Trotsky’s violent extremism

By Dilip -
Let us scrutinize briefly Trotsky’s views on such key issues as forced labor, terror, and concentration camps—the outstanding features of the Stalinist regime. On forced labor, Trotsky had this to say in 1921:
It is said that compulsory labor is unproductive. This means that the whole socialist economy is doomed to be scrapped, because there is no other way of attaining socialism except through the command allocation of the entire labor force by the economic center, the allocation of that force in accord with the needs of a nation-wide economic plan.
I imagine that if Stalin was present at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions, at which Trotsky made these remarks, he must have nodded in agreement. In view of Trotsky’s own sentiments, it is likely that if he had succeeded Lenin, we would have witnessed in the Soviet Union much the same oppression of labor as he did under Stalin.

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