[Dragaera] Aerich and Trotsky

[Jerry Friedman]

I was wondering about Aerich's discussion of ends and means
in TLoCB, Chapter 53, and I found Trotsky's discussion of
the subject in "Their Morals and Ours".
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/morals/morals.htm>
Some of it sounds quite familiar.  However, Trotsky seems
to admit that the end justifies the means, while Aerich
seems to contradict himself by arguing that the
relationship is not one of justifying, but at the same time
that the ends do justify the means--"The defense of the
Empire is a gentleman's first duty".  Of course Aerich
is not consistent: he later frowns at the idea of joining
forces with a demon in defense of the Empire, but Zerika
abashes him.  Maybe after that he accepts that the duty
of defending the Empire outweighs that of despising
demons, necromancers, and witches.

Also, Trotsky says (of the Spanish anarchists getting
arms by killing Trotskyists on behalf of the Stalinists),
"To base ends correspond base means."  I can't tell
whether he saw any inconsistency between that and his
statements that lying, taking hostages, murdering are
necessary for the proletariat to defeat the bourgeoisie.
Anyway, it seems to resemble Piro's comment, praised
by Aerich but as far as I see a non sequitur, that
"if one finds oneself using dishonorable methods to
achieve a goal, it would follow that the goal, itself,
is somehow dishonorable?  Or if not dishonorable, in
some other way flawed?"

I don't know whether Trotsky got some of his ideas from
Lenin or Marx or Engels, or even Hegel (except that he
quotes Marx approving the Paris Commune's retaliatory
execution of hostages).

Here are some extracts from the Trotsky piece that
I think inspired Aerich's statements such as, "There
is a relationship between means and ends, but it is
neither one of justifying, nor of failing to justify.
[...] It is one of prescribing and proscribing."

<begin excerpts>

“Just the same,” the moralist continues to insist, “does it mean that in the class struggle against capitalists all means are permissible: lying, frame-up, betrayal, murder, and so on?” Permissible and obligatory are those and only those means, we answer, which unite the revolutionary proletariat, fill their hearts with irreconcilable hostility to oppression, teach them contempt for official morality and its democratic echoers, imbue them with consciousness of their own historic mission, raise their courage and spirit of self-sacrifice in the struggle. Precisely from this it flows that not all means are permissible. When we say that the end justifies the means, then for us the conclusion follows that 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”. Primarily and irreconcilably, revolutionary morality rejects servility in relation to the bourgeoisie and haughtiness in relation to the toilers, that is, those characteristics in which petty bourgeois pedants and moralists are thoroughly steeped.
...

Dialectic materialism does not know dualism between means and end. The end flows naturally from the historical movement. Organically the means are subordinated to the end. The immediate end becomes the means for a further end.
...

The liberation of the workers can come only through the workers themselves. There is, therefore, no greater crime than deceiving the masses, palming off defeats as victories, friends as enemies, bribing workers' leaders, fabricating legends, staging false trials, in a word, doing what the Stalinists do. These means can serve only one end: lengthening the domination of a clique already condemned by history. But they cannot serve to liberate the masses. That is why the Fourth International leads against Stalinism a life and death struggle.

<end excerpts>

Jerry Friedman