October 7, 2011
AND HE'LL END, LIKE ORWELL, AS A CHRISTIAN:
The mind of a believer: a review of Arguably by Christopher Hitchens (John Gray, 10/06/11, New Statesman)Six months before he was murdered in his study in Mexico City, Leon Trotsky wrote: "I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is no less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth."
There is something tragicomic in this confession of faith. Dialectical materialism, though it claimed to be based in science, was never more than superstitious gibberish. When he invoked the supposed science to bolster his failing political hopes, Trotsky was engaging in a type of magical thinking, using words as charms to ward off the terrors of history. At the same time - and this is the irresistibly comical element of Trotsky's career - he never ceased to regard himself as anything other than an uncompromising rationalist.
The comedy did not end with Trotsky's assassination, nor with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those of his disciples who finally acknowledged that the communist future was not going to arrive did not give up on the dream of world revolution. Instead, an influential number of them found a surrogate for the failed communist experiment in the heartland of capitalism. America replaced the Soviet Union as the embodiment of human progress - and, it transpired, as the instigator of revolutionary wars. [...]
That Hitchens has the mind of a believer has not been sufficiently appreciated. His critics usually fasten on secondary features of his work, quite often those that make reading him so enjoyable.
Posted by oj at October 7, 2011 7:12 AM
Tweet