"Trotskyism, in spite of itself, suffers the fate common to all oppositions: the party in power is realistic since it asserts and claims to prove that the actual is the only possible. There is only one policy to follow: mine. The member of the opposition declares that there is at least one other and that it just happens to be the better, which forces him, in spite of everything, to take an attitude more or less tinged with idealism: there are possibles which don't reach realization; the real course of events ceases to be the measure of man since that which is not is truer, more effective and more consonant with general interests than that which is. . . . Marx is certainly far from denying the existence of the possible but he means by that the stages of future action, such as they appear to us in the course of its preparation. Leaders and militants must be able to say to themselves, looking back on the past: 'We did all that was possible (that is to say, our action extended as far as the circumstances permitted)-- nothing was possible save what we did (events showed that the solutions which we set aside were impracticable).' This attitude leads to an identification of reality and action. . . ." "The theoretician can claim to provide us with an indubitable truth on the condition that he confine himself to what is, and does not concern himself with what might have been. Mr. Germain [a Trotskyist--MC5] bases his opinion on a dead reality; he cannot claim certitude when he tries to establish the possible consequences of what did not happen. As for the goal of his research, not having really existed, it will be the abstract object of an idea; in a word, it will be because it is thought. Thus, one abandons the properly Marxist scheme for a probabilistic idealism." [Much later, on p. 116] "'For a Marxist' every true idea must be practical since truth is action; the Trotskyist idea would remain a purely lifeless abstraction, an idealistic, unforeseen event (since it doesn't produce effects by itself, since it points to a path which it knows will not be followed) if the masses, through their action and their demands, did not take on the responsibility for giving these pure subjective concepts a beginning of realization." [MC5 comments: Sartre was known as a Resistance fighter during World War II and existentialist philosopher in France. Most of his life he spent in productive tension with the followers of Lenin and Stalin. Part of his life may have been outright anarchist. He was for "de-Stalinisation" and "de-Stalinisation of de-Stalinisers." Despite his not being a Maoist while serving as an editor of Maoist newspapers, Sartre lambasted Trotskyism and bourgeois Liberalism. In fact, he passes in and out of calling Trotskyism "anti-communism" as part of his writing style. Thus, despite his tensions with the followers of Stalin and Mao, Sartre believed he must continue to take sides and not take up a vacuous subjectivism. For most of his life, he was not an easy-going "unite-everyone-without-regard-to-line" kind of guy. Persynally, Sartre had seen the Trotskyists of France condemn the Resistance to Nazi occupation in 1942; thus Sartre was a philosopher, but he also had concrete experience with the struggle, and he did not end up mostly as a bourgeois intellectual at least partly on that account. It was not until I specifically read this passage above and some others from Sartre that I was able to understand materialism and its application to Trotskyism and a host of other ideologies, including the relationship of the Third World revolution to revolutionary science. Of course I had read Trotskyism, Marxism, Maoism etc., but the meaning of the materialist method did not sink in adequately until I saw it discussed more or less by third parties, people not fully Marxist-- Sartre and the Trotskyists! Sartre showed very patiently how Trotskyism as it existed could not be good Marxism and even quoted Trotsky (in his occasional lapses into materialism) against Trotskyists. I highly recommend "The Unity of the Workers Does Not Come About Spontaneously" as a section of the "Communists and the Peace." Take out the names and events and replace them with others as named by Trotskyists and it still applies to 99% of Trotskyism and its interpretations of the past 75 years. In fact, Sartre's critique of idealism applies to most of anarchism as well. One thing I would like to mention is the last sentence from Sartre above, and how it is particularly damning coming from Sartre, but not quite correct. At the time that Sartre said the above, he was under fire from the Communist Party for abandoning the idea of economic determinism, the notion that it is the inevitable historic mission of the proletariat to bring down capitalism and install socialism. Thus when even Sartre can see that Trotskyists are idealist, the Trotskyists have been put in their place, all the more. With regard to probability and determinism, Sartre is correct that Trotskyists at best can claim possibility that something better could have been done, not certainty in their criticisms of things actually done by followers of Stalin. That in itself should tell the Trotskyists with any shred of Marxism in them that they must join the followers of Stalin and Mao and not criticize from outside. When Sartre wrote, it was still only 30 years of the Stalin and Trotsky split to evaluate, and the fact that for some reason the Trotskyists in all countries were always in opposition, and not in power. What is much worse is that looking at the last 80 years since the Russian Revolution in more than 150 countries, we see that Trotskyism has failed to bring about revolutions. Thus it can only be a very, very low probability that Trotskyism is correct about the possibles (and their related critique of Stalin and his followers) in all those countries and all their revolutionary situations. It is much more likely that Trotskyism is simply not a proletarian ideology, and that's why the proletariat has not put Trotskyists in power. Nonetheless, since Sartre mentioned probability, I would like to point out that there is a relationship between mere possibility and a definite end, along lines relevant to the "historic mission of the proletariat" debate. As we stress quite often in our work, if we model a 1% independent-each-year chance of nuclear and/or environmental devastation that adds up to eventual doom. After only 300 years of taking such chances the probability of survival is less than 5%. And by the way, Sartre said this was another reason not to break with the followers of Stalin, because by the time completely new parties arise as if born innocent and from scratch, the species could be finished. (p. 133)]