In these lamentable times — we need to find humor somewhere — how about in the subject of Trotskyites?

© 2018 Peter Free

 

07 May 2018

 

 

Every once in a while, something pops up in the counter-current that makes me smile

 

Take Diana Johnstone's recent Consortium News article entitled:

 

 

Trotskyist Delusions: Obsessed with Stalin, They See Betrayed Revolutions Everywhere

 

 

Does anyone American know who Leon Trotsky was?

 

Much less what he and his "fellow travelers" stood for?

 

Would anyone care, if they did?

 

 

I am not belittling Ms. Johnstone

 

Her subject is historically presentable and theoretically still applicable. Provided that one can get past the impenetrable combination of American ignorance and ideologically-based prejudice.

 

Given our cultural rock-headedness, I suspect that "Trotskyite" or "Trotskyist" is not a recognizable invitation to foment resistance to the Great American Oligarchy.

 

Out of the box, in my estimation, Johnstone condemned her essay to being virtually unseen. Except, perhaps, by a vanishingly small percentage of the handful of self-identified Trotskyite-Trotskyists still running loose among the planet's close to 8 billion people.

 

 

The moral? — Counter-culturalists need to speak in understandable terms — or run the towering risk of being ignored

 

I am not saying that Marxist thought, of one stripe or another, is irrelevant.

 

Just that it might be wiser — if social change is the goal — to frame resistance-oriented impulses in recognizably modern words and labels.

 

It is difficult to start a movement, if virtually no one knows what you are talking about.

 

Hence my smile at the arguably self-defeating absurdity of Diana Johnstone's essay title.