An Estimate of Trotsky
Fromm, Erich
The general habit of considering Stalinism and present-day Communism as identical with, or at least as a continuation of revolutionary Marxism, has also led to an increasing...
...Henri Spaak, his judgment is profound and to the point...
...proud of his cause, proud of the truth he discovers, but not vain or self-centered...
...He loved life and its beauty...
...One version of his testament he ends with the following words: "I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere...
...of an unquenchable courage and integrity...
...They did not take themselves as important...
...He probably fell for the popularly shared misunderstanding of such persons as Marx and Trotsky...
...Whether he writes about political events, or Emma Goldman's autobiography, or Edgar Wallace's detective stories, his reaction goes to the roots, is penetrating, alive and productive...
...Quite aside from the fact that it is most unusual for a publisher to criticize his own author by derogatory remarks in advertising copy, this procedure is unforgivable because there is nothing in the diary which "lays bare" Trotsky's selfishness...
...deeply moving...
...There is objectivity and courage and humility...
...It is not accidental that we know little of the personal lives of these men...
...When he has a chance to get a visa from the newly formed Norwegian Labor Government, which would be a most fortunate salvation from an ever-increasingly difficult exile in France, he does not hesitate for a minute to write a sharp criticism of the Norwegian Labor Party...
...Their errors and mistakes are the very ones which also follow from Western thinking: rationalism and the Western overestimation of the efficacy of force which underlies the great middle-class revolutions of the last few centuries...
...Life is beautiful...
...This is a modest man...
...No doubt Trotsky as an individual was as different from Marx, Engels and Lenin as they were among themselves...
...If he has unshakable convictions, he is called a fanatic, quite regardless of whether these convictions are acquired by intense experience and thought, or whether they are irrational ideas with a paranoid tinge...
...Erich Fromm...
...THE GRATITUDE we owe the Harvard Press for rescuing the picture of Trotsky for the present and for future generations does not, however, prevent me from expressing shock and dismay at the fact that the Harvard University Press advertised the book recently saying: "It [the diary] reveals the anguish and loneliness of his exile, often lays bare his underlying fanaticism and selfishness, and offers positive, historically important commentary on both local and international politics...
...In whatever way one may disagree with Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, there can be no doubt that as persons they represent a flowering of Western humanity...
...Just as their theories are seen as related to those of Stalin and Khrushchev, the picture of the "revolutionary fanatic" I96 is applied to them as it is to the vengeful killer Stalin and to the opportunistic conservative Khrushchev...
...My italics, E.F...
...Whether he writes about his barber, the French police officials or Mr...
...I would challenge the copy writer of the Harvard Press advertisement to quote even a single sentence from the diary which would indicate Trotsky's "selfishness...
...Just as was the case with Marx, here was the concern, understanding and sharing of a deeply loving man which shines through Trotsky's diary...
...The words of admiration and concern in which he expresses himself about his wife are Articles by David Bazelon and Harold Rosenberg, discussing Trotsky in the light of hhs diary will appear in our next issue...
...The only thing it lays bare is exactly the opposite...
...In view of the fact that personal data on any of the great revolutionary leaders is very scarce we have Lenin's and Marx' and Engels' letters and—in German—a collection of personal memories about Marx) the Harvard University Press has rendered a singular service with the publication of Trotsky's diary from the year 1935, covering the time of the last months of his stay in France and of his arrival in Norway...
...It is to be hoped that the statement will be omitted from further announcements...
...unselfish and with little vanity or lust for power...
...The general habit of considering Stalinism and present-day Communism as identical with, or at least as a continuation of revolutionary Marxism, has also led to an increasing misunderstanding of the personalities of the great revolutionary figures...
...They represented the Western tradition in its best features: its faith in reason and in the progress of man...
...They were always stimulating, always alive, always themselves, and whatever they touched became alive...
...Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and vileness, and enjoy it to the full...
...they did not write about themselves, nor speculate about their motivations...
...Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky...
...and yet in being permitted to have an intimate glimpse of the personal life of Trotsky, one is struck by all that he has in common with these productive personalities...
...This distortion is a real loss for the present and the future...
...In the midst of insecure exile, illness, cruel Stalinist persecution of his family, there is never a note of self-pity or even despair...
...If a man who sees the essence of social and individual reality says what he sees, without sham and equivocation, he is taken to be egocentric, aggressive and vain...
...of deep concern and devotion to man and his future...
...They were men with an uncompromising sense of truth, penetrating to the very essence of reality, and never taken in by the deceptive surface...
Vol. 6 • April 1959 • No. 2
