THREE¶
Core Argument¶
In this chapter, Trotsky advances the dictatorship of the proletariat as the third and decisive prerequisite for socialism, the plane on which objective economic conditions intersect with subjective political will. He insists that the proletariat, though driven by its material position, is not mechanically propelled toward power; it must consciously organise, assess the balance of forces, and act as a revolutionary class. The chapter’s core argument is that political preparedness—the subjective factor—is indispensable, but that it must be understood in materialist terms, not as a moral or psychological transformation of human nature under capitalism.
Trotsky rejects two opposing deviations. Against Blanquism, he argues that no conspiratorial elite can substitute for the mass movement. Against anarchism, he dismisses faith in spontaneous insurrection without conscious direction. Social-Democracy, he insists, means the conscious conquest of power by a class that understands its own interests. But his principal polemic is directed against those who demand a prior “moral regeneration” of the proletariat—the notion that socialism requires altruistic, selfless individuals before it can be built. This, Trotsky charges, is shallow moralising that postpones socialism indefinitely. He draws a sharp distinction between the class psychology of the proletariat under capitalism—shaped by exploitation, solidarity, but also by poverty, division, and bourgeois corruption—and the socialist psychology that can only emerge after the abolition of capitalist relations. The average worker does not need to be a paragon of virtue; he needs only to grasp from daily experience that his simplest needs can be met only on the ruins of the existing system.
To illustrate the futility of expecting a new human nature within the old society, Trotsky turns to early Christianity. The first Christian communes, he notes, already suffered embezzlement of communal property; as Christianity spread, it did not regenerate society but was itself degraded, becoming materialistic, bureaucratic, and parasitic. The lesson is drawn with polemical force: the dependence of human psychology on social conditions is an inexorable law. Socialism cannot create its own psychological prerequisites in advance. It must first create socialist conditions of life; the socialist psyche will follow. The chapter thus grounds political strategy in historical materialism, arguing against every variety of utopian moralism that would make the revolution wait upon the improvement of human nature.