1. On Trotsky’s On the Transitional Program. The quote you provided is followed by this paragraph:

“We can go further and say that the discipline of our party must be very severe because we are a revolutionary party against a tremendous bloc of enemies conscious of their interests and now we are attacked not only by the bourgeoisie but by the Stalinists, the most venomous of the bourgeois agents. Absolute discipline is necessary but it must come from common understanding. If it is imposed from without it is a yoke. If it comes from understanding it is an expression of personality, but otherwise it is a yoke. Then discipline is an expression of my free individuality. It is not opposition between personal will and the party because I entered of my free will. The program too is on this basis and this program can be upon a sure political and moral basis only if we understand it very well.”

According to your quote, one could be led to believe that the understanding of necessity, according to Trotsky, is the understanding of that which predetermination “imposed from without” as yoke. Discipline, or the execution of our decisions, must come from not any “understanding”, but “common understanding.” Trotsky must create a “common understanding” between his “personal will” and the will of the party, as part of his entrance into the party by his own “free will.” In other words, what Trotsky is arguing is that he has not lost his free will as a result of his acceptance of his responsibility to the party. He has accepted not a yoke of determinism but the understanding that the party requires his services. In return, it provides him with due consideration, a path towards free expression, and a fair share of the power.

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randomposter33 March 15, 20191:58 am Reply

2. We have already spoken about this part of Lenin’s Empiro-Criticism. Lenin argues that the human mind and will do exist, although they are secondary to the material world. He does not go into detail about what makes the mind secondary, but there are basically two main points: that the mind derives from the functioning of the brain, the physical organ and thought itself does not change physical reality except in its connection to bodies that then interact with the material world.

Therefore, it is clear we are free to use our minds, except to think without our brain. It is clear that our thoughts accurately reflect the world and our bodies and our possibilities within any given circumstances. Every action, or the most likely set of actions can be listed along with the most probable consequences of those actions. Finally, a choice can be made from among the list, as long as we are conscious of that entire list. As one or a few choices dominate that list, they appear to reflect the unknown necessity that becomes the our conscious necessity for us.

Lenin diminishes the roles of individuals outside of thought for a reason, because we appear, at least our bodies, as specks of dust to someone who wishes to plan the political economy of the entire world. Armies, but more importantly, the forces of labor of the entire world united for the agreed upon purposes of such forces could unleash, with modern production methods, almost limitless energy, almost limitless transformation of present conditions. So the will of the world, especially of the lower class, for Lenin meant something much more than just an illusion. He sought not to shape the will of the world, but to make everyone conscious of their inherent unity of will and the great possibility that he saw for that unity to solve the common problems of the people.

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randomposter33 March 15, 20193:07 am Reply

Further on in Kautsky’s Road to Power (1909, not 1907):

“Everywhere outside the Anglo-Saxon countries the economic activity of the workers has been directed and assisted from the beginning by the knowledge of Socialism.

Next to these successes it has been the successful battles for parliament and in parliament that has done most to increase the strength and the feeling of strength on the part of the proletariat. Not alone through the material advantages that have been secured for some sections of the proletariat, but most of all through the fact that the propertyless, cowed and hopeless masses of the people saw here a power appear that boldly took up battle against the ruling powers, winning victory after victory, and which was itself nothing but an organization of these propertyless ones.

Therein lies the great significance of the first of May demonstrations, and battle of the ballots, as well as the battle for the ballot. These things often do not bring any important material advantage to the proletariat. Very often the gains are in no way proportionate to the sacrifices made. Nevertheless, every such victory signifies a mighty increase in the effective strength of the proletariat, because they mightily arouse its feeling of strength, and thereby the energy of its volition for the class struggle.

There is nothing that our opponents fear more than this increase in the feeling of strength. They know that the giant is not dangerous to them so long as he is not conscious of his own strength. To keep down this feeling of strength is their greatest care, even material concessions are much less hated by them than moral victories of the working class, which increase its self-confidence. Therefore they often fight much harder to maintain autocratic management of the factory, to maintain the right to “run their own business”, than against increases in wages. This explains the bitter enmity to the celebration of Mayday as a holiday taken by labor, and also explains the efforts to throttle universal and equal suffrage wherever it has become a means of visibly demonstrating to the population the continuous victorious advance of the Socialist party. It is not the fear of a Socialist majority that drives them to such efforts – they need not fear that for many an election.

No, it is the fear that the continual electoral victories of the Socialists will give the proletariat such a feeling of strength, and so overawe its opponents that it will be impossible to prevent the seizure of the powers of the state and the transformation of the relation of powers in the government.”

Notice especially the last two paragraphs. “The feeling of strength,” “self-confidence”, “material concessions are much less hated by them than moral victories of the working class”, “…they often fight much harder to maintain autocratic management of the factory, to maintain the right to “run their own business”, than against increases in wages.”

Kautsky made great concessions to parliamentarianism, and this could be rooted in his mistaken conceptions about the will. The will is not free will, he argues, but it is the “will to live”. All will is not free, or no will is free. But all will is the “will to live”. This fallacy played into his later deciding to sacrifice the socialist movement for the maintenance of positions in the bourgeois parliament for Socialist Party representatives. This meant support for the mass slaughter of workers and their leaders, support for imperialist war and the destructive re-stabilization of capitalism, all for the will to live of a few parliamentarians and their feelings of strength and confidence. This betrayal was prepared by a philosophical assault on free, rational thought.