Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy

Bibliographic Data

ID19903690
AuthorsThomas M Twiss (0000-0003-0462-9714, corresponding author)
Year2014
Pages514
Publication date2014-05-08
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueTrotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004269538
OpenAlexW4299136227
Open LibraryOL29700960M
ISBN9789004269538
LanguageEN
Citations received5

In 1917 the Bolsheviks anticipated, on the basis of the Marxist classics, that the proletarian revolution would put an end to bureaucracy. However, soon after the revolution many within the Bolshevik Party, including Trotsky, were denouncing Soviet bureaucracy as a persistent problem. In fact, for Trotsky the problem of Soviet bureaucracy became the central political and theoretical issue that preoccupied him for the remainder of his life. This study examines the development of Leon Trotsky’s views on that subject from the first years after the Russian Revolution through the completion of his work The Revolution Betrayed in 1936. In his various writings over these years Trotsky expressed three main understandings of the nature of the problem: During the civil war and the first years of NEP he denounced inefficiency in the distribution of supplies to the Red Army and resources throughout the economy as a whole. By 1923 he had become concerned about the growing independence of the state and party apparatuses from popular control and their increasing responsiveness to alien class pressures. Then in later years Trotsky depicted the bureaucracy as a distinct social formation, motivated by its own narrow interests, which had attained a high degree of autonomy from all social classes. Throughout the course of this evolution, Trotsky’s thinking was influenced by factors that included his own major concerns at the time, preexisting images and analyses of bureaucracy, and Trotsky’s interpretation of unfolding events. In turn, at each point Trotsky’s understanding of the general nature of the problem of Soviet bureaucracy directed and shaped his political activities and his analyses of new developments. The picture of Trotsky that emerges is of an individual for whom ideas and theories were extremely important as means of understanding the world, and as a guide to changing it

Bureaucracy · Economics · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Strengths and weaknesses · Anarchism and Radical Politics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · 1917-1921 · 1917-1936 · 1917-1991 · History · leon Trotsky (1879-1940) · Political and social views · politics and government · revolution · Revolution, 1917-1921 · Socialism · Soviet Union

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