The Social Function of Science

---

Author: John Desmond Bernal;
Published: 1938;
Printer: Stephen Austin and Sons, Hertford;
HTML Markup: Pierre Marshall.

This is a reprinted essay which originally appeared in an early edition of the Modern Quarterly in 1938, it is a precursor to the book of the same name which Bernal published the following year, in January 1939.

---

WHAT IS THE contemporary, and what may be the future, function of science in society? Some things about science already win general acceptance. Science is an integral part both of the material and economic life of our times and of the ideas which guide and inspire it. Science puts into our hands the, means of satisfying our material needs and also the ideas which will enable us to understand, to co-ordinate, and to satisfy our needs in the social sphere. Beyond this science has something as important though less definite to offer: a reasonable hope in the unexplored possibilities of the future, an inspiration which is slowly but surely becoming the dominant driving force of modern thought and action.

To see the function of science as a whole, it is necessary to look at it against the widest possible background of history. Our attention to immediate historical events has, up till very recently, blinded us to the understanding of its major transformations. Mankind is, after all, a relatively late emergence on the scene of terrestrial evolution, and the earth itself is a late by-product of cosmic forces. Up till now human life has only undergone three major changes: the foundation of society and of civilization both of which occurred before the dawn of recorded history, and that scientific transformation of society which is now taking place and for which we have as yet no name.

The first revolution was the foundation of society by which man became different from the animals and found, through the new habit of transmission of experience from generation to generation, a means of advance altogether faster and more sure than the haphazard evolutionary struggle. The second revolution was the discovery of civilization, based on agriculture, and bringing with it a manifold development of specialized techniques, but above all, the social forms of the city and trade. Through these mankind as a whole was removed from parasitic dependence on nature and a certain section of mankind liberated altogether from the task of food production. The discovery of civilization was a local event. It had acquired nearly all its essential features by the sixth millennium B.C. but only at its centre, somewhere between Mesopotamia and India. We cannot trace in the succeeding thousands of years right up to the Renaissance and the beginning of our own times, any substantial change in the quality of civilization. The whole of this period of recorded history marks only relatively small cultural and technical changes, and these for the most part of a cyclic character. Civilization after civilization rises and decays, but each one, though different, is not essentially in advance of the one before. The real perceptible advance is only in area. Every breakdown of the civilization internally and through barbarian invasions meant in the long run, after a period of confusion, the spread of that civilization to the barbarians. By the end of the period all the easily cultivated lands of the old world were civilized.

It is apparent to us now, though it was certainly not then, that by the middle of the fifteenth century something new was beginning. We have come to look on the Renaissance as presaging the rise of capitalism, but it was not until the eighteenth century that any fundamental change was generally recognized. By then, through the application of science and invention, new possibilities were available to mankind which were likely to have an even larger effect on his future than those of agriculture and the techniques of early civilization. It is only recently that we have been able to separate in our minds the development of capitalist enterprise from that of science and the general liberation of human thought. Both seemed to be inextricably connected parts of Progress but at the same time, paradoxically, their appearance was greeted as evidence that man was returning to his natural state, freed from the arbitrary restrictions of religion or feudal authority. We now see that though capitalism was essential to the early development of science, giving it, for the first time, a practical value, the human importance of science transcends in every way that of capitalism, and, indeed, the full development of science in the service of humanity is incompatible with the continuance of capitalism.

Science implies a unified and co-ordinated and, above all, conscious control of the whole of social life; it abolishes, or provides the possibility of abolishing, the dependence of man on the material world. Henceforth society is subject only to the limitation it imposes on itself. There is no reason to doubt that this possibility will be grasped. The mere knowledge of its existence is enough to drive man on until he has achieved it. The socialized integrated scientific world organization is coming. It would be absurd, however, to pretend that it had nearly arrived or that it will come without the most severe struggles and confusion. We must realize that we are in the middle of one of the major transition periods of human history. Our most immediate problem is to ensure that the transition is accomplished as rapidly as possible with the minimum of material, human, and cultural destruction.

Although science will clearly be the characteristic feature of the third stage of humanity, its importance will not be fully felt until this stage has been definitely established. Belonging to an age of transition we are primarily concerned with its tasks, and here science is but one factor in a complex of economic and political forces. Our business is with what science here and now has to do. The importance of science in the struggle, moreover, depends largely on the consciousness of this importance. Science, conscious of its purpose, can in the long run become a major force in social change. Because of the powers which it holds in reserve, it can ultimately dominate the other forces. But science unaware of its social significance becomes a helpless tool in the hands of forces driving it away from the directions of social advance, and, in the process, destroying its very essence, the spirit of free inquiry. To make science conscious of itself and its powers it must be seen in the light of the problems of the present and of a realizable future. It is in relation to these that we have to determine the immediate functions of science.

We have in the world to-day a number of palpable material evils — starvation, disease, slavery, and war — evils which in previous times were accepted as part of nature or as the actions of stem or malevolent gods, but which now continue solely because we are tied to out-of-date political and economic systems. There is no longer any technical reason why everyone should not have enough to eat. There is no reason why anyone should do more than three or four hours of disagreeable or monotonous work a day, or why they should be forced, by economic pressure, to do even that. War, in a period of potential plenty and ease for all, is sheer folly and cruelty. The greater part of disease in the world to-day is due directly or indirectly to lack of food and good living conditions. All these are plainly remediable evils and no one can feel that science has been properly applied to human life until they are swept off the face of the earth.

But that is only the beginning. There are a number of apparently irremediable evils, such as disease or the necessity for any kind of unpleasant work at all, which we have very good reason for believing could be dealt with if a serious and economically well-supported scientific drive were made to discover their causes and eliminate them. The starving of research of potential human value is but one step removed from the starving of man.

These are all, however, but negative aspects of the application of science. It is plainly not enough to remove as much of present evil as lies in our power. We must look to producing new good things, better, more active and harmonious ways of living, individually and socially. So far science has hardly touched these fields. It has accepted the crude desires of a pre-scientific age without attempting to analyse and refine them. It is the function of science to study man as much as nature, to discover the significance and direction of social movements and social needs. The tragedy of mankind has too often lain in its very success in achieving what it imagined to be its objects. Science, through its capacity for looking ahead and comprehending at the same time many aspects of a problem, should be able to determine far more clearly which are the real and which the fantastic elements of personal and social desires. Science brings power and liberation, just as much by showing the falsity and impossibility of certain human aims, as by satisfying others. In so far as science becomes the conscious guiding force of material civilization it must increasingly permeate all other spheres of culture.

The present situation, where a highly developed science stands almost isolated from the traditional literary culture, is altogether anomalous and cannot last. No culture can stand indefinitely apart from the dominating practical ideas of the time, without degenerating into pedantic futility. It need not be imagined, however, that the assimilation of science and culture is likely to take place without very serious modifications in the structure of science itself. Science of the present day owes its origin and much of its character, to the precise needs of material construction. Its method is essentially a critical one, the ultimate criterion being experimental, that is, practical verification. The really positive part of science, the making of discoveries, lies outside scientific method proper. Discoveries are usually unthinkingly attributed to the operations of human genius which it would be impious to attempt to explain. We have no science of science. Another aspect of the same defect of present day science is its inability adequately to deal with phenomena in which novelty occurs and which are not readily reduced to any quantitative mathematical description. The enlargement of science to cover this defect is needed for its extension to social problems, and will be more so the more science becomes assimilated with general culture. The dryness and austerity of science, which had led to its widespread rejection by those of literary culture and, among scientists themselves, to every kind of irrational and mystical addition, is something which must be removed before science can fully take its place as a common framework of life and thought.

To a certain extent this transformation will represent a fusion of existing tendencies inside and outside of science. Particular scientific disciplines; the dispassionate assembling of evidence; the acceptance of the existence of multiple causation, each factor having a definite quantitative part to play in the final result, and the general understanding of the elements of chance and statistical probability, will tend to become the background of every kind of human action. At the same time, history, tradition, literary form, and visual presentation will come more and more to belong to science. The world picture presented by science which, though continually changing, grows with each change more definite and complete, is bound to become in the new age the foundation of every form of culture. But this change by itself is not sufficient, the transformation of science and not the mere assimilation of other disciplines is required for the new tasks which science will have to face.

The stages of scientific advance have marked a progress from the large and simple to the small and complex. The first stage of science, that of the description and ordering of the available universe, is already essentially completed. The second stage, the understanding the mechanics of this universe, is on its way to completion, for already we can see in principle the general scheme of this explanation. There remain unknown, and indeed in part necessarily unknowable, possibilities beyond this, though we can already glimpse a little of this future development. It is quite clear that, if humanity does not in the near future destroy that elaborate co-operative effort, which distinguishes civilization from the previous purely biological existence of man, it will have to tackle a universe which will become more and more itself a human creation. Already the chief difficulties both in the theory and practice of science lie in the problems that human society has created for itself in economics, sociology, and psychology. In the future, as the simpler conquest of non-human forces is brought to its completion, these problems will become increasingly important.

This process will bring new aspects into evidence. The more thought deals with the problems of a rapidly developing society, in part consciously motivated, and in part moving by the indiscernible interaction of the different forces working within it, the more the methods of coping with problems will need to be modified in order to deal with the novel and the unexpected. The first sciences to emerge into rationality were those of the simplest operations — mechanics, physics, and chemistry. Our pattern of rationality is founded on the study of systems where everything is uniform and nothing really new happens. In biology already this mode of thought is beginning to break down. The theory of evolution not only marks an advance in our understanding of nature, but is also a critical step in our method of thinking, because it involves the recognition of novelty and history in science. True, men have studied history already for millennia, but in a very different spirit from that of science. Indeed, they have gone so far as to deny that history could be a science at all because of the very possibility of novelty in it. But there is no intrinsic reason why science should not learn to deal with the novel elements in the universe, which after all are as characteristic of it as the repetitive and regular ones. Science has not done so up till now because it has not had to. Now for the first time the problem is fairly presented. If we are to master and direct our world we must learn how to cope with not only the orderly but also with the novel aspects of the universe even when that novelty is of our own making.

Karl Marx was the first to realize this problem and to suggest how it might be solved. He was able to draw from the study of economics, in the place of the superficial regularities that sufficed for the orthodox school, a profound realization of the developments of new forms and of the struggles and equilibria from which still newer forms derived. We have here the beginning of a rational study of development as such but it is one in which it is no longer possible rigidly to separate the observer from the observed, and which consequently identifies the student with the forces he is studying. In the turmoil and struggle which our social and political world is passing through, these ideas are rapidly winning their way even into the camp of their most violent enemies. They have found their justification, not only in predicting but also in moulding human development, a task which would have been impossible within the limits of a science based on the conception of an ordered and invariable world.

Now as science itself has proceeded almost entirely by the method of isolation, the Marxist method of thinking has often appeared to scientists as loose and unscientific, or, as they would put it, metaphysical. Isolation in science, however, can only be achieved by a rigorous control of the circumstances of the experiment or application. Only when all the factors are known is scientific prediction, in the full sense, possible. Now it is quite clear that where new things are coming into the universe all the factors cannot be known, and that therefore the method of scientific isolation fails to deal with these new things. But from the human point of view it is as necessary to be able to deal with new things as with the regular order of nature. Science may be perfectly right in restricting itself to the latter. But then it is wrong if it implies that outside this regular order the human mind is helpless, that if something cannot be dealt with “scientifically” it cannot be dealt with rationally.

The great contribution of Marxism is to extend the possibility of rationality in human problems to include those in which radically new things are happening. It can only do so, however, subject to certain necessary limitations. In the first place, the degree of prediction where new things are concerned can never be of the same order of exactitude as in the regular and isolated operations of science. Exact knowledge, which has been looked on as an ideal, is, however, not the only alternative to no knowledge at all. There are even very large regions inside science itself where exact knowledge is impossible. The whole trend of modern physics has, for instance, shown that it is hopeless to expect it in atomic phenomena. But there the difficulty is circumvented by relying on the exactness of the statistical knowledge of a large number of events. In a similar way, the exact dates and localities of the critical changes, the wars and revolutions which effect human society, are unpredictable, but here statistical methods are not fully applicable, there being only one human society. Nevertheless, the intrinsic instability of certain economic and technical systems is something which can be generally established and their breakdown becomes, within a wide range of years, inevitable.

There can be no question, even to those completely unaware of the methods by which the Marxist predictions are reached, that the Marxists have some way of analysing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be. The uncritical acceptance of this, however, leads many into believing that Marxism is simply another providential teleology, that Marx had mapped the necessary lines of social and economic development which men willy nilly must follow. This is a complete misunderstanding. Marxist predictions are not the result of working out such a scheme of development. On the contrary they emphasize the impossibility of doing this. What can be seen at any given moment is the composition of the economic and political forces of the times, their necessary struggle and the new conditions which will be the result. But beyond that we can only foresee a process which has not ended and will necessarily take on new and strictly unpredictable forms. The value of Marxism is as a method and a guide to action, not as a creed and a cosmogony. The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economic and social development. In doing so it effectively separates the metaphysical elements which throughout the whole course of its history have. penetrated scientific thought. It is to Marxism that we owe the consciousness of the hitherto unanalysed driving force of scientific advance, and it will be through the practical achievements of Marxism that this consciousness can become embodied in the organization of science for the benefit of humanity.

Science will come to be recognized as the chief factor in fundamental social change. The economic and industrial system keeps, or should keep, civilization going. The steady process of technical improvements provides for a regular increase in the extent and commodity of life. Science should provide a continuous series of unpredictable radical changes in the techniques themselves. Whether these changes fit in or fail to fit in with human and social needs is the measure of how far science has been adjusted to its social function.

For the full value of these seminal ideas we must wait until the ending of the struggle, which, though it may seem to us interminably drawn out, will appear in history as an episode, though a great and critical one. Then mankind will come into its material heritage and, far from needing science less, will make even greater demands on it to solve the greater human and social problems which have to be faced. To meet this task science itself will change and develop and in doing so will cease to be a special discipline of a selected few and become the common heritage of mankind.

Already we have in the practice of science the prototype for all human action. The task which the scientists have undertaken — the understanding and control of nature and of man himself — is merely the conscious expression of the task of human society. The methods by which this task is attempted, however imperfectly they are realized, are the methods by which humanity is most likely to secure its own future. In its.endeavour, science is communism. In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal. Not orders, but advice, determine action. Each man knows that only by advice, honestly and disinterestedly given, can his work succeed, because such advice expresses as near as may be the inexorable logic of the material world, stubborn fact. Facts cannot be forced to our desires, and freedom comes by admitting this necessity and not by pretending to ignore it. These things have been learned painfully and incompletely in the pursuit of science. Only in the wider tasks of humanity will their full use be found.

---

J. D. Bernal Archive

Marxism and Natural Sciences by Y.M. Uranovsky

 Natural science has to do with a relatively changeable nature ; on the one hand, as a result of the industrial activity of many generations, on the other hand (as the further development of science has shown) as a result of man's action upon it through the medium of investigation of observed processes.

The essence of the processes of nature cannot be understood without taking man's practical activity into account, which depends on the condition of productive forces and social construction. Only by starting from the practice of social life (industry, classes, social conditions) can human nature be understood as a part of nature as a whole, not only in the sense that man's psychology and ideas show their class essence, but in the sense of taking account of those natural (biological) changes to which he is subjected, when, in the process of changing reality, he also changes himself.

The method established by Marx spells the doom of naturalism in all its variations which looks on human society and man as an ordinary "child" of nature : the socio-power school (Podolinsky, Ostwald) ; the geo-political (Rutzel, G. E. Graf, etc.) ; every kind of bio-sociological school, starting with social-Darwinism, from Karl Kautsky's attempts to supplement Marx with a doctrine of the instincts as the starting-point for the analysis of social relationships, or the efforts of the Austro-Marxists to correct Marx by the teaching of Freud, explaining religion and culture by biological factors, right down to the philosophy of modern fascism (O. Spann) which tries to base itself on a biological theory of completeness and a doctrine of races in the organic world.

Marx breaks down all kinds of teaching on freedom of will by showing that social being determines social consciousness and in this way extends the objective method to the study of the most complex social phenomena.

In place of inconsistent, abstract, materialist monism (Spinoza, French eighteenth-century materialism, Feuerbach), Marx lays the firm foundations for a materialist monism which is not abstract, but concrete, dialectical, consistent, taking account of the specific nature of human society, of all the inner connections between nature and man in their historical development. Marx gives a method and an outlook in which the dialectic of nature and the dialectic of history are indissolubly connected together.

In Marx's views the historical primacy of nature is not in any way broken. Even before the triumph of evolutionist ideas Marx establishes the following premises : the theory of creation is destroyed, as is shown by the natural sciences (geognosis) ; nature develops, it is in process of becoming even before the appearance of man ; the development of nature goes spontaneously, is immanent, selfgenerated ; the organic world (and man) arose through generatio æquivoca ; life has not always existed as Thomson, Helmholtz and other representatives of the "absurd doctrine" of panspermy uphold. It follows that Marx understands this generatio æquivoca not as being the conception and birth of higher organisms without the intermediary of seed and parents (the mediæval form of this doctrine of generatio æquivoca, spontanea aut primaria), but in the sense of self-movement, selfdevelopment, i.e. in the sense which is in accordance with the chemical theory of the origin of life and the evolutionary theory of the origin of man, established within a decade and a half by Darwin's theory.

In a deep internal connection with these new views of the object of the natural sciences, of nature, Marx develops an absolutely new outlook on the science of nature, on natural science.

Even in the works belonging to the Holy Family Marx analyses, with greater power and depth than any of his predecessors (Bacon, Spinoza, the French materialists and philosophers of the age of enlightenment), the cultural-historical and social significance of natural science. Marx reproaches the philosophers for not taking into account the role and importance of the natural sciences. Natural science is not an external factor of usefulness for man or a chance factor of enlightenment. It is internally bound up with the most essential form of human activity, with practice, with industry, with the development of labour.

Industry is a practical relationship of man to nature, natural science, a "theoretical relationship". Industry is the basic form of practice, natural science, the foundation of human science. Industry discloses the real powers of man, and natural science is such a "real power", "a potential of production". Marx establishes the empirical origin and practical function of natural science and apportions a very important social role to natural science.

It follows that the power of Marx's analysis, surpassing all that had hitherto been written on the importance of the natural sciences, is determined by the fact that Marx knew how to generalise with genius the objective data of the epoch. Marx did not invent theories but summed up the experience of history and modern life. He often refers to the "gifts of science" which Davy, Liebig and others made to humanity.

Title: The Fabric of Illusion

 Title: The Fabric of Illusion

In a world not unlike our own, nestled between the folds of time and space, there existed a city called Veritas. It was a place of shimmering glass towers, swirling nebulae painted across the sky, and streets that seemed to change direction based on the whims of its inhabitants. In Veritas, every morning would greet its citizens with a choice: remain in the confines of perceived reality or step into the unknown and unravel the threads of existence.

Elara, a young woman with wild copper curls and eyes that sparkled with mischief, lived a double life. By day, she was an ordinary librarian, her time spent cataloging ancient tomes and mediating between whispering books. By night, she was an explorer of dreams, diving headfirst into the enigmatic fabric that created their world. The tales of her adventures were whispered in hushed tones among the city's inhabitants, for they knew little of the hidden truths that lay just beyond their reach.

One fateful evening, while browsing through the dusty shelves of the library, Elara stumbled upon a weathered book unlike any she had seen before. Its cover was a deep shade of indigo, embellished with shimmering silver letters that read, “The Truth of Shadows.” Intrigued, she opened it, revealing pages filled with cryptic symbols and sketches of magical landscapes that danced before her eyes. As she flipped through the chapters, a single phrase echoed in her mind: “Reality doesn’t exist.”

The words resonated within Elara, igniting something deep inside her. She closed her eyes, clutching the book tightly, and suddenly felt a pull, as if the fabric of reality was unraveling around her. When she opened them again, she was no longer in the library. Instead, she stood in a vast, vibrant expanse lit by two suns. The sky shifted in hues of lavender and gold, and the ground beneath her trembled gently, alive with energy.

“Welcome, seeker,” said a voice that seemed to emanate from the air itself. A figure materialized before her—a tall being with skin that shimmered like the night sky, swirling with constellations. “I am Kael, Weaver of Realities. You’ve unlocked the doorway to the realm beyond perception.”

“What do you mean? Reality doesn’t exist?” Elara asked, her heart racing.

Kael smiled enigmatically. “What you call reality is but a tapestry woven from the dreams, fears, and desires of countless souls. It is the sum of collective beliefs, a mere reflection in a pool that deepens and shifts with every thought.”

Elara's mind swirled with possibilities as she gazed at the vibrant world around her. It felt more alive than anything she had known. “But how can I reshape it? How can I change what I see, what I feel?”

“The question is not how to change it, beloved seeker, but rather to understand that you are the weaver of your own tapestry. It’s time for you to recognize your power,” Kael instructed, gesturing to the infinite kaleidoscope of realities unfolding before her. “Each thread is a choice, each pattern a belief. Embrace your ability to create.”

With newfound determination, Elara focused her thoughts, envisioning her aspirations, her fears, and her dreams. As she did, she saw radiant threads emerging, intertwining and forming patterns that danced to her desires. The vibrant world pulsed, shifting in response to her energy—the sky darkened, blossoming with galaxies as she began to weave a tapestry of light.

But with every masterpiece comes a shadow. As Elara created, she also unearthed the darker threads—the fears that her mind had hidden, the insecurities that clawed at her spirit. Stumbling upon them, she hesitated, feeling a wave of doubt crash over her. “What if I undo everything?”

Kael appeared beside her, the shimmer of the cosmos swirling around him. “Fear is a part of the weave, just as love is. Acknowledge it, for in acceptance lies your strength. Remember, you are not just the creator; you are also the observer. Allow yourself to experience both the beauty and darkness without judgment.”

Taking a deep breath, Elara embraced her shadows. Instead of flinching, she wove them into her tapestry. As she did, something extraordinary happened—the fears transformed, emerging as lessons learned, illuminating her tapestry with depth and richness. The once dark threads sparkled like constellations, revealing their true nature.

With the completion of her masterpiece, the world around her shimmered and shook. Elara realized she had woven a new reality—one that transcended the limitations of her previous existence. She had unlocked a world where impossibilities danced with possibilities.

As she stood before the altar of creation, the skies changed, settling into a serene twilight. Kael smiled, pride evident in his gaze. “You have awakened to your truth, Elara. Remember, reality is but a canvas. Forge forward, not only for yourself but for all who dwell in Veritas.”

And so, Elara returned to her city, the book clutched tight to her chest, her heart glowing with newfound wisdom. With each passing day, she shared her journey, awakening others to the illusion of their confines and encouraging them to weave their own tapestries.

Reality didn’t exist; what thrived was the power of creativity, the beauty of belief, and the magic of transformation. Together, they would rewrite the story of Veritas, one thread at a time.

BASIC IDEAS OF NIKOLAI FEDOROV

 1. The contemporary humanity is divided into

ty ae leh ee ws 8) the learned and unlearned, the rich and poor. acetone A poy ee GR 4! The common task is to restore the kinship and Hise ah gatunle®, shou ate etme NG Ny ANG unity of the human kind. . Bes CAA wy iat ae '\:\| 2. People are brothers because they have one " y BA, Sart wear Ne ,:| heavenly Father. Religion is the way to tyr | oy © Sey YY unification.

3. True religion is not an abstract faith in God the Father but the worship of all our fathers and forefathers since they gave life to us.

4. The common task of humanity is the resurrection of all previous generations. Brotherhood cannot be limited to the living but must include all generations.

_| 5. The so-called progress is immoral because it | consists in the swallowing up of the old by the ‘| new, in the displacing of the fathers by the =| sons.

6. The progress increases the force of death, the superiority of the living over the dead and of the young people over the old ones.

7. Death as an inevitability of nature is an insult to humanity. The project, called the Common Task, is directed toward overcoming death through technological advancement.

8. All natural laws, death being only one, must be reversed in order that humanity can manifest God's omniscience and omnipotence.

Everything granted must be transformed into { something crafted.

9. Contemporary civilization has procreative obsession, which has given rise to a feminized industry of conspicuous consumption oriented * «| toward seduction

10. History as a succession of generations, whereby the new supplants the old, must give way to a retrospective tendency _ that emphasizes immortality and the resurrection of ancestors.

AOE

11. "Supramorality" demands that sons return their debt of love to their fathers by resurrecting them. All technological resources must be dedicated to this task of preserving and revitalizing the remains of deceased fathers

12. Christianity is primarily the religion of | resurrection, which echoes the Orthodox privileging of Easter over all other holidays, icluding Christmas.

13. Man is called to worship God by literalizing through practice everything in Scripture that is usually interprete only in a spiritual sense, as symbols of another world.

14. The moral task of humanity is not to wait for the Last Judgement, but to follow the example set by Christ and endeavor to make bodily resurrection possible on the | earth, to transform the entirety of human existence into a man-made and continuous Easter.

15. The museum, as a collection of the ancestors' remains, is the central cultural institution of humanity, which works also as a laboratory of resurrection science.

16. With the conquest of death and | attainment of immortality, procreation | becomes obsolete, and the focus of human history shifts to cosmic expansion, which is necessary to accomodate the innumerable resurrected generations of ancestors

*16 BASIC IDEAS OF NIKOLAI FEDOROV, Mikhail | Epstein, 1995. emory.edu/INTELNET/four_thinkers.html

_ > 1 4

; a ) Lf. € y

Feminist dialectics

 

🌍Lawyers’ Socialism by kausky

 🌍

Lawyers’ Socialism

(excerpt)

---

First published: Juristen-Sozialismus, "Die Neue Zeit", Heft 2, Jahrgang 1887;
Source: Marx and Engels On Religion, Progress Publishers, 1957;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.

---

The world outlook of the Middle Ages was substantially theological. The unity of the European world which actually did not exist internally, was established externally, against the common Saracen foe, by Christianity.

The unity of the West-European world, which consisted of a group of nations developing in continual intercourse, was welded in Catholicism. This theological welding was not only in ideas, it existed in reality, not only in the Pope, its monarchistic centre, but above all in the feudally and hierarchically organized Church, which, owning about a third of the land in every country, occupied a position of tremendous power in the feudal organization. The Church with its feudal landownership was the real link between the different countries; the feudal organization of the Church gave a religious consecration to the secular feudal state system. Besides, the clergy was the only educated class. It was therefore natural that Church dogma was the starting-point and basis of all thought. Jurisprudence, natural science, philosophy, everything was dealt with according to, whether its content agreed or disagreed with the doctrines of the Church.

But in the womb of feudalism the power of the bourgeoisie was developing. A new class appeared in opposition to the big landowners. The city burghers were first and foremost and exclusively producers of and traders in commodities, while the feudal mode of production was based substantially on self-consumption of the product within a limited circle, partly by the producers and partly by the feudal lord. The Catholic world outlook, fashioned on the pattern of feudalism, was no longer adequate for this new class and its conditions of production and exchange. Nevertheless, this new class remained for a long time a captive in the bonds of almighty theology. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century all the reformations and the struggles carried out under religious slogans that were connected with them were, on the theoretical side, nothing but repeated attempts of the burghers and plebeians in the towns and the peasants who had become rebellious by contact with both the latter to adapt the old theological world outlook to the changed economic conditions and the condition of life of the new class. But that could not be done. The flag of religion waved for the last time in England in the seventeenth century, and hardly fifty years later appeared undisguised in France the new world outlook which was to become the classical outlook of bourgeoisie, the juristic world outlook.

It was a secularization of the theological outlook. Human right took the place of dogma, of divine right, the state took the place of the church. The economic and social conditions, which had formerly been imagined to have been created by the Church and dogma because they were sanctioned by the Church, were now considered as founded on right and created by the state. Because commodity exchange on a social scale and in its full development, particularly through advance and credit, produces complicated mutual contract relations and therefore demands generally applicable rules that can be given only by the community — state-determined standards of right — it was imagined that these standards of right arose not from the economic facts but from formal establishment by the state. And because competition, the basic form of trade of free commodity producers, is the greatest equalizer, equality before the law became the main battle-cry of the bourgeoisie. The fact that this newly aspiring class’s struggle against the feudal lords and the absolute monarchy then protecting them, like every class struggle, had to be a political struggle, a struggle for the mastery of the state, and had to be fought on juridical demands contributed to strengthen the juristic outlook.

A christmas carol

 

"Jabberwocky"

 "Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Dada poem9

 Gen they that meth they meth the the th

Tent he the the the tenth the the they Brent

The the the dying you they run a they by tent

The the the tent meth tent run tent run 

Gen they rent th be gen the gnu they runs g

The the they n Danny sync fast achy candy be

The tenth cent gen tenth cent st wth there gen

The the they. The girl the the the gen gen they GB

Gen they sing sync sch at sync they can they e.g. 

Be that barn gang arms vs fancy th fans they he

Engle they my eh they msg sync checks net at 

Grants my that sync tent fan sync th fragment

Gem felt Cheng gen they dinner meth tend th

Gen they gang nether they gen tangent that sch

Rent at at gen Ethernet Sandy tenth s garner g

The the the that synch sync they meth tangent he

He the clerk sign maybe gang synth fans in

The the th tent herb and magnet n gang at n

Why all this talk about our not being equal?

 Why all this talk about humans not being equal? Surely you do not believe in a master race! Surely Hitler and his minions showed to us all what is wrong with thinking that anyone can be better than you! 🙏 This is not a matter of treating everyone the same! What is the point of doing so, if everyone is not one? Think on that!

Leon Trotsky My Life Preface to the Norwegian Edition

 

Leon Trotsky

My Life

---

Preface to the
Norwegian Edition

(October 1, 1935)

---

Source: Leon Trotsky, Mitt Liv, Tiden, Oslo 1935.
Translation: Frans-Arne Stylegar.
HTML Markup: Jonas Holmgren.
Proofreader: Einde O’Callaghan.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit Marxists Internet Archive as your source.

---

I write these lines in Norway or, more specifically, in the community hospital in Oslo. A surprising chapter! One can often predict great historical events, but it is difficult to predict one’s own destiny. I recollect one situation: After the French government had expelled me from France to Spain because of my insufficient patriotic enthusiasm for the tsar and the Entente, I was without any reason whatsoever arrested by the government of Alfons XIII; as I lay on the bench in Madrid’s “model” prison I asked myself, laughing: how and why had I ended up here? A surprising chapter! But the serious answer is: However capricious the course of my personal life may seem, in the final instance it is shaped under the influence of weighty historical factors such as war, revolution and counter-revolution. One has to accept one’s destiny as it is being forged by the hammer of history ... And it is no exaggeration when I say that with a book in hand I felt just as confident as a year or a year and a half later in the Smolny or the Kremlin.

Almost twenty years have passed since then: quite a period in a single person’s life – especially when one considers that those very two decades have been filled with huge happenings in the history of the whole of humanity. But through all vicissitudes and upheavals I have happily managed to keep my inclination and readiness to laugh at the annoyances of my personal life intact. And the fact that I now, as the 18th anniversary of the October revolution approaches, lie ill in the Norwegian capital, can least of all make me feel “offended” by the course of history or delude me into complaining about my personal lot. True, the transition from the present, definitively bankrupt social system to a new and more harmonious one is much slower than I had believed and wished for; the conservatism and gullibility of the masses, the dullness and treason of their leaders has thrown humanity backward and is demanding innumerable further sacrifices – but the victory of the new society is certain, and that is the main point. Fais ce que doit, advienne que pourra ... [Do what you have to, come what may ...]

* * *

My first exile was so short (October 1903-February 1905) that it barely qualifies as an exile at all: between two periods of underground work, between two prison terms and two banishments in Tsarist Russia, a young revolutionary simply spent one and a half years in Western Europe, where from a circle of seasoned émigrés from two generations (Plekhanov and Axelrod, Lenin and Martov) he learnt Marxism and revolutionary politics.

My second exile lasted for ten years. It coincided with the dark and deep reactionary retreat between the two Russian revolutions (1905 and 1917). The latter phase of this exile stretches into the war years with their chauvinistic divisions and poisonings, which werre a major setback for the world proletariat.

My third exile began in January 1929, following a year of internal exile in Central Asia, and has now lasted for almost seven years. This period is characterised by the terrible sharpening of capitalist contradictions all over the world, by the growth and advance of fascism, by the heavy losses of the European proletariat (Germany, Austria, Spain). There is nothing accidental about these parallels between the periodisation of my personal life and that of history’s development. The destiny of many revolutionary generations, not only in Russia but in every country that has experienced major social upheavals has followed this curve: from prison and exile to power, and from power to prison and exile.

But this inevitably raises one objection: In the Soviet Union the counter-revolution has, after all, not been victorious; there the present social development is taking place on the basis created by the October revolution. But it was from this very same Soviet Union, which the author of this book had helped create, that he had to leave for his third exile. How can he explain this contradiction?

There is nothing enigmatic about it. The capitalist counter-revolution has not succeeded in the Soviet Union, that is true enough. Only very short-sighted people or those directly involved can overlook the deep degeneration which the party that carried through the victorious October revolution and the state that the victorious working class created have undergone during the last ten or twelve years. Over the Soviet state a bureacracy now rules. It has collected in its own hands unlimited power and innumerable material privileges. Incidentally, it would have been very instructive to calculate the part of the national income being devoured by the ruling, privileged caste; but these statistics belong to the great state secrets. As it definitively freed itself from the control of the masses and rose up above the community of a working class declared incapable of managing their own affairs, the bureaucracy unavoidably had to crystallise from its own ranks a chief arbitrator, a sealer of destinies, an absolute and infallible “leader”. In this thoroughly byzantine ideology the bureaucracy’s demand to play the role of the eternal, irremovable and well-paid legal guardian of the people finds its highest (more properly: lowest) expression. But this enlightened absolutism has nothing in common, and cannot have anything in common with a workers’ state, not to mention with “the classless, socialist society”.

The technical, economic and cultural conquests of the Soviet state are indeed magnificent. This is an indisputable fact. These results were accomplished through the nationalisation of the means of production and the heroic sacrifices of the working masses. But only the so-called “friends of the Soviet Union” (in reality the friends of the bureaucratic Soviet chiefs) can believe that socialist construction must rely on personal dictatorship, on a regime of bureaucratic irresponsibility, and on the merciless oppression of the thought and criticism of the advanced workers. In reality the Bonapartist arbitrariness, which follows from the struggle of the bureacracy to keep its position, is steadily coming into stronger and sharper conflict with the conditions neccessary for the construction of the new society. Through its sense of untenability of its own position against the mass of the people, which economically and culturally is becoming progressively stronger, the bureaucracy has introduced into its own circles a system of reciprocal assurance and mercilessly condemns anybody who dares doubt that its usurped privileges are of divine ..., nay, of “revolutionary” origin. Thus the furious oppression of the tens of thousands of older and younger revolutionaries who remain faithful to the banner of the October revolution. In this sense I can say that my third exile parallels the deep bureaucratic reaction in the Soviet Union.

Only a few days ago Le Temps, the leading organ of the French bourgeoisie, wrote on the occasion of the reintroduction of military ranks in the Red Army: “The outer change is one of the characteristics of the thoroughgoing changes currently taking place in the whole Soviet Union. The newly secured regime is starting to take solid shape. Revolutionary habits and customs are retreating, in the family as well as in society, before values and practices that still dominate in the so-called capitalist countries. The Soviets are getting more and more bourgeois (les sovjets s’embourgeoisent)” (Le Temps, September 25, 1935). This statement from a serious, careful and thoroughly conservative paper needs no comment. Statements like this occur by the thousand. They show incontestably that the bourgeois degeneration among the heads of Soviet society has advanced very far. At the same time they prove that the further development of the Soviet Union is unthinkable without freeing the socialist base of society of its bourgeois-bureaucratic and bonapartist superstructure. Here, in a few words, is the reason for my third exile ...

For four and a half year I lived with my wife, my steady comrade-in-arms and travel-mate, in Turkey on the island of Prinkipo; then two years in France; and finally the last months in Norway.

* * *

Before finishing this preface I cannot avoid mentioning that my stay at Ullevål hospital has given me an unexpected and rare opportunity to meet a particular category of Norwegians: doctors, nurses, female and male nursing students. In all these people I have encountered nothing but attentiveness, compassion, and straightforward, sincere humanity. I will forever remember and cherish my stay at Ullevål hospital.

On the table where I am writing these lines lies one of the hospital’s bibles in Norwegian. Thirty-seven years ago I had on my table in the solitary cell of Odessa prison – I had not yet reached my twentieth birthday – the same book written in different European languages. By comparing the parallel texts I practiced linguistics – the style of the gospel and the conciseness of the translations make the learning of foreign languages easier. Unfortunately, I cannot promise anybody that my new encounter with the old and well-known book will contribute to the salvation of my soul. But reading the Norwegian bible text can nonetheless help me learning the language of the country which has offered me its hospitality, and whose literature I already in younger years learnt to treasure and love.

Oslo Community Hospital October 1, 1935 L. Trotsky

Leon Trotsky My Life forward

 

Leon Trotsky

My Life

---

FOREWORD

Our times again are rich in memoirs, perhaps richer than ever before. It is because there is much to tell. The more dramatic and rich in change the epoch, the more intense the interest in current history. The art of landscape-painting could never have been born in the Sahara. The “crossing” of two epochs, as at present, gives rise to a desire to look back at yesterday, already far away, through the eyes of its active participants. That is the reason for the enormous growth in the literature of reminiscence since the days of the last war. Perhaps it will justify the present volume as well.

The very fact of its coming into the world is due to the pause in the author’s active political life. One of the unforeseen, though not accidental, stops in my life has proved to be Constantinople. Here I am camping – but not for the first time – and patiently waiting for what is to follow. The life of a revolutionary would be quite impossible without a certain amount of “fatalism.” In one way or another, the Constantinople interval has proved the most appropriate moment for me to look back before circumstances allow me to move forward

At first I wrote cursory autobiographical sketches for the newspapers, and thought I would let it go at that. And here I would like to say that, from my refuge, I was unable to watch the form in which those sketches reached the public. But every work has its own logic. I did not get into my stride until I had nearly finished those articles. Then I decided to write a book. I applied a different and infinitely broader scale, and carried out the whole work anew. The only point in common between the original newspaper articles and this book is that both discuss the same subject. In everything else they are two different products.

I have dealt in especial detail with the second period of the Soviet revolution, the beginning of which coincided with Lenin’s illness and the opening of the campaign against “Trotskyism.” The struggle of the epigones for power, as I shall try to prove, was not merely a struggle of personalities; it represented a new Political chapter – the reaction against October, and the preparation of the Thermidor. From this the answer to the that I have so often been asked – “How did you lose power?” – follows naturally.

An autobiography of a revolutionary politician must inevitably touch on a whole series of theoretical questions connected with the social development of Russia, and in part with humanity as a whole, but especially with those critical periods that are called revolutions. Of course I have not been able in these pages to examine complicated theoretical problems critically in their essence. The so-called theory of permanent revolution, which played so large a rôle in my personal life, and, what is more important, is acquiring such poignant reality in the countries of the East, runs through this book as a remote leitmotif. If this does not satisfy the reader, I can say that the consideration of the problem of revolution in its essence will constitute a separate book, in which I shall attempt to give form to the principal theoretical conclusions of the experiences of the last decades.

As many people pass through the pages of my book, portrayed not always in the light that they would have chosen for themselves or for their parties, many of them will find my account lacking the necessary detachment. Even extracts that have been published in the newspapers have elicited certain denials. That is inevitable. One has no doubt that even if I had succeeded in making my autobiography a mere daguerreotype of my life – which I never intended it to be – it would nevertheless have called forth echoes of the discussion started at the time by the collisions described in the book. This book is not a dispassionate photograph of my life, however, but a component part of it. In these pages, I continue the struggle to which my whole life is devoted. Describing, I also characterize and evaluate; narrating, I also defend myself, and more often attack. It seems to me that this is the only method of making an autobiography objective in a higher sense, that is, of making it the most adequate expression of personality, conditions, and epoch.

Objectivity is not the pretended indifference with which con firmed hypocrisy, in speaking of friends and enemies, suggests indirectly to the reader what it finds inconvenient to state directly. Objectivity of this sort is nothing but a conventional trick. I do not need it. Since I have submitted to the necessity of writing about myself – nobody has as yet succeeded in writing an autobiography without writing about himself – I can have no reason to hide my sympathies or antipathies, my loves or my hates.

This is a book of polemics. It reflects the dynamics of that social life which is built entirely on contradictions. The impertinence of the schoolboy toward his master; the pin-pricks of envy in the drawing-room, veiled by courtesies; the constant competition of commerce; the frenzied rivalry in all branches of pure and applied science, of art, and sport; the parliamentary clashes that reveal the deep opposition of interests; the furious struggle that goes on every day in the newspapers; the strikes of the workers; the shooting down of participants in demonstrations; the packages of explosives that civilized neighbors send each other through the air; the fiery tongues of civil war, almost never extinguished on our planet – all these are the forms of social “polemics,” ranging from those that are usual, constant and normal, almost unnoticed despite their intensity, to those of war and revolution that are extraordinary, explosive and volcanic. Such is our epoch. We have all grown up with it. We breathe it and live by it. How can we help being polemical if we want to be true to our period in the mode of the day?

But there is another and more elementary criterion, one that relates to plain conscientiousness in stating facts. Just as the most bitter revolutionary struggle must take account of time and place, the most polemical work must observe the proportions that exist between objects and men. I hope that I have observed this demand not only in its entirety, but also in its particulars.

In certain cases – although these are not very numerous – I relate long-ago conversations in dialogue form. No one will demand a verbatim report of conversations repeated many years after. Nor do I claim such accuracy. Some of these dialogues have rather a symbolic character. Everyone, however, has had moments in his life when some particular conversation has impressed itself indelibly on his memory. One usually repeats that sort of conversation to one’s personal or political friends; thanks to this, they become fixed in one’s memory. I am thinking primarily, of course, of all conversations of a political nature.

I may state here that I am accustomed to trust to my memory. Its testimony has been subjected to verification by fact more than once, and it has stood the test perfectly. But a reservation is necessary. If my topographic memory, not to mention my musical one, is very weak, and my visual memory and my linguistic memory fairly mediocre, still my memory of ideas is considerably above the average. And, moreover, in this book ideas, their evolution, and the struggle of men for these ideas, have the most important place.

It is true that memory is not an automatic reckoner. Above all, it is never disinterested. Not infrequently it expels or drives into a dark corner episodes not convenient to the vital instinct that controls it – usually ambition. But this is a matter for “psychoanalytic” criticism, which is sometimes very ingenious and instructive, but more often capricious and arbitrary.

Needless to say, I have persistently checked my memory by documentary evidence. Difficult as the conditions of my work have been, in the business of making inquiries in libraries or searching out archives I have been able to verify all the more important facts and dates that were needed.

Beginning with 1897, I have waged the fight chiefly with a pen in my hand. Thus the events of my life have left an almost uninterrupted trail in print over a period of thirty-two years. The factional struggle in the party, which began in 1903, has been rich in personal episodes. My opponents, like myself, have not withheld blows. All of them have left their scars in print. Since the October Revolution, the history of the revolutionary movement has held an important place in the research work of young Soviet scholars and of entire institutions. Everything of interest is sought out in the archives of the revolution and of the Czarist police department and published with detailed factual commentaries. In the first years, when there was as yet no need of disguising anything, this work was carried on most conscientiously. The “works” of Lenin and some of mine were issued by the State Publishing House, with notes that took up dozens of pages in each volume and contained invaluable factual material concerning both the activities of the authors and the events of the corresponding period. All this of course facilitated my work, helping me to fix the correct chronological pattern and to avoid errors of fact, at least the most serious ones.

I cannot deny that my life has not followed quite the ordinary course. The reasons for that are inherent in the conditions of the time, rather than in me. Of course certain personal traits were also necessary for the work, good or bad, that I performed. But under other historical conditions, these personal peculiarities might have remained completely dormant, as is true of so many propensities and passions on which the social environment makes no demands. On the other hand, other qualities today crowded out or suppressed might have come to the fore. Above the subjective there rises the objective, and in the final reckoning it is the objective that decides.

My intellectual and active life, which began when I was about seventeen or eighteen years old, has been one of constant struggle for definite ideas. In my personal life there were no events de serving public attention in themselves. All the more or less unusual episodes in my life are bound up with the revolutionary struggle, and derive their significance from it. This alone justifies the appearance of my autobiography. But from this same source flow many difficulties for the author. The facts of my personal life have proved to be so closely interwoven with the texture of historical events that it has been difficult to separate them. This book, moreover, is not altogether an historical work. Events are treated here not according to their objective significance, but according to the way in which they are connected with the facts of my personal life. It is quite natural, then, that the accounts of specific events and of entire periods lack the proportion that would be demanded of them if this book were an historical work. I had to grope for the dividing line between autobiography and the history of the revolution. Without allowing the story of my life to become lost in an historical treatise, it was necessary at the same time to give the reader a base of the facts of the social development. In doing this, I assumed that the main outlines of the great events were known to him, and that all his memory needed was a brief reminder of historical facts and their sequence.

By the time this book is published, I shall have reached my fiftieth birthday. The date coincides with that of the October Revolution. Mystics and Pythagoreans may draw from this what ever conclusions they like. I myself noticed this odd coincidence only three years after the October uprising. Until I was nine years old I lived in a remote little village. For eight years I studied at school. I was arrested for the first time a year after I left school. For universities, like many others of my time, I had prison, Siberia, and foreign exile. In the Czar’s prisons I served four years in two periods. In the Czarist exile I spent about two years the first time, a few weeks the second. I escaped from Siberia twice. As a foreign immigrant, I lived for about twelve years altogether in various European countries and in America – two years before the revolution of 1905, and nearly ten years after its defeat. In 1915, during the war, I was sentenced in my absence to imprisonment in Hohenzollern Germany; the next year I was expelled from France and Spain, and after a brief stay in the Madrid prison, and a month in Cadiz under the surveillance of the police, I was deported to America. I was there when the February Revolution broke out. On my way from New York I was arrested by the British in March, 1917, and detained for a month in a concentration camp in Canada. I took part in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and I was the chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet of delegates in 1905, and again in 1917. I took an intimate part in the October Revolution, and was a member of the Soviet government. As the People’s Commissary for foreign affairs, I conducted peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk with the delegates of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. As People’s Commissary for military and naval affairs, I devoted about five years to organizing the Red Army and restoring the Red Navy. During the year 1920 I added to that the direction of the country’s disorganized railway system.

The main content of my life, however, except for the years of the civil war, has been party and literary activity. In 1923 the State Publishing House began the publication of my collected works. It succeeded in bringing out thirteen volumes, not counting the previously published five volumes on military subjects. Publication was discontinued in 1927, when the persecution of “Trotskyism” became especially intense.

In January, 1928, I was sent into exile by the present Soviet government; I spent a year on the Chinese frontier; in February, 1929, I was deported to Turkey, and I am now writing these lines from Constantinople.

Even in this condensed synopsis, the outward course of my life could hardly be called monotonous. On the contrary, counting the number of turns, surprises, sharp conflicts, ups and downs, one might say that my life was rather full of “adventures.” But I must say that, by natural inclination, I have nothing in common with seekers after adventure. I am rather pedantic and conservative in my habits. I like and appreciate discipline and system. Not to provide a paradox, but because it is a fact, I must add that I cannot endure disorder or destruction. I was always an accurate and diligent schoolboy, and I have preserved these two qualities all my life. In the years of the civil war, when I covered by train a distance equal to several times round the earth, I was greatly pleased to see each new fence constructed of freshly cut pine boards. Lenin, who knew this passion of mine, often twitted me about it in a friendly way. A well-written book in which one can find new ideas, and a good pen with which to communicate one’s own ideas to others, for me have always been and are today the most valuable and intimate products of culture. The desire for study has never left me, and many times in my life I felt that the revolution was interfering with my systematic work. Yet almost a third of a century of my conscious life was entirely filled with revolutionary struggle. And if I had to live it over again, I would unhesitatingly take the same path.

I am obliged to write these lines as an immigrant – for the third time – while my closest friends are filling the places of exile and the prisons of that Soviet republic in whose creating they took so decisive a part. Some of them are vacillating, withdrawing, bowing before the enemy. Some are doing it because they are morally exhausted; others because they can find no other way out of the maze of circumstances; and still others because of the pressure of material reprisals. I had already lived through two instances of such mass desertion of the banner: after the collapse of the revolution of 1905 and at the beginning of the World War. Thus I know well enough, from my own experience, the historical ebb and flow. They are governed by their own laws. Mere impatience will not expedite their change. I have grown accustomed to viewing the historical perspective not from the stand point of my personal fate. To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one’s own place – that is the first duty of a revolutionary. And at the same time, it is the greatest personal satisfaction possible for a man who does not limit his tasks to the present day.

L. Trotsky. 1929