Leon Trotsky Quotes

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Is it possible to fulfill this task, is it possible to achieve the definite victory of Socialism in one country without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible.

Leon Trotsky
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified, From the Marxist point of view, which expresses the historical interests of the proletariat, the end is justified if it leads to increasing the power of man over nature and to the abolition of the power of man over man.

Leon Trotsky
To overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to establish the power of the proletariat in one country still does not signify the full victory of Socialism.

Leon Trotsky
Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.

Leon Trotsky
In spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.

Leon Trotsky
We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.

Leon Trotsky
It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries.

Leon Trotsky
The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful General Secretary.

Leon Trotsky
Lenin's methods [of "hard" centralism and mistrust of the working class] lead to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a "dictator" substitutes himself for the central committee. … The party must seek the guarantee of its stability in its own base, in an active and self-reliant proletariat, and not in its top caucus … which the revolution may suddenly sweep away with its wing.

Leon Trotsky
In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

Leon Trotsky
Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.

Leon Trotsky
The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

Leon Trotsky
The usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal.

Leon Trotsky
Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!

Leon Trotsky
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.

Leon Trotsky
It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.

Leon Trotsky
Not believing in force is the same thing as not believing in gravitation.

Leon Trotsky
If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers' State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.

Leon Trotsky
The main task of Socialism - the organization of Socialist production - remains still in the future.

Leon Trotsky
Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.

Leon Trotsky
The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime.

Leon Trotsky
Capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.

Leon Trotsky
The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction...

Leon Trotsky
The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.

Leon Trotsky
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

Leon Trotsky