Trottin' with Trotsky

What a mustache.

It came to pass that I went to the temple with my ward instead of doing my blog post on time. This may or may not be a call for pity. (Is it working?)

Leon Trotsky's real name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, but the lack of consistency in his identity didn't seem to affect his ability to stick to the truth when he predicted the future. Trotsky's The Proletariat and the Revolution is an outline for the working class to use as they rise up against the government. Political riots had broken out in 1903-4 as a result of dissatisfaction with the government (with the failed Russo-Japanese War and other general stupidness), but the working class had abandoned their revolutionary cause. So Trotsky came in to revive the efforts.

To map out the proletarian revolution, Trotsky uses a great deal of anthypophora (i.e. asking questions and then answering them himself). This format is an appeal to logos, even if it isn't as sound as a syllogism or some statistical proof. It is clear. It is concise. It is simplified. "How do we do this? Why, we do this." Very appealing.

This clear-concise-simplified-ness is backed up by pleasant pockets of lists and repetitions. Trotsky uses a great deal of "we ought"'s as nails to hammer in his message. It's an indirect way of commanding that builds Trotsky's ethos ("Hey, I've thought this through. I have enough authority to say we should do this.). It also smothers his argument in a heap of oughts, each one richer and more convincing than the one previous.

That's what I do with
my wrenches.

The most powerful of these repetitions comes at the end of Trotsky's Proletariat. He gives his revolutionary forces a name and a cause: the NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY! (Sounds fit for a comic book, don'tcha think?) Then he uses more oughts and more powerful directives leading up to a wonderful, flourishing finish: "We ought to carry on the most intensive propaganda in the army in order that on the day of the strike each soldier...should know that he is facing the people who are demanding a National Constituent Assembly."

AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!

Trotsky's words aren't the most pathos-sparking, but his direct, low-style speech is incredibly attractive to the logic. The proletariat must have taken his words to heart, too, because the revolution turned out almost exactly like his roadmap. I guess all a revolution needs is an outline to run with--and then the runners to run with it.

The Zimmerwald Manifesto

“Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. . . . The war that has produced this chaos is the outcome of imperialism, of the attempt on the part of the capitalist classes of each nation to foster their greed for profit by the exploitation of human labor and of the natural resources of the entire globe."

So begins Leon Trotsky in his Zimmerwald Manifesto. By this point, the First World War was about a year old. Trotsky attempts to unite socialists throughout Europe in opposing the war. He does this, along with other ways, by painting a narrative that fits to his mold of dissent.