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On 8/17/15 11:28 AM, Joseph Green via Marxism wrote:
Trotsky's stand toward Haile Selassie is reminiscent of Stalin's famous remarks about the Emir of Afghanistan in "Foundations of Leninism". It is one of the examples of how Stalinism and Trotskyism have much in common. I wrote about this in "Anti-imperialism and the class struggle".
Look, your problem is not just with Trotsky (or Stalin). It is with Lenin and the Comintern that viewed struggles such as these as worth supporting. Italy was trying to make Ethiopia into a colony, just as it had done to Somalia. We don't take a neutral "plague on both your houses" position in such confrontations.
In fact you can see the same outlook from Karl Marx who took the side of the Chinese during the Opium wars no matter the character of the state that opposed Britain:
“A little while before the tables began to turn, China, this living fossil, began to become revolutionary. In itself there was nothing extraordinary in this phenomenon, for Oriental empires continually exhibit an immutability in social sub-structure with restless permutations of the persons and races who have possessed themselves of the political super-structure. China is ruled by a foreign dynasty. After three hundred years why should not a movement develop for the overthrow of this dynasty? The movement had from the beginning a religious complexion, but that was a feature it had in common with all Oriental movements. The immediate motives for the appearance of the movement were obvious – European interference, opium wars, and consequent disruption of the existing Government, the flow of silver out of the country, disturbance of the economic equilibrium through the introduction of foreign manufactures, &c. What seemed to me a paradox was that the opium animated instead of stupefying. As a matter of fact the only original part of this revolution was its leaders. They are conscious of their task, quite apart from the change of dynasty. They have no slogans. They represent a still greater torment for the masses of the people than for the old rulers. Their motive seems to be nothing else than to bring into play against the conservative marasmus grotesquely repulsive forms of destruction, destruction without any germ of regeneration.”
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