism.

"Here we have the real psychological motor force. The young feel shut out; the old take up all the space, and the young can't find any outlet for their abilities. They are dissatisfied quite simply because they themselves are not sitting in the driver's seat. But as soon as they are sitting there, it's all over with their radicalism.

"It's like this: gradually these young people move into the available posts. They become lawyers, office heads, teachers. And so they come to look upon their earlier radicalism as a sin of their youth, as a simultaneously repulsive and charming error. As a result of this memory of his own youth, the academician comes to lead a double life throughout his entire life. What it is, is that he himself believes that he still possesses a kind of revolutionary idealism, and in reality he retains a certain liberal veneer. But this veneer is only a coating for what he really is — a narrow-minded, petty-bourgeois social climber, whose real interests boil down to his career."

Trotsky shifted in his chair a bit and looked around with a kind, apologetic smile.

Can students be of any importance to a revolutionary movement?

"The revolutionary student can only make a contribution if, in the first place, he goes through a rigorous and consistent process of revolutionary self-education, and, in the second place, if he joins the revolutionary workers' movement while he is still a student. At the same time, let me make clear that when I talk about theoretical self-education, I mean the study of unfalsified Marxism."

What should be the relationship between the academician and the workers' movement?

A stern and determined expression comes into Trotsky's eyes.

"He must realize that he is coming into the workers' movement as a learner and not as a teacher. He must learn to subordinate himself and do the work that is demanded of him, and not what he wants to do. The workers' movement for its part must regard him with the greatest skepticism. A young academician must first 'toe the line' for three, four, or five years, and do quite simple and ordinary party work. Then, when the workers have confidence in him and are completely certain that he is not a careerist, then he can be allowed to move up — but slowly, very slowly. When he has worked with the workers' movement in this way, then the fact that he was an academician is forgotten, the social differences disappear."

What, then, is the role of the intellectual in the revolutionary movement?

"His role is to draw general conclusions on the basis of concrete facts. If this process of drawing generalizations out of current conflicting material is not constantly going on, the movement becomes banalized."

Earlier you said that by a theoretical self-education you meant the study of unfalsified Marxism. What do you mean by unfalsified Marxism?

"Criticism of Marxism is not so dangerous. Falsification is a different matter. What I mean by it is theories that go by the name of Marxism, but that have actually abandoned the essence of Marx's teachings. The revisionist Bernstein, for example, made the movement itself the main thing in his theory and pushed the ultimate goal into the background. What resulted from this 'Marxism'? In England, a MacDonald — or a Lord Snowden. You can find other examples yourselves. Such falsification only uses the name of Marxism in order to deceive the workers."

Well, but, as Lis Tørsleff wrote, the world hasn't stood still since Marx's time, has it?

"Of course not. I'm no fetishist — Marxism did not come to a halt when Marx died. Marx could also be wrong — mainly in his predictions of when events would occur, and then he erred only in his assessment of the timing. Lenin integrated newly emerged historical factors into Marxism and thus adapted it to our time."

Trotsky then took up the question of democracy and dictatorship: "We Communists do not deny — as, for example, the anarchists do — the importance of democracy. But we recognize its importance only up to a very definite point That point is reached as soon as the class contradictions become so great that the tension causes a short circuit to occur. At that point, democracy can no longer function, and the only alternatives are either a proletarian or a bourgeois dictatorship. Look at the evolution of the Social Democratic republic in Germany from 1918 to the present. In the early days, the Social Democrats had power, but now it is reactionary generals who are sitting at the wheel.

"Democracy can no longer even play its own game because of the class contradictions. Look, for example, at how the democratic right to asylum — the right of an exiled person to residency — is observed these days."

With the mention of the right to asylum, you could see that Trotsky was again coming back to Dalgas Boulevard. With a broad smile, he continued:

"I am not a stubborn Marxist. You can still get me to believe in democracy. But first you'll have to comply with two wishes: first bring about socialism in Germany through democratic means, and second get me a residence permit in Denmark."