BY LEON TROTSKY  
Our class enemies are in the habit of complaining about our terrorism. What they mean by this is rather unclear. They would like to label all the activities of the proletariat directed against the class enemy’s interests as terrorism. The strike, in their eyes, is the principal method of terrorism. The threat of a strike, the organization of strike pickets, an economic boycott of a slave-driving boss, a moral boycott of a traitor from our own ranks—all this and much more they call terrorism.

However, it must be said that when they reproach us with terrorism, they are trying—although not always consciously—to give this word a narrower, less indirect meaning. The damaging of machines by workers, for example, is terrorism in this strict sense of the word. The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister—all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international Social Democracy ought to know that it has always opposed this kind of terrorism, and done so in the most irreconcilable way.

Why?

“Terrorizing” with the threat of a strike, or actually conducting a strike, is something only industrial or agricultural workers can do. The social significance of a strike depends directly upon first, the size of the enterprise or the branch of industry that it affects; and second, the degree to which the workers taking part in it are organized, disciplined, and ready for action. This is just as true of a political strike as it is of an economic one. It continues to be the method of struggle that flows directly from the productive role of the proletariat in modern society.

In order to develop, the capitalist system needs a parliamentary superstructure. But because it cannot confine the modern proletariat to a political ghetto, it must sooner or later allow the workers to participate in parliament. In elections, the mass character of the proletariat and its level of political development—qualities which, again, are determined by its social role, i.e., above all, its productive role—find their expression.

As in a strike, in elections the method, aim, and result of the struggle always depend on the social role and strength of the proletariat as a class. Only the workers can conduct a strike. Artisans ruined by the factory, peasants whose water the factory is poisoning, or lumpen proletarians, in search of plunder, can smash machines, set fire to a factory, or murder its owner.

In the first case, there is a social struggle, whose methods and means flow necessarily from the nature of the prevailing social order; in the second, a purely mechanical reaction identical everywhere—in China as in France—very striking in its outward form (murder, explosions, and so forth) but absolutely harmless as far as the social system goes.

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?…

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 toward a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission.  
 
 
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