Leon Trotsky

Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist (1879–1940); leader of the Red Army in the Russian Civil War; principal Bolshevik opponent of Stalin after Lenin's death; expelled from the USSR in 1929; founder of the Fourth International in 1938; assassinated in Mexico in 1940. Author of Results and Prospects (1906), Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (1920), My Life (1930), The History of the Russian Revolution (1930–32), The Revolution Betrayed (1937), Their Morals and Ours (1938), In Defense of Marxism (1939–40), and Etat ouvrier: Thermidor et Bonapartisme (1935). For this wiki, Trotsky is the protagonist of Ch 4 of *Adventures of the Dialectic*, where his fate exemplifies the "derailment of the dialectic" — the historical process that Marxism cannot theorize because its philosophy places the dialectic in the object.

Key Points

  • Ch 4 of AD: Trotsky is "the pure case" of a revolutionary caught between his own practical dialectical understanding and the Marxist-naturalist philosophy that prevents him from acting on that understanding. "He did not accomplish the revolutionary resolution of antinomies in practice... because he encountered an obstacle there, the same obstacle that Lenin's 'philosophy' confusedly attempted to take into account" (AD 73).
  • Philosophically a naturalist: Trotsky's pure-philosophy passages (e.g., In Defense of Marxism) repeat a "banal naturalism" — consciousness is an "expression of changing matter," Darwinism is "the highest triumph of the dialectic in organic matter." MP finds this "peremptory, schematical, and abstract" (AD 74).
  • Practically a dialectician: Trotsky's treatment of politics, ethics, and literature is "supple, precise, and complex." The end/means dialectic (Their Morals and Ours): "In practical life as in the historical movement the end and means constantly change places" (AD 75).
  • "Action is the pedagogy of the masses" (AD 76, Trotsky's formulation): the key insight of Trotsky's practical dialectic that MP admires.
  • The Party as mirror and laboratory: Trotsky's Party is "the mirror where the proletarian forces scattered throughout the world are concentrated" (AD 79). It "neither knows nor sees all; and yet its authority is absolute because... only through the Party" can spontaneous history become manifest. MP praises the formulation but argues Trotsky could not maintain it in practice.
  • Permanent revolution: Trotsky's thesis — revolutionary process is transtemporal, present even where objective conditions are not ripe — is diagnosed by MP as the Marxist attempt to naturalize negativity (AD 111). It is simultaneously Trotsky's deepest insight and his most characteristic Marxist error.
  • The Thermidor problem: Trotsky's diagnosis of Soviet degeneration shifted repeatedly between 1923 and 1935. MP reads this oscillation as the symptom of a philosophical impossibility: Marxism cannot think the separation of Party from proletariat.

Details

The Practical Dialectic (Ch 4 §I)

MP's Ch 4 opens with an extended appreciation of Trotsky's practical dialectic, particularly in Their Morals and Ours (1938). The key passages MP quotes:

  • "In practical life as in the historical movement the end and means constantly change places" (AD 75).
  • "The great revolutionary end spurns those base means and ways which set one part of the working class against other parts, or attempt to make the masses happy without their participation; or lower the faith of the masses in themselves and their organization, replacing it by worship for the 'leaders'" (AD 75).
  • "Seeds of wheat must be sown in order to yield an ear of wheat" (AD 76).
  • "Revolutionary realism, unlike technical action, never aims at external results alone. It wants only a result which can be understood, for if its result were not understandable, there would be no revolution. Each revolutionary act is efficacious not only through what it does but through what it gives people to think about. Action is the pedagogy of the masses, and explaining one's actions to the masses is acting again" (AD 76).

These formulations, MP writes, are "admirably sure" (AD 75). They articulate the dialectic MP himself wants to defend: not the externalized dialectic of Marxist realism, but a dialectic of deepening understanding in which means and ends reciprocally modify each other.

The Theoretical Naturalism (Ch 4 §I continued)

But alongside the practical dialectic Trotsky also writes passages of "banal naturalism":

"Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter... Darwinism, which explained the evolution of species through quantitative transformations passing into qualitative, was the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter" (In Defense of Marxism, quoted AD 74).

MP's diagnosis: these two Trotskys are in philosophical tension. "When Trotsky is speaking of literature, ethics, and politics and not of pure philosophy, he never falls back into the mechanism which is the weakness in Bukharin's works; nor does he ever cease to perceive, in the most precise and supple manner, the most complex dialectical relations. It is only at the two limits of his thought, in pure philosophy and in action, that one finds him suddenly peremptory, schematical, and abstract" (AD 74).

The two limits — pure philosophy and practical action — are where the naturalism resurfaces. In pure philosophy Trotsky defends orthodox dialectical materialism; in action (the Stalin period 1923–27) he falls into blind Party discipline. What saves the middle ground — literature, ethics, programmatic politics — is the practical dialectic. But the middle ground cannot ground a philosophy, and the two limits constrain the practice.

The Blindness 1923–1927 (Ch 4 §II)

MP's central historical case is Trotsky's behavior during the rise of Stalin. Between 1923 and 1927, Trotsky had every opportunity to bring the class struggle of Party vs. faction into the open, to carry the argument to the proletarian base, to use his own theses on the Party-class dialectic against the Stalinist maneuvers. He did not.

Drawing on Lefort's 1948 essay, MP documents:

  • Trotsky did not publish against "Lenin's levy" (the mass Party intake of 1924) even though he later said it had delivered "a death blow to Lenin's party" (AD 103).
  • Trotsky joined the Central Committee in suppressing the publication of "Lenin's Testament" (Lenin's critical notes on Stalin) and called Max Eastman (who did publish them) a liar (AD 103).
  • Trotsky declared repeatedly in 1925–27 that there was "no programmatic difference" between the Left Opposition and the Party majority (AD 104), even as he was losing the political struggle.

MP's diagnosis: Trotsky "observed discipline even beyond what is required by 'democratic centralism'" (AD 107). This was not cowardice; it was philosophical necessity. "What kept Trotsky from [carrying the struggle to the workers] was the fact that the materialistic dialectic did not envisage this eventuality, and the problem was thus to bring it up for consideration" (AD 107).

Marxism cannot theorize the possibility that a proletarian Party, democratically elected by a revolutionary class, turns against its class. This possibility is "excluded by materialism, by the idea that the classless society is inscribed in the structure of capitalist production" (AD 112). Trotsky's paralysis is the practical consequence of this exclusion.

The Derailment of the Dialectic

MP's key phrase for what Trotsky could not think: the "derailment of the dialectic" (AD 108). The dialectic, for Marxism, is not a method external to history but a process immanent in history's matter. Therefore when the dialectic fails — when the Party turns against the proletariat — Marxism cannot name this as a failure of the dialectic; it must name it either as a temporary deviation (which Trotsky's early Thermidor denial affirmed) or as a historical fact that demands a reinterpretation of Marxism itself (which Trotsky never did).

The derailment is unthinkable philosophically, not just politically. Marxism placed the dialectic in the object; a derailment of the dialectic would require that the dialectic be somewhere else (in subjects, in institutions, in the "internal mechanism"). But Marxism has no non-objective place for the dialectic to be. Hence Trotsky's repeated oscillations on whether Thermidor had or had not arrived: he could never decide because the decision was philosophically impossible.

The Critique of Permanent Revolution

Trotsky's thesis of permanent revolution is, for MP, both Trotsky's deepest insight and his most characteristic Marxist error. The insight: revolution cannot be reduced to objective conditions plus subjective will; there is a third order, the "internal mechanism," that operates beyond ordinary historical explanation. The error: Trotsky interprets this internal mechanism as a natural process, a "transtemporal revolution" (AD 111) that is permanently in being-ness, continually "gnawing at history."

"This idea of a transtemporal revolution — anticipated before its objective conditions come together, always to be remade even where these conditions are not joined, present everywhere in 'embryonic' form and never completed anywhere, history's continual obsession and the permanent justification of the will... is nothing other than the Marxist idea of a world incomplete without praxis, of a praxis which is part of the definition of the world" (AD 111).

MP's alternative: permanent revolution is the myth that the essential-prematureness of revolution (see essential-prematureness-of-revolution) could be institutionalized as a permanent condition. The insight behind permanent revolution is right — revolution has an internal mechanism that is not exhausted by objective conditions — but the conclusion (that this mechanism is permanent and can be lived as a continual rupture) is wrong.

Trotsky's Horse: The Inédits Image-Anchor (Chouraqui 2025)

The Inédits 1946–1949 (Mimesis 2022) — read by Chouraqui 2025 §2.2 — supply a side of MP's reception of Trotsky that AD's published critique mostly leaves implicit. In the Inédits, MP repeatedly cites a Trotsky image: "one learns to ride a horse by mounting a horse" (Vol. 2 pp. 305, 308, 340, 386, 404; Vol. 1 p. 466). MP glosses the image as a model of recognition+institution unity in political action: "It is good politics to recognize reality but not to the point that one places oneself in a passive position towards it. Similarly, it is good politics to act, but not at the expense of a realistic sense of the possible. […] action can neither follow nor precede knowledge of the facts: good political action coincides with knowledge."

Chouraqui's reconstruction therefore reads MP's Trotsky as not just the protagonist of AD Ch 4's "derailment of the dialectic" but also the source of MP's recurring image for the unimpaired political agent — the agent who can ride the horse of history, neither following nor preceding. The redirection complicates AD's sharper critique: Trotsky is, on the Inédits reading, both the figure of Marxist failure (caught between practical dialectic and theoretical naturalism, AD's diagnosis) and the figure who articulated the right structural model in the horse-image, even if his philosophical commitments prevented him from sustaining it.

See trotskys-horse for the dedicated concept page treating the image as MP's recurring anchor for recognition-and-institution in the political register, and agnosia-mp for the structural pathology Trotsky's horse opposes.

After Expulsion (Ch 4 §III)

MP treats Trotsky's post-1929 theoretical work with admiration and sadness. Expelled from the USSR, founding the Fourth International, developing the critique of the Stalinist bureaucracy — Trotsky's late work is philosophically sharper than his post-1923 Party maneuvers. But it is philosophically incomplete:

"[Trotsky] transferred to economic categories the fetishism that he had previously professed toward political forms, the Party, and the Soviets" (Lefort, quoted AD 108). Trotsky's "unconditional defense of the USSR" as the country of collectivization and planning is the displacement of his Marxist faith from the Party (which has failed him) to the economy (which has not yet). MP's diagnosis: this is "fetishism" in the specific Marxist sense — the attribution to an object of powers that properly belong to relations between persons.

Trotsky never drew "the philosophical conclusion from his failure: he restricted himself to recreating Bolshevism outside of Bolshevism, Marxism outside of Stalinism" (AD 113). This is the concluding sentence of MP's direct engagement with Trotsky's biography. Marxism could not survive its own failure in Trotsky; what survives in Trotsky's late work is a kind of anachronistic heroism, admirable but philosophically bypassed.

Connections

  • is the protagonist of Ch 4 of AD
  • is read by Lefort (1948) in the essay that is MP's principal secondary source for the chapter
  • partly inherits from Lenin the "step in advance" conception of the Party — Trotsky's practical dialectic is the Leninism he keeps
  • refuses to break with Stalin philosophically even after he has broken with him politically — MP's key diagnostic
  • inaugurates the thesis of permanent revolution — both insight and error
  • exemplifies the essential prematureness thesis without being able to formulate it (MP's own formulation is the generalization of Trotsky's insight beyond its Marxist framing)
  • faces the derailment of the dialectic but cannot name it
  • becomes the subject of MP's critique of Lefort's Trotsky-reading — MP argues Lefort too is caught in the Marxist philosophy that blinded Trotsky
  • parallels the Bras Nus of the French Revolution — Trotsky's October insurrection is MP's modern exemplar of revolution-as-movement; his inability to save that movement from regime-formation is the general structure MP names in the Epilogue
  • is contrasted with Sartre's ultrabolshevism — Trotsky is the Marxist who saw the problem but remained caught in the naturalism; Sartre is the anti-Marxist who avoids the problem by denying the dialectic altogether

Open Questions

  • Is MP's diagnosis of Trotsky's 1923–27 silence philosophically fair? Some Trotskyist readings (most notably Mandel) have argued that Trotsky's caution was politically strategic rather than philosophically necessitated. MP's reading, drawing on Lefort, insists on the philosophical necessity.
  • Did Trotsky's late work (The Revolution Betrayed, the Transitional Program of 1938) revise the philosophical naturalism MP diagnoses, or does it retain it? MP says Trotsky "never drew the philosophical conclusion"; this claim is contestable.
  • How does MP's critique of permanent revolution relate to Mao's later "continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat"? The structural move is similar; MP would presumably apply the same critique, but he died before Mao's formulation became prominent.
  • Trotsky's writings on literature (Literature and Revolution, 1923) are not engaged by MP. They share some features with Lukács's literary theory; MP could have used them as further evidence of Trotsky's practical dialectic at its sharpest.
  • What would MP say of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (1930–32)? The book is a sustained application of Trotsky's practical dialectic to a specific historical event; MP's diagnosis of "essential prematureness" could be tested against its analyses.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1955-adventures-of-the-dialectic — Ch 4 "The Dialectic in Action" is the primary engagement. Key passages: the naturalism vs. practical dialectic at pp. 74–75; the 1923–27 behavior at pp. 103–07; the derailment of the dialectic at p. 108; "transferred to economic categories the fetishism" at p. 108 (quoting Lefort); permanent revolution at p. 111; the "sublime point" reading at p. 114. The chapter also draws heavily on Boris Souvarine's Staline (1935).
  • Lefort's 1948 Temps modernes essay "La Contradiction de Trotsky et le problème révolutionnaire" — MP's principal secondary source; cited extensively in Ch 4.
  • Boris Souvarine, Staline (1935) — secondary source for the documentary evidence about Trotsky's 1923–27 behavior.
  • chouraqui-2025-healing-schneider — §2.2 supplies the Inédits attestations of "Trotsky's horse" (Vol. 2 pp. 305, 308, 340, 386, 404; Vol. 1 p. 466) and reads the image as MP's recurring anchor for recognition+institution unity in political action. See trotskys-horse.