Vol. 77/No. 2      January 21, 2013

Below is an excerpt from Writings of Leon Trotsky 1937-38, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. Trotsky was a central leader of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. The book contains his correspondence with supporters of the Left Opposition around the world as they defended the communist course of the revolution and its leadership under V.I. Lenin, against the counterrevolution led by Joseph Stalin.

This article appeared in the August 1938 Clave, a revolutionary magazine published in Mexico City where Trotsky was living in exile. The Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM) was the main trade union federation in Mexico, headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a Stalinist. The GPU was the Soviet secret police under Stalin. Copyright © 1970 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY LEON TROTSKY  
A campaign against the reactionary press is underway in Mexico. The attack is being directed by the CTM leaders, or, more precisely, by Mr. Lombardo Toledano personally. The objective is to “curb” the reactionary press, either by placing it under a democratic censorship or by banning it altogether. The trade unions have been mobilized for war. The incurable democrats, corrupted by their experience with a Stalinized Moscow and headed by “friends” of the GPU, have hailed this campaign, which cannot be regarded as anything but suicidal. In fact, it is not difficult to foresee that even if this campaign triumphs and leads to practical results that suit the taste of Lombardo Toledano, the ultimate consequences will be borne primarily by the working class.

Both theory and historical experience testify that any restriction of democracy in bourgeois society is, in the final analysis, invariably directed against the proletariat, just as any taxes that are imposed also fall on the shoulders of the working class. Bourgeois democracy is of use to the proletariat only insofar as it opens up the way for the development of the class struggle. Consequently, any working class “leader” who arms the bourgeois state with special means for controlling public opinion in general and the press in particular is, precisely, a traitor. In the last analysis, the sharpening of the class struggle will impel the bourgeoisie of every stripe to reach an agreement among themselves; they will then pass special laws, all sorts of restrictive measures, and all kinds of “democratic” censorship against the working class. Anyone who has not yet understood this should get out of the ranks of the working class.

“But at times,” some “friends” of the USSR will object, “the dictatorship of the proletariat is forced to resort to special measures, particularly against the reactionary press.”

“This objection,” we reply, “comes down primarily to trying to identify a workers’ state with a bourgeois state. Even though Mexico is a semicolonial country, it is also a bourgeois state, and in no way a workers’ state. However, even from the standpoint of the interests of the dictatorship of the proletariat, banning bourgeois newspapers or censoring them does not in the least constitute a ‘program,’ or a ‘principle,’ or an ideal setup. Measures of this kind can only be a temporary, unavoidable evil.”

Once at the helm, the proletariat may find itself forced, for a certain time, to take special measures against the bourgeoisie, if the bourgeoisie assumes an attitude of open rebellion against the workers’ state. In that case, restricting freedom of the press goes hand in hand with all the other measures employed in waging a civil war. Naturally, if you are forced to use artillery and planes against the enemy, you cannot permit this same enemy to maintain his own centers of news and propaganda within the armed camp of the proletariat. Nonetheless, in this instance, too, if the special measures are extended until they become an enduring pattern, they in themselves carry the danger of getting out of hand and of the workers’ bureaucracy gaining a political monopoly that would be one of the sources of its degeneration.

We have a living example of such a dynamic before us in the detestable suppression of freedom of speech and of the press that is now the rule in the Soviet Union. This has nothing to do with the interests of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, it is designed to protect the interests of the new governing caste from the worker and peasant opposition. …

The real tasks of the workers’ state lie not in clamping a police gag on public opinion but rather in freeing it from the yoke of capital. This can be done only by placing the means of production, including the production of public information, in the hands of society as a whole. Once this fundamental socialist step has been taken, all currents of public opinion that have not taken up arms against the dictatorship of the proletariat must be given the opportunity to express themselves freely. … One of the main causes of the degeneration of the state apparatus is the Stalinist bureaucracy’s monopolization of the press, which threatens to reduce all the gains of the October Revolution to utter ruin. …

But only the blind or feebleminded could think that as the result of a ban on the reactionary press the workers and peasants can free themselves from the influence of reactionary ideas. In reality, only the greatest freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly can create favorable conditions for the advance of the revolutionary movement of the working class.

It is essential to wage a relentless struggle against the reactionary press. But workers cannot let the repressive fist of the bourgeois state substitute for the struggle that they must wage through their own organizations and their own press. Today the state may appear to be “kindly” disposed to the workers’ organizations; tomorrow the government may fall, will inevitably fall, into the hands of the most reactionary elements of the bourgeoisie. In that case, whatever restrictive legislation that exists will be thrown at the workers. Only adventurers with no thought other than for the needs of the moment would fail to heed such a danger.

The most effective way to combat the bourgeois press is to expand the working class press.  
 
 
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