Socialist Party reply #1 to Robert Service on Trotsky

Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, replies to the Hoover Institute's debate, posted on Youtube, between historian Robert Service and Christopher Hitchens on Service's biography of Leon Trotsky, leader with Lenin of the Ruissian Revolution. Part one.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Peter Taaffe
• Socialist Party
• Hoover Institute
• Robert Service
• Christopher Hitchens
• Leon Trotsky
• russian revolution

[TerrySleeper]

@Mrydberg87 - no, I do not accept without reservation what LT said about himself in his autobiography, just because he wrote it! He admitted making errors and mistakes - I don't think that Bush and Rumsfeld ever did.

If you doubt that Service's book is rubbish, just check what the American Historical Review said about the book. The right-wing press may have loved the book; American academics know that it is trash and said so openly.

Naive? Moi?

[TerrySleeper]

The American Historical Review's verdict of the book was damning:

"A book that fails to meet the basic standards of historical scholarship."

"Service fails to examine in a serious way Trotsky's political ideas in his writings and speeches - nor does it appear that he has always bothered to familiarize himself with them."

"Service relies on cheap shots and slanderous asides to keep his readers convinced that Trotsky is a despicable man."

'Nuff said?

[TheSocialistParty]

@Mrydberg87 Not aware that anyone has shown Trotsky's autobiography to be unreliable. Whereas i certainly couldn't vouch for Bush or Rumsfeld. It would probably be quite easy to show where they have told half truths and so forth in their biographies. One reviewer says: Noted war criminal Donald Rumsfeld has published his long-awaited autobiography in which he dodges -- with the docile, lithe flexibility of a teenager or career liar -- any and all responsibility for his actions in government.

[TheSocialistParty]

@Mrydberg87 In general it would be naive to take someone at their word, but in the case of Trotsky, given that he lived at a time when the most grotesque slanders were being thrown at him by stalin and the communist parties around the world, any inaccuracies in his works would be thrown against him.

The workers movement must, in any case, tell the truth because the bosses' media attacks the workers movement at every opportunity, so truth is vital.

[TheSocialistParty]

@Mrydberg87 But isn't it even more naive to consider Robert Service's account "objective"?

The man has to make money from his work - it's his living.

Why should he worship objectivity if he thinks that Marxism in its Leninist and Trotskyist form is a threat to his way of life and that of his class?

And especially when there is a long tradition of these kind of attacks which get praised for a while in the media, because they say what the media want to hear?

[Mrydberg87]

@TerrySleeper

I think that it is a bit naive to take someones own autobiography as fact. I mean should we also believe that the picture George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld paint of themselves in their autobiographies is accurate?

I like to hear both sides and appreciate Peter Taaffe views as well, but just because you don't like what Robert Service says in his book doesn't make it untrue. His books on Stalin and Lenin are written with the same objectivity as his book on Trotsky

[TerrySleeper]

Just fiished reading Trotsky's autobiography.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this as a good read - certainly better than the Service book.

No contest.

[TerrySleeper]

I'm halfway through reading Trotsky's autobiography, My Life.

The man revealed in that book is unrecognisable in Service's paltry effort.

How did Service ever get the damn thing published? It's beyond me . . . . .

[Drac39]

Service's Stalin biography which I have read is more than generous in it's assessment to the greatest butcher in human history, and it now appears that he does this at the exprense of Trotsky, the true Revolutionary advocate for the working class.

[Drac39]

@TheSocialistParty Thanks, it is shocking to think that a Historian would say such a thing. The quote is 100% true, it's disgusting. To be a good Historian you don't engage in personal opinion or right or wrong or good or evil. Service clearly has a distaste for Trotsky and can't be taken seriously. I'm not a Trotskyist but I very much admire the man and it is really a disappointment to read this. And worse yet he accuses Trotskyists of violence at the end of the article.