I'm no fan of communism, and Trotsky didn't really stick to this anyway, but his analysis here is hard to find fault with.
Most people here probably haven't read this but know it intuitively, which is why we are far less likely to turn to ''Second Amendment remedies;'' it changes nothing or at best leads to temporary confusion and an excuse for repression.
I can see why it is appealing to the right though. Since they believe in hierarchy and are always waiting for a strong leader on horseback to tell them what to do, they believe that their political opponents operate the same way and will be demoralized and aimless if they kill our leaders. With today's progressives, nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead of looking to leaders to tell us what to do and believe, we are looking to elected representatives to do WHAT WE TELL THEM, and while we mourn those who fall to right wing violence (or more often scandal mongering, ridicule, or freezing out by the press), violence directed against our reps doesn't change our aims, or even betrayal by those we worked and voted for does not changes our ideas that are not so different from those of our founding fathers: we want an educated electorate that can knowledgeably participate in self-governance, free from hunger and want with access to health care that doesn't bankrupt them, with jobs that provide enough income to support a family and enough leisure time to spend with them, and knowledge that they will be protect from criminals with money as well as the garden variety kind.
If Democrats in Congress and the White House state such goals clearly and actually pursued them, there might be fewer ignorant and desperate people for the right to manipulate into acts of violence.
A strike, even of modest size, has social consequences: strengthening of the workers' self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently even an improvement in productive technology. The murder of a factory owner produces effects of a police nature only, or a change of proprietors devoid of any social significance. Whether a terrorist attempt, even a 'successful' one, throws the ruling class into confusion depends on the concrete political circumstances. In any case, the confusion can only be short-lived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function.But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one's goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organization? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?
In our eyes,
individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission...Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more 'effective' the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organization and self-education.
But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only
the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy. http://www.socialistalternative.org/literature/terrorism/